While social media provides tools to connect people from all over the world, it can also bring out the worst in human nature. People who are polite in their everyday dealings can turn vicious online.
The combination of cell phones and social media can be an especially toxic witches’ brew for young people. For one thing, it can amplify problems with bullying.
Online bullying is hard for parents and teachers to detect. Moreover, young people tend to be nearly constantly online, meaning that targets of social media bullying get little respite.
Over the past decade, mental health data have shown ever-worsening rates of anxiety and depression in young people. This has coincided with the growth of social media and cell phone usage.
A correlation alone cannot prove that social media or phones are to blame for the wave of mental health problems in young people. But recent research by Sara Abrahamsson from the Institutt for Samsfunnsøkonomi (Institute of Economics) in Norway comes close to establishing a causal link.
Abrahamsson compared academic achievement and mental health at schools following the adoption of cell phone bans, and at schools that did not ban phones. She found a marked decline in bullying at schools implementing bans.
For girls at schools banning phones, there was a 29% reduction in seeking specialist help for mental symptoms. Girls’ academic results also improved. These benefits were especially pronounced for girls from socioeconomically disadvantaged families. There were no reliable effects of bans on boys’ mental health or academic results.
Abrahamsson suggested that the lack of effects for boys may be attributable to their lower use of social media in the first place. Alternatively, as social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has noted, social media exacerbates traditionally female forms of bullying. On the academic front, boys may simply have found other ways to be distracted in class.
The deterioration in teenagers’ mental health alongside the growth of social media and phone usage has been especially serious for girls. Putting that together with Abrahamsson’s findings of positive effects of bans for girls helps establish a causal link between excessive social media use and poor mental health. Her results support the blanket ban on cell phones in New Zealand schools, which came into effect last week.
Dr Michael Johnston has held academic positions at Victoria University of Wellington for the past ten years. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Melbourne. This article was published HERE
Online bullying is hard for parents and teachers to detect. Moreover, young people tend to be nearly constantly online, meaning that targets of social media bullying get little respite.
Over the past decade, mental health data have shown ever-worsening rates of anxiety and depression in young people. This has coincided with the growth of social media and cell phone usage.
A correlation alone cannot prove that social media or phones are to blame for the wave of mental health problems in young people. But recent research by Sara Abrahamsson from the Institutt for Samsfunnsøkonomi (Institute of Economics) in Norway comes close to establishing a causal link.
Abrahamsson compared academic achievement and mental health at schools following the adoption of cell phone bans, and at schools that did not ban phones. She found a marked decline in bullying at schools implementing bans.
For girls at schools banning phones, there was a 29% reduction in seeking specialist help for mental symptoms. Girls’ academic results also improved. These benefits were especially pronounced for girls from socioeconomically disadvantaged families. There were no reliable effects of bans on boys’ mental health or academic results.
Abrahamsson suggested that the lack of effects for boys may be attributable to their lower use of social media in the first place. Alternatively, as social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has noted, social media exacerbates traditionally female forms of bullying. On the academic front, boys may simply have found other ways to be distracted in class.
The deterioration in teenagers’ mental health alongside the growth of social media and phone usage has been especially serious for girls. Putting that together with Abrahamsson’s findings of positive effects of bans for girls helps establish a causal link between excessive social media use and poor mental health. Her results support the blanket ban on cell phones in New Zealand schools, which came into effect last week.
Dr Michael Johnston has held academic positions at Victoria University of Wellington for the past ten years. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Melbourne. This article was published HERE
2 comments:
I am forever grateful that i grew up in a world before mobile phones. There is no record of the mistakes we made on a video or in photos. We were the ones who had freedom. Kids today have been locked down, brainwashed and everything they do is recorded on a device.
Getting rid of electronic devices at primary school needs to be more extensive.
Handwriting is good for the brain as is handwriting notes which helps with memorizing apparently. It's probably advantageous for hyperactive kids as well.
Our reckless Ministry has, of course, readily promoted screens because they fit their ideology of any new gimmick automatically being better than anything previously.
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