Landing : Athabascau University

Social Media Use Linked to Developing Depression Regardless of Personality | University of Arkansas

https://news.uark.edu/articles/62109/social-media-use-linked-to-developing-depression-regardless-of-personality

This describes an interesting study that seems to confirm social media use can be harmful no matter who you are though, as the article notes, more research is needed to confirm the findings. Quite a few similar studies have come to quite similar conclusions before, giving similar reasons, neatly summarized here:

"The authors suggest that problematic social comparison can enhance negative feelings of oneself and others, which could explain how risk of depression increases with increased social media use. Engaging primarily in negative content can also enhance these feelings. And lastly, engaging in more social media reduces opportunities for in-person interactions and activities outside of the home."

Like all technologies, though, it ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it. The design challenge this presents is to figure out ways such problems can be reduced or averted though mindful design and/or management of social software systems. I suspect that the negative effects of, say, Facebook, TikTok, or LinkedIn would be significantly different from those of, say, the Landing, Slashdot, or Stack Overflow, and utterly different from the effects of, say, Telegram, email, or Moodle.

Comments

These comments are moderated. Your comment will not be visible unless accepted by the content owner.

Only simple HTML formatting is allowed and any hyperlinks will be stripped away. If you need to include a URL then please simply type it so that users can copy and paste it if needed.

(Required)

(Required)