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posted by martyb on Wednesday January 24 2018, @11:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-look! dept.

Screen-addicted Teens are unhappy?

Happiness is not a warm phone, according to a new study exploring the link between adolescent life satisfaction and screen time. Teens whose eyes are habitually glued to their smartphones are markedly unhappier, said study lead author and San Diego State University and professor of psychology Jean M. Twenge.

To investigate this link, Twenge, along with colleagues Gabrielle Martin at SDSU and W. Keith Campbell at the University of Georgia, crunched data from the Monitoring the Future (MtF) longitudinal study, a nationally representative survey of more than a million U.S. 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-graders. The survey asked students questions about how often they spent time on their phones, tablets and computers, as well as questions about their in-the-flesh social interactions and their overall happiness.

On average, they found that teens who spent more time in front of screen devices -- playing computer games, using social media, texting and video chatting -- were less happy than those who invested more time in non-screen activities like sports, reading newspapers and magazines, and face-to-face social interaction.

Twenge believes this screen time is driving unhappiness rather than the other way around.

"Although this study can't show causation, several other studies have shown that more social media use leads to unhappiness, but unhappiness does not lead to more social media use," said Twenge, author of "iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy -- And Completely Unprepared for Adulthood."

Journal Reference:

Jean M. Twenge, Gabrielle N. Martin, W. Keith Campbell. Decreases in Psychological Well-Being Among American Adolescents After 2012 and Links to Screen Time During the Rise of Smartphone Technology.. Emotion, 2018; DOI: 10.1037/emo0000403

"Reading newspapers and magazines" makes teens happier? Perhaps paper produces happiness radiation...


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by etherscythe on Wednesday January 24 2018, @06:57PM (2 children)

    by etherscythe (937) on Wednesday January 24 2018, @06:57PM (#627288) Journal

    This is one of the results of the glorification of school sports programs. I don't deny there are benefits to encouraging physical fitness in our increasingly sedentary society, but come on, the oldest "might makes right" tendencies of our history should be considered to be on the same level as peeling up big rocks to try to find the turtles holding everything up, and without ethical community involvement that is where sports programs often end up. At least make your team captain compete for greatest charity contribution in order to qualify as such, and you might start to turn this trend around. And no, donating game tickets does not count. Spend real time, like in a soup kitchen, meals-on-wheels or such. Associate physicality with morality and you just might start to see more kids ACTUALLY having "the best years of their life."

    I know I'm far from alone in having heard that line about my school years and finding it incredibly depressing to think I had nothing better to look forward to later in my life.

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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday January 24 2018, @08:23PM

    by frojack (1554) on Wednesday January 24 2018, @08:23PM (#627356) Journal

    but come on, the oldest "might makes right" tendencies of our history should be considered

    Well, with all due respect I suggest the GP was using sports as a metaphor for doing SOMETHING physical, and was not actually suggesting being on the football team, or even on the pulchritude platoon (chearleaders).

    The idea being the effort alone produces the internal dopamine hit, and usually others with similar interests are involved, such as working on cars, bikes, hunting, or shooting baskets, tennis, or going to the beach or the dance.

    One doesn't have to be on a team, and all the guys that specialized in that seemed to sort of crash after highschool when then found out that was not going to work for them going forward. "Glory Days", for the vast majority, last far less than we are lead to believe.
     

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Wednesday January 24 2018, @11:18PM

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Wednesday January 24 2018, @11:18PM (#627446) Homepage Journal

    I absolutely HATE basketball, ever since I was on the team in 6th grade. Damned grownups ruined it. BTW, if you haven't grown up by age 60 you don't have to. Baseball and football? Still love both of them, because when we played them as kids there weren't any grownups around to ruin it for us, it was simply fun, not "exercise".

    Of course, we had no computers back then. I was born fifty years too early... maybe. Star Trek was REALLY COOL, but most of the cool impossible stuff like doors that open by themselves, "communicators" (flip phones), flat screen displays, voice activated computers capable of displaying sound and moving pictures are all commonplace today. To a young person it would be "so what?"

    I was a bookworm (half a dozen books a day in the summer) with thick lensed glasses, but I still had friends. Probably because of the geeky things I brought to school, like the "dufus detector" that only went off if it was pointed at a member of the staff.

    Your hope will probably be fulfilled, almost certainly. Don't worry, other bullshit smacks you in the face when you're older and you'll look back and say "so what?". Hang on until retirement and life's great, you're ten again with no grownups telling you what to do (waited all my life for that!).

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