It’s common to read or hear stories in the media about the negative impact that social networking sites like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter are having on society generally, but younger people in particular. After all, younger people are generally the highest volume users and increasingly, they have little experience of a world without social media.
Are young people losing the ability to have real, face to face conversations and interactions? Are their manners declining? Is correct spelling going the way of the horse and cart?
What about general happiness and quality of life? How good can your life be if you’re constantly checking your smart phone or tablet?
The jury is still out and probably always will be at some level, in that there is always another study being done.
Are young people losing the ability to have real, face to face conversations and interactions? Are their manners declining? Is correct spelling going the way of the horse and cart?
But I came across an interesting bit of information while reading the 2015 Report of the annual Australian Unity Wellbeing Index, What makes us happy? It is the culmination of 15 years of surveys of ordinary Australians’ attitudes towards happiness and wellbeing.
The report finds that people’s wellbeing remains within ‘the normal range’ right across the spectrum, regardless of whether people say they spend no time on social media or spend more than one hour a day.
However, there was one exception. People who say they spend about 30 minutes each day on social media, have a level of wellbeing slightly above the normal range.
“Perhaps moderation is key”
The report, authored by Deakin University emeritus professor Robert Cummins, says this may indicate “moderate exposure to this form of communication may be associated with optimal wellbeing. Perhaps moderation is the key.”
Interestingly, women’s wellbeing seems to differ little whether they are internet users or not. Perhaps women just enjoy social networking, whether it’s electronic or just the old fashioned face to face variety.
On the other hand, men who don’t use the net at all report “below normal levels of wellbeing compared to the normal range of wellbeing for men who do”.
People who say they spend about 30 minutes each day on social media, have a level of wellbeing slightly above the normal range.
Women and men are different
The report speculates that this finding may be associated with factors other than internet use itself. “For instance, men who don’t access the internet may be elderly and socially isolated, suggesting lower wellbeing.”
The cost of having an internet connection does not seem to be a factor, they say, since women’s life satisfaction is the same whether they are online or not.
The report starts to lose its focus of social media per se at this point, focusing instead on general use of the internet and time spent online. From this point of view, they suggest that increased life satisfaction might be explained by the way the internet can be used to efficiently perform daily tasks that might otherwise be a hassle.
“For example, if people are using the internet to quickly access information, read the news, or perform ordinarily time-consuming tasks like banking, they may have more time to spend doing the things they really enjoy. Perhaps it has more to do with what we use the internet for rather than how long we spend on it,” they conclude.
I’d like to see some more drilling down in this area and some more detail on ages and internet use, but particularly social media use.
A personal, family perspective
My own personal experience of social media in the context of quality of life – particularly of Facebook in this respect – would indeed support the finding that 30 minutes a day is probably good for you.
And I don’t just mean for young people. In my experience, family members ranging from their teens to their 70s (and especially those aged 50 to 70 in this instance), have found a great deal of pleasure in connecting with family members dispersed right across the country and previously barely seen.
Social media has provided a platform – and a private one, with the ability to create special groups as my family has – to connect with family members, learn about our shared history and really get to know one another, even though we may rarely meet. (Although we have now had our second biannual family reunion.)
That level of family and community connectedness is an amazing source of happiness and wellbeing for me – and most of my other family members too I believe.
You can always find downsides from poor use of time with any kind of activity or technology. But that doesn’t mean we should write that activity or technology off altogether.
In fact, it makes sense to me that moderation with social media can indeed be a good thing!
