• jeffw@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Once again, the media taking a study and pushing a narrative with it.

    From age 12 to 14 and 14–16 years, the interaction term between social media use and the intercept (i.e., overall level) of social anxiety was negative and significant, indicating that increased social media use forecasted a small decline in social skills among those with higher levels of social anxiety symptoms

    So, there’s no overall relationship, except a negative one once you factor in an interaction term.

    Theres also nothing here that says people who spend more time on social media are more mentally “healthy.” Just that they have more friends. Or do they use social media more because they have more friends? This isn’t some slam dunk for social media.

    • Hiro8811@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Also I didn’t see mentioned what apps. While some apps like WhatsApp and Signal(although no teen is using it) do increase in person meetings they are not the apps that people refer to when they cause social media of causing depression, anxiety, etc. These apps are YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, tik tok redit. Can’t really speak for myself as I’m an introvert and never really used anything other than YouTube but I do regret getting a smartphone .

      • jeffw@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Even among the apps you list as higher risk, I’d imagine there are differences

      • RatBin@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Agreed. I use WhatsApp to coordinate a work / study group and the only notifications I receive are related to events hold in person or by zoom / meet. Nothing much past that. I had to go through loops to get rid of reddit and YouTube.

  • GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    Idk how much I can trust anything being posted by Reason tbh - it’s not exactly what I would call a respectable publication.

    • a lil bee 🐝@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Or, maybe it was never quite so bad as we all believed? There is no doubt that the internet and social media impacted all of our lives and routines drastically, but I think some of the impacts of social media are exaggerated by layfolk just reacting to how they feel about it. There are tons of great studies showing its impact to the mental state of children and we have to work on that, but I don’t think it has entirely uprooted the childhood experience. Just my two cents.

  • Ginger666@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    The age of consent in Norway is 16, so idk if you can apply the study to the US