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Frequent Social Networking Associated with Poor Functioning Among Children [pdf]

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11–20 of 34 posts

Re: Frequent Social Networking Associated with Poor Functioning Among Children [pdf]

#11
post #8
post #7

Is frequent HN consumption associated with poor functioning among programmers?

In the past I joked that whenever I'm coding something really really fun, I missed a couple of days of HN, as always YMMV

It's really true though, i've also found my online consumption is inversely correlated with the level of motivation I have for the project i'm working on.

The social media we consume has been very precisely tuned for our consumption preferences. If you're not particularly motivated, you might be inclined to gravitate towards easy to consume media. Social media would likely be near the top of that list. So heavy users, would likely also be the lowly motivated producers.

Re: Frequent Social Networking Associated with Poor Functioning Among Children [pdf]

#12
post #8
post #7

Is frequent HN consumption associated with poor functioning among programmers?

In the past I joked that whenever I'm coding something really really fun, I missed a couple of days of HN, as always YMMV

Amdahl's law pretty much guarantees this will always be the case. There is a fixed time resource and all the work needs to be done in it.

Re: Frequent Social Networking Associated with Poor Functioning Among Children [pdf]

#13
post #3

Now, let's see how long it takes until we see until someone cites this as evidence that social networking cause poor functioning :)

I'm bookmarking this thread for exactly that purpose.

My bet: before the end of next month someone will cite it on HN as evidence that social network cause poor functioning.

Re: Frequent Social Networking Associated with Poor Functioning Among Children [pdf]

#14
post #9
post #2

When I read the title I thought "Association" could mean potential causation, but I think the 2nd to the last sentence in the Abstract helps clarify: "The findings suggest that students with poor mental health may be greater users of SNSs."

It's not surprising. Who remembers what being a teenager is like? My 'favorite' aspect of growing up is how stringently regulated waking/sleeping hours are while one's circadian clock is fluctuating wildly. I am pretty sure I did not get any good nights of sleep in high school, and that made me miserable. I self medicated with a lot of things. A lot of them were garbage, like junk food or Internet forums. Some of the…

Something like this?

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zosQ90T3srs/UeqiEbif-kI/AAAAAAAAB...

Re: Frequent Social Networking Associated with Poor Functioning Among Children [pdf]

#15
post #9
post #2

When I read the title I thought "Association" could mean potential causation, but I think the 2nd to the last sentence in the Abstract helps clarify: "The findings suggest that students with poor mental health may be greater users of SNSs."

It's not surprising. Who remembers what being a teenager is like? My 'favorite' aspect of growing up is how stringently regulated waking/sleeping hours are while one's circadian clock is fluctuating wildly. I am pretty sure I did not get any good nights of sleep in high school, and that made me miserable. I self medicated with a lot of things. A lot of them were garbage, like junk food or Internet forums. Some of the…

Add to that how poor the feedback mechanisms are; by the time a parent sees a child become an adult it may be too late to apply that learning to another child.

Child-rearing is a hard problem.

Re: Frequent Social Networking Associated with Poor Functioning Among Children [pdf]

#16
post #5

Interesting to see how instant-gratification-type habits like endlessly browsing your news feed are the new low-grade drug habits. I'm just waiting for the study that finally proves that surfing twitter for more than 60 minutes causes a 300% higher likelihood that you'll visit a porn site in the next five.

I've taken on myself to customize my social network experience using injected CSS with extensions such as Stylish or Greasemonkey.

Simply adding a noisy background to my Facebook feed (a sunset, really) made it so I spent about half the time I used to there. I also changed all the hues of blue to be red.

I don't seem to mindlessly surf Facebook now.

They tailor those internet "drugs" very well and messing with a few values will remove a lot of the addiction. It's some pretty interesting psychology that is going on and social media won't hesitate to manipulate us in order to get more ads view.

Re: Frequent Social Networking Associated with Poor Functioning Among Children [pdf]

#17
post #9
post #2

When I read the title I thought "Association" could mean potential causation, but I think the 2nd to the last sentence in the Abstract helps clarify: "The findings suggest that students with poor mental health may be greater users of SNSs."

It's not surprising. Who remembers what being a teenager is like? My 'favorite' aspect of growing up is how stringently regulated waking/sleeping hours are while one's circadian clock is fluctuating wildly. I am pretty sure I did not get any good nights of sleep in high school, and that made me miserable. I self medicated with a lot of things. A lot of them were garbage, like junk food or Internet forums. Some of the…

In Ontario, a lot of effort (TV ads, billboards, etc.) goes into Kids Help Phone (kidshelpphone.ca), which is a call center staffed with counsellors to help kids and teens. But kids and teens are moving away from having a landline telephone in their bedroom, and towards smartphones and iPods and Internet connected devices. If this study helps make those services easier for the current generation of kids and teens to access, then that's worthwhile.

What I find concerning is that overall Internet/computer use isn't a measure in the study. The conclusion ("health service providers should monitor SNSs more to provide support to youth") seems reasonable, but it isn't going to be enough to cover all the ways a kid could demonstrate a cry for help (e.g. tumblr blogs, fanfic involving people from school).

Re: Frequent Social Networking Associated with Poor Functioning Among Children [pdf]

#19
post #2

When I read the title I thought "Association" could mean potential causation, but I think the 2nd to the last sentence in the Abstract helps clarify: "The findings suggest that students with poor mental health may be greater users of SNSs."

Right. As their own statistics show, the average age in the groups from least to most use increases from 13.8 to 15.8, and there's a big separation by grade level in terms of use that supports that observation, too. That's a pretty big gap in terms of developmental status and, bluntly, levels of teenage angst, so perhaps while there is clear correlation here, there is not causation. I think this is the clincher - "Conversely, studies conducted among university students found no such relationship [between mental health and SNS use]." What's the main difference? Lack of the steep developmental range seen in early teens. They also openly state this:

"The cross-sectional nature of the data precludes evaluation of temporality and causality of the observed relationship between use of SNSs and mental health problems."

So, when the press run with "Social media causes brain damage in children, think of the children!", remember what the paper actually says.

Personally, I think from anecdotal experience that heavy SN use fucks you up no end, but these findings don't prove this.

Re: Frequent Social Networking Associated with Poor Functioning Among Children [pdf]

#20
post #3

Now, let's see how long it takes until we see until someone cites this as evidence that social networking cause poor functioning :)

To clarify, this document's argument is actually that poor functioning is associated with higher levels of social networking?
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