Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’
Two Ways to Use Social Media
In my last post, I talked about how children in neighborhoods with faster internet apparently evaluate their lives more negatively. That study is one of several that has explored a possible link between internet use and mental health risk. One thing to keep in mind when we talk about “internet use,” however, is that there…
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Social Media Might Kind of Affect Life Satisfaction in Teens
Maybe you’ve heard that social media usage is linked to lower life satisfaction. But what does that mean? There are multiple ways social media and life satisfaction could be “linked”: People with higher life satisfaction use social media less than people with lower life satisfaction People tend to use social media more when they become…
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Social Media Use Today Could Mean Memory Slips Tomorrow
Go on a Facebook binge, and the consequence might be … I’m sorry, where was I? A new study by researchers at the University of Michigan implicates social media usage in higher rates of everyday memory failures such as forgetting whether you’ve already done something, or what it is you were going to do for…
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Facebook Posts Can Predict Depression Risk
We tend to curate our Facebook profiles to control the image we project. But a new study suggests that when it comes to mental health, our Facebook posts might be more revealing than we realize. In the study, researchers in Philadelphia, PA and Stony Brook, NY looked to see if they could identify people with…
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What Do Your Media Habits Say About Your Personality and Mental Health?
Here’s a shocking finding: going on the Internet might correlate with good mental health. And if you don’t find that shocking, you probably don’t spend enough time on the Internet. That finding is from a recent study that tracked the media habits of 633 German students with the goal of untangling how different types of…
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How Social Media Influences Offline Behavior
What happens on Facebook stays on Facebook? Maybe not. Considering how much time we spend on social media, it makes sense that our online interactions could affect our behavior IRL. And researchers are increasingly finding that this is the case, for better and for worse. Let’s start with the “better.” A little online peer pressure…
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The Dangers of Comparing Yourself to Others on Social Media
Social media makes a lot of things easier. Keeping up with old friends. Sharing your vacation pictures. Comparing yourself to other people. It’s that last one that could be causing problems, according to two new studies published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. Social networking isn’t inherently bad for people’s mental health, the…
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Media Literacy: An Essential Twenty-First Century Skill
Here’s an idea you won’t here about in, well, the media: we should have media literacy classes in schools. Despite how much information we get from the media, we don’t talk much about how to critically evaluate the things we see on TV or read in the papers. But not helping students learn how to…
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Teen Social Media Use – Is there a Mental Health Risk?
The use of smartphones, social media, and messaging apps are now ubiquitous in modern life for teens ages 13-17. The rates of usage in recent years are staggering and continue to grow; according to data from the Pew Research Center: 24% of teens go online “almost constantly,” with a smartphone 56% of teens go online…
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The Role of the Media in Body Image & Eating Disorders
Most likely, we have all known someone who suffered from some form of eating disorder. According to the National Eating Disorder Association 20 million women and 10 million men in the US suffer from a clinically significant eating disorder at some time in their life – that’s approaching 10% – and four out of 10…
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