Studies Find that Communicating with Friends and Family, Communicating Annonymously, and Receiving Positive Feedback on Social Networking Profiles All Significantly Decrease Feelings of Depression

Three studies, in relation to people's uses of the internet and social networking websites and how that affected those people's feelings of depression, loneliness, self-esteem, and well-being were completed on people from all different age groups. The first study, completed on college aged students found that after chatting anonymously with their peers at five different times, feelings of depression and loneliness significantly decreased and feelings of self-esteem increased. A second study, completed on people of all ages, found that using the internet to talk to friends and family significantly decreased feelings of depression. The third study found that in adolescents age 10-19, self-esteem and well-being were increased significantly when the feedback on their social networking profiles was positive. 

Chatting Anonymously with Peers Five Different Times Decreases Feelings of Depression

A study by Shaw and Grant (2004) had students chat anonymously on five different occasions with a peer in their class that they had never met with or spoke to before. They chatted with the same peer all five times and either both participants were given discussion questions to lead the conversation each time or just one out of the two participants were given discussion questions. Both participants were asked not to reveal any information to each other in the chat which would reveal the identity of the other person. Before the chat sessions, the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), and the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale were administered. These same tests were administered again after two chat sessions and then again, finally, after all five chat sessions had been completed. As you can see in the chart above, the average depression scores from the beginning of the study to the end of the study decreased by 3.3 points. Average loneliness scores decrease by 3.6 points.

Using the Internet to Communicate with Friends and Family Decreases Feelings of Depression More than Using the Internet to Meet New People

A second study, by Bessière, Kiesler, Kraut, and Boneva (2008), gathered participants by randomly dialing many different people and asking them if they had access to the internet. If they said yes, they were then sent a survey. About 45% of the people to receive the survey completed it. A follow up survey was sent six months later in which 82% of the people who completed the first survey also completed the second survey. The participants were administered the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). They were also asked a series of true or false questions about their activities on the internet. The researchers narrowed these questions down into four categories, internet use to communicate with friends and family, internet use to meet new people, internet use to gather information and internet use to entertain or escape. After six months, another CES-D scale was administered. People who reported using the internet mostly to communicate with friends and family showed decreases in their depression scores from the first test to the second test six months later. This significant decrease was not found for any other category. People who mostly used the internet to meet new people actually had an increase in depression scores. Researchers say this is due to the displacement theory, which is when an individual uses the internet to communicate with new people in order to displace communication with the already strong ties in their life. This causes distress and, therefore, increases depression.

In the video above, University of Maryland, College Park Social Psychology professor, Dr. Dylan Selterman, Ph.D. gives his perspective as a social psychologist on both of the previously mentioned studies. As presented in the studies, he concurs that a determining factor for the mental health and well-being of an individual is the way in which they use the internet, not whether or not they use the internet at all.

Adolescents, Age 10-19, Scored Higher on Self-Esteem and Well-Being Tests When Reporting Receiving Positive Feedback on their Social Networking Profiles

In a final study, by Valkenburg, Peter, and Schouten (2006), researchers conducted a survey through a Dutch social networking website called CU2 ("See You Too"). They asked the participants to measure the tone of the reactions to their profiles, among other things such as, how frequently they use CU2, how frequently they receive reactions on their CU2 profiles and how many relationships they have formed through the social networking website. The tone of other CU2 users' reactions to their profile was measured through a five point scale in which 1 was that the reactions they receive on their profile were always negative and 5 was that the reactions they  receive on their profile were always positive. Three subscales of Harters’ self-perception profile for adolescents were used to measure self-esteem and the five-item satisfaction with life scale, developed by Diener et al, was used to measure well-being.

The chart to the left shows the percentage of the adolescents that received each type of feedback on their profiles. The researchers found that the adolescents who reported receiving positive feedback on their social networking profiles, scored higher on the self-esteem scale than adolescents who reported receiving only negative or predominantly negative feedback on their profiles. This increase in self-esteem also increased the scores on the well-being scale. With adolescents who reported receiving only negative or predominantly negative feedback on their profiles, researchers did not see this increase in self-esteem scale scores or well-being scale scores.

In the following video, Dr. Selterman comments on this study, and the many others like it, in which researchers find results that support the evidence that social networking websites affect well-being positively but also find results that suggests that social networking websites affect well-being negatively. Dr. Selterman offers an alternative study, which found that this is due to the passiveness of interacting with social media websites on the internet.

 

More recently, studies such as these three, and many more similar to them, have been able to provide evidence that internet use, social networking website use and even chatting anonymously in a chat room can reduce feelings of depression and loneliness and can increase feelings of self-esteem and well-being. If you use the internet to communicate with new people, you will, most likely, not receive the decrease in feelings of depression you were looking for. If you use the internet to communicate with your friends and family, then this decrease in feelings of depression should take place. As Dr. Selterman stated earlier, it is not if you use it, but the way in which you use the internet that will alter one's well-being.

An Interactive Color Mixing Graphic by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry Makes it Easier for Everyone to Understand Pigment and Light Mixing

The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry has an interactive color mixing activity on it's website. Within the interactive, you have the option to either work with colored light or colored ink. The interactive also gives the user the ability to challenge themselves by finding the correct color combination to match a specific color given to them. In addition, it provides the user with a second visual, which shows how the same color could look different with different colored backgrounds.

The interactive provides a great visual for not only young children looking to learn more about color mixing, but also educators, searching for the best way to present color mixing to their students. Even well established paining artist's can use the interactive to improve their color mixing efficiency. It is very easy to manipulate the amount of each color you would like to mix and it clearly shows you the results. The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry also provides many other interactive graphics dealing with a variety of other topics.

Study shows that not only does interactive computer gaming affect children's sleep cycles but also affects verbal memory more negatively than television viewing

In a sleep and memory study conducted by Dworak, Schierl, Bruns, and Struder (2007) on 11 male children between the ages of 12 and 14, researchers found that playing an interactive video game for an hour, a few hours before bed time, increased the amount of time it took the children to fall asleep that night. It also significantly increased the amount of time the children spent in stages 2 and 4 of their sleep cycle. This affected the children's ability to pass a verbal memory test the next evening.  

Overall, the (%tst), which is the percentage of total sleep time, remained the same throughout the experiment and for each participant. There was a decrease in sleep efficiency recorded for the night when the participants watched a movie on television a few hours before bed. The time it took for the participants to fall asleep, the sleep-onset latency, increased significantly on the nights in which the participants played an hour of an interactive computer games a few hours before bed. It went from an average of 10 to 18 minutes to fall asleep to 32 to 57 minutes to fall asleep. This night also showed an increase in the amount of time the children were in stages 2 and 4 of the sleep cycle, showing that it took them a longer time to fall into a deeper sleep. The night with interactive computer gaming also showed a significantly more negative affect on the verbal memory of the children the next day than watching television produced.

The experiment required that the participants continue their day as normal, but to not watch any television or play any interactive computer or video games. About 4-5 hours before the average bed time of the participants, between 8:30 and 9:30pm, they were given a visual memory test and a verbal memory test and their performance was recorded. Then, 2-3 hours before the average bed time, participants either played an hour of an interactive computer game or watched a movie on the television. Their sleep was then recorded from the time they went the bed to the time they woke up the next morning. The same type of visual and verbal memory tests were performed 24 hours after the first tests were administered. The participants were also instructed to keep a sleep diary throughout the day. This was used to record if, and when, they felt tired during the day. This addition of qualitative data to the quantitative sleep data strengthens their results and allows for an opportunity to explain anything that may be out of the ordinary with the children's diary responses.

According to the researchers, there are not many other studies that attempt to view the relationship between interactive computer gaming and sleep patterns. Just one that they acknowledged, by Higuchi et al, produced similar results in which it took longer for children to fall asleep, sleep-onset latency, after interacting with computer games. Another well-known series of studies, performed between 1928 and 1933 were the Payne Fund studies. They tested the effects of movie viewing on children on not only sleep patterns but also children's attitudes about violence, their delinquent behavior and their knowledge of foreign countries and their cultures.

As a college student, because this study was performed on children, you may be wondering why it has any relation to you at all. The study conducted by Dworak, Schierl, Bruns, and Struder (2007) shows evidence that the issues the children may be having now with their sleep patterns can increase as they age into adolescents. We are always interacting with television, video games, computer games, and most of this is happening on our laptop computers. This interaction with the media so often could also be affecting our sleep patterns. The children's sleep patterns were affected and it decreased their ability to memorize and recall facts that were verbally presented to them. If students are having the same issues with their sleep patterns, due to increased media usage, they may not be able to memorize or recall what is presented to them in verbal lecture based classes. This could then lead to decreased performance on class assignments and exams and maybe even decreased final grades in classes.  If researchers were to complete a similar study using college aged students and found similar results, they may encourage college students to decrease their media viewing in order to attain better memory for verbal presentations.

Overall, this study has allowed me to assess the amount of media I may view on a daily basis and has encouraged me to decrease this amount in an attempt to improve my memory. As a result, I hope that this will improve my performance in class and, in turn, increase my grades in the future. I encourage others to do the same as I have. 

 

Spring 2015!

Welcome to the spring semester of 2015! I am optimistic about this semester and hope that I can gain the insight that I need to make a decision about a major!