Articles like this make me cringe. People engaging in social activity with their friends feel less inhibited and enjoy cookies more than granola bars at that time? Why is this so surprising? To me, it goes back to that technological determinism/digital dualist argument that SNSs and the like are Doing Things To Our Brains. Danger point! Seriously though, the framing of this Wired story suggests something of the deterministic sort, even though the published article title ("“Are Close Friends the Enemy?...) and a statement by the author (1) say otherwise. Still, the Wired article title ("Does Facebook Praise Kill Self-Control?") and other statements (2,3) frame it differently. 1. "Wilcox cautions that those findings do not necessarily mean that spending time on social networks causes any of those things." 2. "the “likes” prompted by your status updates and photo posts might also have a negative impact, especially on your waistline and pocketbook." ("likes" being the cause here, not the content of the update, the social engagement or the people participating in it.) 3. "those people who reported higher self-esteem and lower self control *from* browsing Facebook happen to have a higher body mass index and more credit card debt." (emphasis mine) Also, people are fat, have debt, read CNN, or like/dislike granola bars for various reasons. The latter two are not good controls. Thoughts? -Kim
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Message: 5 Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:16:19 -0400 From: nativebuddha <nativebuddha@gmail.com> To: Deanya Lattimore <deanyalattimore@gmail.com> Cc: "air-l-aoir.org@listserv.aoir.org" <air-l-aoir.org@listserv.aoir.org> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Facebook, cookies and self-control? Message-ID: <CAF-xTaak-_FaqNmSUQttYRUSExe4mGhwt3wXb0OoLwFFY9Q72A@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
that was my impression as well.
-robert
On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 8:49 AM, Deanya Lattimore <deanyalattimore@gmail.com
wrote:
Here'e the study itself, downloadable - http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2155864
It's hard to say anything about a study that doesn't say anything. The researchers do everything that researchers do these days who want their studies to become public and picked up by the media; in this way, the media draws its own conclusions that the researchers themselves are too cautious to draw.
I think this one deserves to be put up for an Ig Nobel. :-) Deanya
On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 9:20 PM, nativebuddha <nativebuddha@gmail.com>wrote:
Wondered what others thought about the validity of these findings:
http://www.wired.com/business/2013/01/self-control-and-facebook/
-Robert _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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