New Study Says Social Media Has ‘Little Effect’ on Teens’ life satisfaction.
You may have heard that social media is devastating to teen self-esteem.
This might not be the case.
The study team organized an 8-year survey that began in 2009 to examine the connections between social media use and life satisfaction.
A study by Oxford Internet Institute (OII) on 12,000 UK teens suggests that social media’s effects on their life satisfaction are tiny.
The study asked 10 to 15-year-olds how long they spent using social media on a typical day and their levels of life satisfaction.
The study revealed more effects on young girls, but they were small and not as increasingly pervasive as the effects found in boys.
Not exactly 50% of the impacts were “statistically significant.”
The biggest concern around social media is its obstruction of sleep, exercise and time with family or companions.
This implies that adolescents have been observed with lower life satisfaction who use more social media than average.
“Parents shouldn’t worry about time on social media, thinking about it that way is wrong. We need to retire this notion of screen time.” – Andrew Przybylski, Oxford University, via BBC
