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I read the original article on PNAS May 2019 (Social Medias enduring effect on adolescent life satisfaction) and am not convinced that it warrants a headline statement on social media impact on early teens. Common sense tells us that to have 13 to 15 year olds spending 3 to 5 hours a day on screens is:
1. Sedentary and means spending 3 to 5 hours less playing sport or getting exercize and thus contributing significantly to childhood obesity.
2. Contributes to isolation and solitary occupation, thus reducing time spent with real friends or family or participating in real life events.
3. Could in itself cause health risks as copious reports of self-harm/bullying/suicides show.
4. The actual use of web-sites needs to be explored to get any insight into internet use and subsequent risk. What are the teenagers actually looking at? Social media and other sites? Other sites and some social media? Without content analysis it is impossible to extrapolate cause and effect.
4. Some use (moderate) of screens may help busy teenagers to relax, learn, contact friends etc and may be a positive influence.
5. The PNAS study was not face to face, did not analyse content on screens, did not do mental or physical states before during and after exposure, and confined itself (as all research must) to one constricted and possibly flawed question which their data and methods and statistics could not possibly answer. They ask "If social media use affects their satisfaction with life?" This question itself is problematic because it is subjective and depends on what teenagers consider life satisfaction to be, which may be a very poor surrogate for what life satisfaction really is from a social mental and physical health point of view.
This study does not answer any real question and should not be taken as evidence against the common sense and Health Minister's advice to control and reduce teen and childhood exposure to social media and internet in general.
Competing interests:
No competing interests
10 May 2019
Eugene Breen
Psychiatrist, Associate Clinical Professor
Mater Misericordiae University Hospital Dublin, University College Dublin
Screen time effects on mental and physical health of teenagers.
I read the original article on PNAS May 2019 (Social Medias enduring effect on adolescent life satisfaction) and am not convinced that it warrants a headline statement on social media impact on early teens. Common sense tells us that to have 13 to 15 year olds spending 3 to 5 hours a day on screens is:
1. Sedentary and means spending 3 to 5 hours less playing sport or getting exercize and thus contributing significantly to childhood obesity.
2. Contributes to isolation and solitary occupation, thus reducing time spent with real friends or family or participating in real life events.
3. Could in itself cause health risks as copious reports of self-harm/bullying/suicides show.
4. The actual use of web-sites needs to be explored to get any insight into internet use and subsequent risk. What are the teenagers actually looking at? Social media and other sites? Other sites and some social media? Without content analysis it is impossible to extrapolate cause and effect.
4. Some use (moderate) of screens may help busy teenagers to relax, learn, contact friends etc and may be a positive influence.
5. The PNAS study was not face to face, did not analyse content on screens, did not do mental or physical states before during and after exposure, and confined itself (as all research must) to one constricted and possibly flawed question which their data and methods and statistics could not possibly answer. They ask "If social media use affects their satisfaction with life?" This question itself is problematic because it is subjective and depends on what teenagers consider life satisfaction to be, which may be a very poor surrogate for what life satisfaction really is from a social mental and physical health point of view.
This study does not answer any real question and should not be taken as evidence against the common sense and Health Minister's advice to control and reduce teen and childhood exposure to social media and internet in general.
Competing interests: No competing interests