Reader Comments
Post a new comment on this article
Post Your Discussion Comment
Please follow our guidelines for comments and review our competing interests policy. Comments that do not conform to our guidelines will be promptly removed and the user account disabled. The following must be avoided:
- Remarks that could be interpreted as allegations of misconduct
- Unsupported assertions or statements
- Inflammatory or insulting language
Thank You!
Thank you for taking the time to flag this posting; we review flagged postings on a regular basis.
closeEveryone in school gets stressed as the semester progresses
Posted by dplaut on 18 Aug 2013 at 23:41 GMT
Did you have a control group that does not use Facebook but was required to answer 5 surveys a day x 2 weeks? How about a control group that is not in school??
If people become more stressed as the semester progresses (I know I was) then they may have less time for live social interaction, feel a bit less happy, and turn to Facebook for few minutes of distraction between writing papers, studying etc.
RE: Everyone in school gets stressed as the semester progresses
JanGleixner replied to dplaut on 14 Jan 2014 at 13:19 GMT
Answer based on a very short look on the paper:
They had in a way. They correlated the usage with the outcome. So they had people that used it more and people that used it less. The progressing semester would not have have a influence on that correlation, because it would just shift the mean (unless, of course, a progressing semester influences facebook usage).
However they did not run any causal experiments, so their conclusion (or at least the medias) is not possible.
What would be needed to show this was a control group that is forced to not use facebook.
From my personal experience I'd say that it is the other way around. When I am sad (esp. bored) I go to fb. The observed effect could be fully explained by this.