Study Finds Growing Up WIth Gadgets Has a Downside: Social Skill Impairment 203
Posted
by
timothy
from the huh-whadju-say-lol dept.
from the huh-whadju-say-lol dept.
PolygamousRanchKid writes with this excerpt from a CNN story:"Tween girls who spend much of their waking hours switching frantically between YouTube, Facebook, television and text messaging are more likely to develop social problems, says a Stanford University study published in a scientific journal on Wednesday. Young girls who spend the most time multitasking between various digital devices, communicating online or watching video are the least likely to develop normal social tendencies, according to the survey of 3,461 American girls aged 8 to 12 who volunteered responses. The study only included girls who responded to a survey in Discovery Girls magazine, but results should apply to boys, too, Clifford Nass, a Stanford professor of communications who worked on the study, said in a phone interview. Boys' emotional development is more difficult to analyze because male social development varies widely and over a longer time period, he said."
Not News (Score:5, Insightful)
The only new thing here is that it happens to girls, as well as guys.
Not a controlled study (Score:4, Insightful)
that's the truth (Score:5, Insightful)
The only new thing here is that it happens to girls
I've recently had the "privilege" of venturing back into the dating market after more than a year of being single. Imagine my surprise when I learned that it's virtually impossible to date these days without an unlimited texting package. Nobody knows (or at least nobody I've dated) how to talk anymore. It's as if asking for conversation in more than 160 character bites is too much. The distressing thing is that this trait seems to be independent of education and background. I've dated women with backgrounds ranging from GED to Ph.D candidate and have encountered this with all of them.
Perhaps I'm old fashioned but I'm a techno geek who still appreciates the value of a good handshake and eye contact. The lack of these skills doesn't just screw you with dating; it screws you in the business world as well.
Please define "social problems" (Score:5, Insightful)
Please define "social problems"
Please do it in terms of something other than "the old farts say it was always done this way, so it should always be done this way".
Welcome to your children's world.
-- Terry
Paradigm shift (Score:5, Insightful)
15 years ago, online dating was satire. 5-10 years ago it was socially frowned upon. These days, it's damned near normative.
You're doing it wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because phone calls are fucking annoying.
If you want to have a conversation with someone, take them out to dinner or some other activity where you are together.
Otherwise, unless you're stuck across the country and can't see each other, stop expecting people to accept your interruptions to their day.
Re:Study finds surveys bad science.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to the 21st century (Score:5, Insightful)
Multitasking between various digital devices, communicating online, and watching video ARE normal social skills nowadays.
Don't write this off (Score:4, Insightful)
[This part of the post is a bit tangential and may be skipped.] Some people would say that everything will be fine because eventually technology and biotechnology will be used to directly enhance our minds and bodies, so that we can exceed our biological constraints. These people ignore the problem of our moral/ethical frameworks, which are grounded in the brain's evolutionary heritage, being incapable of guiding us in such a future as there is no precedent in the evolution of moral/ethical behavior. Simple example: 60 years in the future a person begins being slowly "enhanced" by replacing one by one his neurons, and then other cells, with artificial or bioengineered ones that initially duplicate function and then bring online enhanced functionality; eventually the whole person's consistence has been replaced; now contrast this to, instead, making a recording of all relevant information about the person, building an artificial copy, and killing the original; same result, yet the second version feels wrong to most people. Our morals/ethics are not equipped for situations that have no analogy whatsoever to anything in our evolutionary past. If we extend ourselves, we would have to extend our morals and ethics too, and the latter extension is basically arbitrary.
Re:You're doing it wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm curious why you went to phone calls when I never mentioned them in my initial post?
That said, some of us do appreciate the value of hearing an actual voice and knowing we have someone's (relatively) undivided attention. Phone calls don't need to "interrupt" your day nor do they need to endure for hours on end. I can communicate more to someone with a five minute phone call than I can with five hours of texting.
Speaking of fucking annoying that's how I view text messages. They are fine for "Hey, I'm running a few minutes late" but utterly useless for real conversation. They are slower than IM, less meaningful than e-mail and entirely too prone to the misunderstandings that a danger in all forms of non-verbal/in-person communication. Vocal inflections and body language make up a significant portion of human interaction; you are missing a great deal when you remove them both from the equation.
Re:Not a controlled study (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to mention it's apparently a self-selected, self-reported "study" aimed at girls who read a technology magazine.
Re:Please define "social problems" (Score:3, Insightful)
But there are other issues that come up, that can fool you into believing that they don't want informed, stubborn people. It sounds like you don't have much respect for managers, and that could be your downfall. If you don't like somebody, and you let them know, how can you expect them to like you? People who are perceived as mean or unfriendly are often singled out and discriminated against, even when they're in the right.
Here's the truth that you probably won't like hearing: management is fucking hard, and it's not much fun. I try to avoid it if at all possible, preferring to come up with clever software designs and banging out code -- you know, the fun stuff.
Those people who you complain about making tons of money for knowing how to shake hands and smile? Their job is a lot harder than you think. They have to keep track of every aspect of a project, figure out ways of communicating what needs to be done, deliver information to their superiors in a way that won't freak them out, and try to extract good performance out of engineers who see them as just another smile and a handshake.
Good managers are hard to come by. With no management, stress and uncertainty accumulate, and projects go to bad places. With bad management, they tend to go to even worse places. With good management, things get done, and people feel satisfied in their jobs.
You may feel like people want you to be someone who you're not. I honestly don't know who you are, but I'm guessing you're angry and bitter. That does not define who you are -- that's just what you're thinking right now. You can choose to do what you want, and it's what you do that defines who you are, not what's happened to you, or what you've done in the past. I think you might find that if you try to be nice to people, treat them with respect, and genuinely convince yourself that they're not all fucktards, things might turn out a little better for you.