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?”).
