By KJ DELL'ANTONIA
Researchers at Stanford University examined an online survey taken by more than 3,400 8- to 12-year-old girls and found that “those who say they spend considerable amounts of time using multimedia describe themselves in ways that suggest they are less happy and less socially comfortable than peers who say they spend less time on screens.”
As Matt Richtel describes in more detail on The Times’s Bits blog, it’s a survey that has problems: media time is self-reported, and the girls who would choose to take such a survey may not be representative of the general population. It’s also an interesting age group to lump together: the differences in media use between 8-year-olds and 12-year-olds are likely to be dramatic. The survey was offered through Discovery Girls magazine online, which markets itself to girls from 8 to 12, but has a decidedly pre-teen feel. (Today’s survey asks, “Have you ever gotten a not-so-great hairstyle from your BFF?”).
But what the Stanford researchers gathered from the collected data does suggest that most parents’ instinct to limit both social media and passive media for tweens and young teenagers is sound. Online communication and video use were both associated with “negative social well-being indicators.”
The researchers suggest that girls (boys were not included in the survey) “need to experience the full pantheon of communication that comes from face-to-face contact, such as learning to read body language, and subtle facial and verbal cues.” The more media use of any kind, the less time for real-world interaction — and face-to-face contact was strongly associated with feeling good about social connections.
Boiled down to its simplest result, this survey reveals that the more time 8- to 12-year-old girls say they spend online, the less happy they are — and that is surely not what those girls wanted or expected when they begged for custody of Mom’s old laptop.
Parents understand why our kids want to be online. When you keenly remember being the last girl in class to get a pair of high-top Reeboks, it must be tempting to let your daughter be among the first on Facebook. But when we give in to our children’s requests, it’s usually in the hopes of making them happier. If more time online has the opposite effect, it’s a strong argument for insisting that the middle grade years be conducted IRL (in real life).
My oldest daughter is just 7, so I haven’t navigated these waters yet — although she just asked me for an e-mail address. I fully admit that my good intentions have not yet met the force of her desires (my son, who’s 10, has no interest in social media). I intend to take this survey as a reminder that my daughter, like most children her age, probably doesn’t know what’s good for her. That’s still my job. Researchers say the question of how social media affects younger children and adolescents needs more study. As a parent, I think I need to make sure I give my daughter’s media diet more thought.
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