Social media may be bad for your health

As reported by University at Buffalo, January 21, 2022:

Social media use has been linked to biological and psychological indicators associated with poor physical health among college students, according to the results of a new study by a University at Buffalo researcher.

Research participants who used social media excessively were found to have higher levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a biological marker of chronic inflammation that predicts serious illnesses, such as diabetes, certain cancers and cardiovascular disease. In addition to elevated CRP levels, results suggest higher social media use was also related to somatic symptoms, like headaches, chest and back pains, and more frequent visits to doctors and health centers for the treatment of illness.

“Social media use has become an integral part of many young adults’ daily lives,” said David Lee, PhD, the paper’s first author and assistant professor of communication in the UB College of Arts and Sciences. “It’s critical that we understand how engagement across these platforms contributes to physical health.”

The findings appear in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

For decades, researchers have devoted attention to how social media engagement relates to users’ mental health, but its effects on physical health have not been thoroughly investigated. Recent surveys indicate social media usage is particularly high for people in their late teens and early 20s, a population that spends about six hours a day texting, online or using social media. And though a few studies have found links between social media usage and physical health, that research relied largely on self-reporting or the effects of usage with exclusively one platform.

“Our goal was to extend prior work by examining how social media use across several platforms is associated with physical health outcomes measured with biological, behavioral and self-report measures,” said Lee, an expert on health outcomes related to social interactions.

Researchers recruited a diverse sample of 251 undergraduate students between the ages of 18 and 24 for the study. Blood samples were collected through finger sticks, and participants also completed questionnaires on physical health and social media usage on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram, the most popular platforms at the time the data were collected in 2017. Those responses were crosschecked with another survey that measured validity by determining the degree to which participants took their role in the study seriously.

“We were able to establish a correlation between the amount of social media use and these physical health indicators,” said Lee. “The more participants used social media, the more somatic symptoms they experienced and visits to the doctor they reported. They also showed higher levels of chronic inflammation.”

Lee says this study is just the beginning of understanding the relationship between social media and physical health.

“By looking at a biological marker in the blood, we were able to find a relatively more objective association between social media usage and physical health, but this correlational finding can’t rule out the possibility that poor health impacts social media usage,” said Lee.

Lee says the aphorism could hold true with social media use and physical health: The rich get richer while the poor get poorer. “In our previous research, we found those high in self-esteem benefited from using social media, but people low in self-esteem did not. So, the effect may be more nuanced.”

“There’s still work to be done,” said Lee. “But right now, I wanted to get the word out there that social media use may have a link to important physical health outcomes.”

Lee’s research team for the current study included colleagues from The Ohio State University: Tao Jiang, a graduate student; Jennifer Crocker, PhD, professor of social psychology; and Baldwin Way, PhD, associate professor of psychology.

Click on the link to see the original journal article Social Media Use and Its Link to Physical Health Indicators by David S. Lee, Tao Jiang, Jennifer Crocker, and Baldwin M. Way in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

Girls are different from boys in their texting habits...

...with resulting differences in school performance. Once again, psychologists treat every example of obvious differences between males and females as if they've made a profound discovery.

As reported in a press release from the American Psychological Association, October 5, 2015:

WASHINGTON - Teenage girls who compulsively text are more likely than their male counterparts to do worse academically, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

"It appears that it is the compulsive nature of texting, rather than sheer frequency, that is problematic," said lead researcher Kelly M. Lister-Landman, PhD, of Delaware County Community College. "Compulsive texting is more complex than frequency of texting. It involves trying and failing to cut back on texting, becoming defensive when challenged about the behavior, and feeling frustrated when one can't do it..."

...Girls do not text more frequently than do boys, but they appear to text for different purposes, Lister-Landman said. "Borrowing from what we know about Internet communication, prior research (e.g., Baron, 2004) has shown that boys use the Internet to convey information while girls use it for social interaction and to nurture relationships," she said. "Girls in this developmental stage also are more likely than boys to ruminate with others, or engage in obsessive, preoccupied thinking, across contexts. Therefore, it may be that the nature of the texts girls send and receive is more distracting, thus interfering with their academic adjustment."

Go here for full text of the original article.

Stupid young males tend to be oblivious to their surroundings while listening to headphones

As reported by Joan Delaney in The Epoch Times, February 20, 2012 (updated February 25, 2012):

The deaths of two headphone-wearing high school students who were struck by trains in separate incidents just hours apart last week brought home the dangers of being oblivious to surrounding sounds when walking near train tracks.

On Feb. 13 around 3:00 p.m., 16-year-old Jacob Hicks was hit by a train at a level crossing in Oshawa, Ont., while texting and listening to music on headphones. He died later in hospital.

The automated lights and bells at the crossing were active at the time, but police said the music Hicks was listening to was likely so loud it drowned out the warnings, according to media reports.

The same afternoon, 19-year-old Daniel McPherson was walking along the tracks in Leduc, south of Edmonton, when he was struck and killed by a freight train. He was also wearing headphones.

McPherson appeared not to hear the train’s squealing brakes and whistle as the driver tried desperately to alert him.

If a recent U.S. study is anything to go by, the tragic incidents demonstrate a growing problem, particularly among young people.

According to research from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, the number of injuries and deaths in headphone-related collisions in the U.S. has increased dramatically in recent years—and the victims are mostly young males.

Between 2004 and 2011, the researchers reviewed 116 accidents in which injured pedestrians were documented to be using headphones.

Seventy percent of the 116 accidents resulted in the death of the pedestrian. More than two-thirds of victims were male (68 percent) and under the age of 30.

Fifty-five percent of the moving vehicles involved in the accidents were trains, and 29 percent of the vehicles reported sounding some type of warning horn prior to the collision.

The researchers came to the conclusion that the increased incidence of accidents over the years closely corresponds to the rising popularity of auditory technologies with headphones.

“Everybody is aware of the risk of cellphones and texting in automobiles, but I see more and more teens distracted with the latest devices and headphones in their ears,” said lead author Dr. Richard Lichenstein, associate professor of paediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

“Unfortunately, as we make more and more enticing devices, the risk of injury from distraction and blocking out other sounds increases.”
Distraction, Sensory Deprivation

The researchers noted two likely phenomena associated with the injuries and deaths: distraction and sensory deprivation.

The distraction caused by the use of electronic devices has been dubbed “inattentional blindness,” in which an individual fails to notice a fully visible but unexpected object because his attention is otherwise engaged.

In cases of headphone-wearing pedestrians being struck by trains or vehicles, the distraction is intensified by sensory deprivation—the pedestrian’s ability to hear warning signals is hampered by the sounds produced by the electronic device and headphones.

The Sherlockian powers of observation and deduction on the part of the researchers are positively dazzling, especially when they attribute the accidents to "distraction and sensory deprivation." For those who may not have the scientific expertise to figure this out, it means that the stupid yutes have the volume turned up too loud, and they're not paying enough attention to their surroundings to notice oncoming trains.

These tragedies can be easily avoided by doing three things:
1/ Turn down the volume;
2/ Look up and around and show some awareness of your surroundings;
3/ Remember that railroad tracks are there for the movement of trains, and aren't intended as paths for pedestrians.