Too much social networking makes girls less happy: Study

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDJan 30 2012

Researchers have studied the effects of too much social networking among young girls and found that it is ruining their girlhood. The new Stanford University study looks at data from girls between the ages of 8 and 12 who spend “considerable” time using social media and finds that they are likely to be “less happy” than their unplugged peers. 

The study looked at a sample of 3,461 girls but researchers admit that the children were not followed up. Additionally the survey was an online one. The peer-reviewed study appeared Wednesday in the academic journal Developmental Psychology. It has raised more questions than it answered feel other experts.

The girls, all subscribers to Discovery Girls magazine, took the survey online, detailing the time they spent watching video (television, YouTube, movies,) listening to music, reading, doing homework, emailing, posting to Facebook or MySpace, texting, instant messaging, talking on the phone and video chatting – as well as how often they were doing two or more of those activities simultaneously.

The girls' answers showed that multitasking and spending many hours watching videos and using online communication were statistically associated with a series of negative experiences: feeling less social success, not feeling normal, having more friends whom parents perceive as bad influences and sleeping less. The researchers say that while they found a correlation between some media habits and diminished social and emotional skills, a definite cause-and-effect relationship has yet to be proved.

Clifford Nass, the Stanford professor of communication who led the study, said that the impetus behind his group's research was the possible impediment social media creates to face-to-face interaction, which teaches kids how to read body language and subtle facial and verbal clues. “The results were upsetting, disturbing, scary.” Nass said. He further explained that, “Humans are built to notice these cues - the quavering in your voice, perspiration, body posture, raise of an eyebrow, a faint smile or frown. Social media leaves the conversation two-dimensional. If I'm not with you face to face, I don't get these things. Or, if I'm face to face with you and I'm also texting, I'm not going to notice them.”

Nass has some advice, “Kids, spend time, when you are with other people, looking at them, listening closely, and see if you can tell their emotions. And if you can't, that's OK, but it means you have some learning to do. When we media multitask, we're not really paying attention to the people around us and we get in a habit of not paying attention, and thus when I'm talking with you, I may be hearing the words but I'm missing all the rich, critical, juicy stuff at the heart of emotional and social life.”

The research was a follow-up to a 2010 experiment that demonstrated that media multitaskers were not really doing two things at once and were paying a mental price for trying.