High social media consumption can be harmful to health, according to study
If you spend too long on your mobile, you are damaging your health. At least according to a British study that claims to have found that prolonged social media activity leads to a lack of sleep and exercise as well as bullying among young people.
Do you often write articles on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and other social media? Do you comment diligently and like whatever comes your way? Then you should be careful. Too much social media activity can lead to you neglecting other activities - whether intentionally or unintentionally - and could damage your health. Researchers from London have reportedly found that this can have a detrimental effect on both the mental and physical health of young people.
Uncomfortable side effects
Excessive social media use tends to lead to teenagers exercising less, sleeping less or less and being more exposed to cyberbullying. However, it is not the social media itself that has a negative impact on young people's health. It is the involvement in online communities that results from the use of social media. The test subjects, who were aged between 12 and 16 at the time of the survey (2013 to 2015), had to estimate the frequency of their social media use. The questionnaire asked about mental health, physical activity, sleep duration and experiences with cyberbullying.
Girls stated that they felt worse mentally the more they spent time on Facebook and the like. The chance of scoring worse on mental health issues with increased social media use was only 30% higher than with average use. Nevertheless, a clear trend can be recognised thanks to the study, according to the researchers from London. The study cited people who only use social media once a day as the average level of activity. Incidentally, the figure for boys was 67%.
Bans do not help
Other researchers take a different view of the results and approach of the study. Johannes Breuer from the Data Archive for Social Sciences in Cologne believes that the quantity of social media use alone is not enough to draw conclusions about psychological health. It depends on how teenagers actually use social media and what influence this has on areas such as sleep or leisure activities. Nevertheless, Breuer praises the sample on which the study is based.
As possible countermeasures, he advises against fixed time budgets for social media consumption or blanket bans. He appeals to parents' responsibility and duty of supervision and believes that they should go into more detail about the specific risks of using such platforms. For example, it makes sense to explain to teenagers that if they suffer from a lack of sleep, using them before bedtime or in bed is counterproductive. Parents may need to restrict use in these situations. Claudia Lambert, employed at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research, emphasises Breuer's statement. Banning their use completely is nonsense - care must be taken to ensure that social media is in a healthy relationship with sport and other hobbies.
Too weak effects
Christopher Ferguson, Professor of Psychology at Stetson University in the US, doubts that the results of the study actually reveal an indirect or even direct link between social media consumption and mental health. The effects are not meaningful enough and can therefore be attributed to methodological inaccuracies. In contrast to Breuer, he believes that the large sample led to a correlation - which is unfortunately almost always the case with samples of this size.
Malte Elson, head of the Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction research group at Ruhr University Bochum, takes a different approach. He believes that taking action against online and offline bullying, getting enough sleep and engaging in physical activity is common sense. These conversations at the family table already existed before social media. The conclusions of this study should therefore be treated with caution in order to derive preventative measures.
When I'm not stuffing my face with sweets, you'll catch me running around in the gym hall. I’m a passionate floorball player and coach. On rainy days, I tinker with my homebuilt PCs, robots or other gadgets. Music is always my trusted companion. I also enjoy tackling hilly terrain on my road bike and criss-crossing the country on my cross-country skis.