Today, we rely on our phones, for our daily activities. This raises concerns about the effect of the screens and our mental health. On occasion they may seem the other half of a toxic relationship. This has prompted the development of a new consulting job: parenting trainers without a screen.
However, investigations say that the terror surrounding the screens lacks evidence.
“None of these [negative] claims is supported by facts or a drop of scientific evidence,” University of Oxford experimental psychologist Andrew Przybylski recently sounded off in an editorial in The Guardian.
Tenuous Relationships
Przybylski and his colleagues analyzed data from a survey of more than 10,000 people. Between 10 and 15 years of age every year for almost a decade. In the survey, preteens answered questions about their homes, their satisfaction with life and their use of social networks. Such as “How many hours do you spend chatting or interacting with friends through a social website on a normal school day?
The responses of adolescents revealed that the use of social networks had little impact on their well-being.
Although the researchers found that adolescents who use more social networks showed slightly less satisfaction with life compared to adolescents who use less, the correlation was small.
“What we found was a lot of nothing,” Przybylski said.
When tracking people’s satisfaction with life and the use of social networks over time, the results were more or less flat. In general, the use of social networks did not predict how satisfied a teenager is with life. Not even his satisfaction with life was correlated with the amount of time he spent using social networks.
Only when the researchers focused their analysis on gender did minor trends appear.
For men, the use of social networks predicted small falls in life satisfaction. However, the correlation was a little stronger for girls.
For women, greater satisfaction with the school, the family and their appearance predict a slightly lower use of social networks. Even with all their findings, the researchers describe the relationships as weak.
Imperfect Measures
Other scientists argue that the study is flawed. Joshua Foster, a personality and social psychologist at the University of South Alabama. M. Hope Jackson, a mobile area psychologist, they points out that Przybylski’s study focuses on a single question. About the use of social networks, one that doesn’t covers the weekend, when preteens have more free time.
Psychologists also call attention to the fact that the question in the survey only refers to “chat or interact with friends.” This leaves aside how many hours preteens spend on platforms consuming content but not socializing.
That could explain why most teenagers said that the number of hours they used social media in a day was “none” or “less than an hour” on average.
In response, Przybylski writes: “No self-report measurement is perfect.” It is a point that he and his colleagues mentioned in their study. The team was “dissatisfied” with having to rely on questionnaires, but noted that there is no evidence to suggest that the survey they used is better or worse than other tools already used.
However, to get to the bottom of how screens and the use of social networks affect well-being. Przybylski indicates, one has to go to the source: Facebook, Instagram and game companies. He advocates what he calls an “open and robust science model” where companies share data directly with researchers.
“They have the data to answer these questions,” he said.
This makes us think that there is still much to investigate to determine, if it really consumes the mass and the use of the screens, it really affects our health, directly.
