All posts tagged: social media depression

Social media causes children to dislike themselves, study finds

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According to a survey conducted by stem4, a mental health charity, social media has caused children to dislike their bodies, Breitbart reports. The poll of over 1,024 young people between the ages of 12-121 found: In an interview with The Guardian, Dr. Nihara Krause, the founder of stem4 said: “We need to improve understanding of the potentially compelling impact of social media content, and the reinforcement created through algorithms, on young people’s engagement with apps and their consequent mental health.” READ: Study: Social Media Causes Children to ‘Dislike Their Own Bodies’ Of course, many of these social media giants already knew this. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook has conducted several studies on the negative impact that Instagram is having on teen girls. The following are some findings from Facebook’s own studies: “Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse.” “Comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves.” “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen …

Study says for an emotionally healthier you reduce your Facebook time

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I have a confession to make. I am rarely on Facebook. We have a Facebook page for OpenTheWord, with articles automatically posted to the page. You can like the page here if you want to follow the website in that way. But in a counter-intuitive move, I am probably recommending you don’t. Because if researchers from Yale and UC San Diego are right, you may be emotionally healthier if you cut back the amount of time you spend on Facebook. In their study, the two researchers, UC’s Holly Shakya and Yale’s Nicholas Christakis, followed 5,208 people for two years who were regular Facebook users. There was one slight difference in their methodology. In the past, people studying the impact of social media have done it through self reporting. In other words, the people being studied reported how much they were on social media. However, in this study Shakya and Christakis received permission to monitor their study groups’ Facebook activity through Facebook, so they had an accurate reading of how many times the individuals were actually …

Broken cell phone Credit: Julian/Flickr/Creative Commons

Does Facebook cause depression?

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According to a study by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, there may be a link to depression and loneliness to the amount of time a person spends on social media. In fact, Psychologist Melissa Hunt who was part of the study described the connection between depression and social media usage as “striking.” In their study, published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, the researchers studied the impact social media usage had on 143 undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania who were struggling with moderate forms of depression. They focused on three social media platforms: Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram. Half the group was limited to using social media just ten minutes a day (tracked by battery usage on their phones) and the other half continued on as normal. When the researchers tested the two groups at the end of three weeks, they discovered that the group with limited usage saw their levels of depression fall from moderate to mild and there was absolutely no change in the other group that continued usage. Though …