
Frequent Social Networking Associated with Poor Functioning Among Children [pdf] - redgrange
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/cyber.2015.0055
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cyanbane
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."

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danharaj
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 them were good for me, like an
obsessive reading habit. How much of 'successfully' growing up is just having
the 'right' escapes from oppressive school and family structures?

Being a teenager is like being extruded out of a rigid nozzle into the mold of
what dysfunctional adults think a functional adult is like. The process itself
compromises the child's development.

This study will be used as fodder to make the nozzle more rigid, the mold more
byzantine. Give the child no escape. They must become a proper adult.

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MichaelGG
It's idiotic how early schools start. Some places wanted to start at 7am, bus
at 6am, so kids would need to be up at 5am. Ended up hiring a teacher directly
(early grade school so still feasible[1]) and starting at 9am. Works great.
Plus my daughter and I can stay up "late" (10pm) playing games whenever we
feel like it.

I understand some people want schools as daycare, but separate that out.

Also:

>2015

>MySpace

Hmm?

1: Cost of tuition for 2 kids covers teacher's salary, and other parents are
interested enough I could easily turn a profit if desired

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sliverstorm
"Schools as daycare" is a bit of an oversimplification. For starters, many
people have rigid work schedules and do not have the luxury of getting their
kid to school at an arbitrary time.

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Spivak
> For starters, many people have rigid work schedules and do not have the
> luxury of getting their kid to school at an arbitrary time.

Based on this statement alone you can conclude that schools function as
daycare. Why can't your nanny take your kids to school? Because you likely
don't have a nanny, and don't see the need for one as school is a sufficient
substitute. You could also say you can't afford one but then by demanding the
school operate during work hours you're passing the cost of daycare onto the
school system.

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xixi77
Now, let's see how long it takes until we see until someone cites this as
evidence that social networking cause poor functioning :)

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

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Cakez0r
The point is that 'associated with' definitely does not mean 'causes'. But
somebody will probably try to use this paper as evidence of a causal link.

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schmidtc
Is frequent HN consumption associated with poor functioning among programmers?

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eridal
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

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swalsh
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.

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lordCarbonFiber
I think leveraging virtual spaces to provide greater access mental health
support is a great step forward to improve outcomes for troubled adolescents.
This definitely opens interesting avenues for future research.

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joezydeco
How about second-hand social networking? Parents that are constantly glued to
their phones instead of interacting with their children?

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FussyZeus
Not to mention the kids who grow up thinking that's just normal to constantly
have your phone in your face.

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birbal
My kids don't think its normal. They actually complain when i have the phone
stuck to my ear. Our assumptions on what and how kids learn from us are over-
simplified.

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09bjb
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.

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Raphmedia
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.

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mailslot
One thing that isn't accounted for is a drastic change toward an indoor
culture. Kids are often forbidden to leave their home and socialize in a
normal context. If the only option available to interact with friends are
social networking sites, then it's the parents that are damaging their own
offspring.

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coldtea
We can just change the definition of "proper functioning" so that all is well
again. That's how we tackle most things anyway...

