2y ago

Girls who spend long hours on the internet are at increased risk of depression, study finds

www.psypost.org

33 comments

just girls?
- only girls matter
  
  Amazing how Lemmy users are just at bad as Redditors when it comes to jumping to conclusions from the header, rather than actually giving a look into the article.
  About half of the participants were girls (...) The results showed that girls reported substantially higher depression scores than boys at all ages. They also reported more hours of internet use per week than boys at age 15. Average Internet use times of girls and boys were similar at 13 and 17 years of age.
  
  that seems to be the attitude 😅
- The scientist who conducted the study is definitely not on a list and can go near elementary schools.
The study found that girls who spend more time online have more severe depressive symptoms.
The boys had no such associations.
Depression is becoming more common and can lead to learning and relationship difficulties.
Adolescence is a critical period for the development of depression.
Poor mental health during adolescence can lead to academic and relationship problems.
The study found a correlation between Internet use and symptoms of depression in girls.
The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the relationship between Internet use and depression.
However, the researchers did not take into account the details of Internet activity and spoke French.
- "researchers did not take into account the details of internet activity" seems like a pretty big hole in the study...
  
  Probably means they didn't take into account the fact that boys were just blasting people in online games whereas girls drowned themselves in social media? I reckon it's nothing to do with actual gender and more about what those genders spend their time doing online.
  
  Yeah that's the next thing to measure.
- They spoke French!? Sus. 🙃
  
  As a french Canadian I support this comment!
Girls, it turns out, when exposed to unbridled misogyny, are affected.
Shockers.
- This was downvoted so hard when I first found it but this is undeniably the reason and I don't care that some guys can't stand hearing it.
  Look at this thread! LOOK AT IT. Every other comment is 'WHAT ONLY GIRLS?!' without reading the study that in fact says THAT YES ONLY GIRLS.
  God lemmy, I had hope for you, but the internet is the internet and it's a fucking cesspool for women.
  
  Data: exists Internet: "No."
No shit
I would guess it isn't causative though. Not sure how you could possibly test that hypothesis though.
- Disagree. There's good reasons to suspect it's causative. There's a facebook study showing instagram is absolutely toxic for teenage self esteem that was leaked (definitely wasn't meant to go public), and I've seen headlines of several academic studies indicating social media contributes to mental health issues in places like /r/science (I've not read them because not very interested).
  Intuitively social media tipping pre-disposed people into depression seems awfully plausible from what I've seen
  https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-instagram-is-toxic-for-teen-girls-company-documents-show-11631620976
  
  Good point! It makes sense to me now.
To say this only affects girls is laughable. This study can be thrown out.
- The study doesn't say so
  
  An analysis of data from a longitudinal study of child development in Canada showed that girls who spent more hours on the internet at 13 years of age tended to have higher depressive symptoms at age 15. In the same way, girls’ internet usage at age 15 was associated with more depressive symptoms at 17. These associations were absent in boys.
  Oh ok.
not only gurls
Replace "girls" with "people" and it's still true.

33 comments