Study Finds Growing Up WIth Gadgets Has a Downside: Social Skill Impairment 203
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."
Re:that's the truth (Score:4, Interesting)
I created a profile on PoF and set the limit to 300 characters minimum to contact me.
I got a few nice messages, but then there were ones with a bunch of gibberish complaining about how they had to write so much just to make contact. It's 4 lines of text... jeez.
The period now seems to have been replaced with "lol" in most communication too. At least it weeds out the ones worth talking to.
Re:Please define "social problems" (Score:3, Interesting)
This was my first thought upon reading the post.
Social norms are often an artificial construction, the expectations of them are a burden in themselves, and often quite illusory.
It's like Machismo, Honor, or a dozen other terms. Are they good, or are they just what's expected?
Re:that's the truth (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm skeptical of online dating as well but I'm at a loss for what's better these days. I'm not into the bar/clubbing scene, so cross that off the list. I've always maintained boundaries at work and refuse to date co-workers. What does that leave? I've tried activity groups (hiking clubs and the like) but most of the people who attend those are already paired off. Church may be an option for some people but the median age at my church is around 60 so that's not going to work either.
I've actually met a few friends through OKCupid. Nothing that panned out as relationship material but if you troll through that site long enough you'll actually find decent human beings mixed in with the fake profiles/spammers and the extremely desperate. I think I've met seven or eight people through OKC and only one of them turned out to be psycho. That's probably comparable odds to meeting people in person -- anybody can pretend to be sane for the initial conversation! Sucks that you got banned from there. I wouldn't regard E-Harmony as any real loss; it's overpriced and hasn't quite escaped it's Christian roots. Unless you are a fairly religious person looking for your future spouse E-Harmony isn't likely to prove fruitful.