'The Science™' on Social Media Overuse Among Teens

Mene, mene tekel--the warning signs are all around us, clearly visible for everyone

Yesterday, we looked at a quite sad part of daily life in the 2020s, online dating, courtesy of a long portrait published by Norwegian state broadcaster NRK:

The Unbearable Sadness of Online Dating

Today, we shall look at two recent (2020, 2023) studies that allow more ‘insights’ into the strange netherworld of online dating, screen time, and how big social media corporations ruin everyone’s lives.

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Dating App Use Shows Pareto Distribution, Study Finds

We’ll start with a paper by Trond Viggo Grøntvedt et al., a student advisor (rådgiver) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Trond holds a Ph.D. in evolutionary psychology and he and his colleagues have researched the burning question ‘Do Tinder Matches and Meet Ups Lead to One-Night Stands?’, Evolutionary Psychological Science, no. 6 (2020). 109-18.

Here’s the abstract, but we’ll not dwell on this paper too long for obvious conceptual and other problems (here and in the following, emphases mine; for readability, I’ve removed all references):

Several recent papers have established a link between personality and Tinder use, particularly with regards to sociosexuality and motivations for use. Following up our recent publication on dating apps and the studies linking Tinder and sociosexuality, we provide a more detailed investigation of the efficiency of using Tinder to acquire one-night stands or meet potential long-term committed relationship partners. Using self-reported data from 269 students (62% women), we find that a very large number of matches are required for a relative small number of meet ups, and result in a very limited number of hook-ups or potential romantic partner meetings. Merely 20% of the Tinder users in the sample have had one-night stands following Tinder use, and the majority of these only had one extra partner. The primary individual difference predictor of achieving casual sex using Tinder is unrestricted sociosexual attitudes, and this also predicts fewer potential romantic partner meetings.

That paper tells us:

• Those who use Tinder and other such apps are generally more willing to spread their legs.

• The sample is highly problematic for two reasons: ‘self-reported data’ (hi, Covid VE rates) is prone to massive biases while the size (n = 269, 62% of whom are women) is neither representative nor very large.

• Still, the share of ‘achievers’ (sic) reproduces the familiar 80:20 split first proposed by Vilfredo Pareto a century ago. See more on this phenomenon here.

From the Paper by Grøntvedt et al.

Tinder has commonly been seen as a sex app in the public discourse [what a difference 4 years make, if you care to remember yesterday’s NRK piece], primarily relating the use of the app to casual sex encounters. However, Tinder users have been shown to use the app not only for sexual hook-ups but also for initiating relationships. One plausible explanation for a finding of different motivations and different outcomes of Tinder use could be that initial sexual encounters lead to more committed relationships [I’m not saying it doesn’t, but I consider it highly unlikely: why would a man invest into a ‘situationship’ that already led to casual sex?] Alternatively, there could be underlying personality differences and evolved sex differences that influence motivation for using Tinder for short-term mating vs. long-term mating. However, no previous studies have addressed whether Tinder use actually increases the number of one-night stands or if Tinder use is associated with more meetings for committed relationships.

There is something called ‘sexual strategies theory’, or SST, which posits a dichotomy: ‘Long-term mating typically encompasses a committed, intimate, and lasting emotional relationship’ while ‘short-term mating on the other hand is characterized more by brief physically motivated sexual encounters’.

Brilliant people in this field came up with the following gem:

From an evolutionary perspective on reproduction, one differs between mating and parenting effort, which to some degree mirrors short-term and long-term mating strategies. One-night stands bear costs within the realm of mating effort, including time spent seeking out eligible mates, courting these, displaying or providing resources or desirable traits, and competing with other short-term oriented individuals [no shit analysis]…

SST predicts sex differences will evolve in areas where men and women have encountered enduring dissimilar adaptive challenges throughout human evolution. Many of these are specifically related to benefits of mating effort and parental investment, because men have larger fitness benefits of multiple sex partners relative to what women have. As such, again relative to women, men will be more short-term oriented, desire sexual variety, and be willing to consent to sex after a shorter time-lapse. This is also expected to influence newer dating arenas, such as dating apps. Sex differences have been found in motivations and reasons for using dating apps. For instance, men emphasize desire for sex as a reason for using dating apps compared with women. Alternatively, there may be features of electronic dating apps that create a mismatch between the mating arena and our evolved sexual psychology.

This is all one needs to know about what underpins human psychology; needless to say, the notion of the Pareto Distribution is absent from this ‘study’.

A bit further down, more such ‘insights’ are found:

Individual differences in mate value might influence who achieves matches, meet ups, and sexual encounters, as well as how many people they meet with an interest in a potential long-term, committed relationship. Several studies have investigated how sex differences in preferences differ between short-term sexual relationships and long-term committed relationships. For initial contact based on pictures, such as Tinder, men who are seen as physically attractive might have a higher probability of achieving matches and meet ups because women have increased preference for physical appearance in short-term settings. However, when actually meeting face to face, other important factors, such as personality traits or confidence, are perceived. For dating apps based on pictures, such as Tinder, mate value as measured by physical appearance might be positively associated with matches and meet ups.

At this juncture, the question why bother with the additional nuisance of using such apps becomes painfully obvious (to everyone but the authors): one only finds out about who one’s date is, and could be, during real-world encounters. I do wonder why this isn’t something everyone realises from the get-go (esp. those who rely on such apps in the first place).

What this study investigated

Our analyses will focus on Tinder use as one of the questions included in the questionnaire utilized in this study specifically asked for matches on Tinder, which could be evaluated by participants by looking at app use history. Given differences in motivation for using Tinder, what is the likelihood for engaging in short-term sexual encounters following Tinder use? Further, how many people has one met with an interest in having a long-term committed relationship? Both of these associations will be controlled for the number of matches and meetings, length of Tinder use, sociosexual orientation, and age.

We hypothesize that sociosexuality will be positively associated with number of matches, meet ups, and number of one-night stands following Tinder use, but not with number of people met with an interest in a long-term committed relationship…Botnen et al. (2018) that suggested there was no effect of Tinder use on number of sexual encounters, we consider the effect of sexual encounters outside of Tinder use as a predictor of sexual encounters following Tinder use. Thus, a history of one-night stands outside of Tinder use is expected to influence one-night stands following Tinder use if indeed app use is merely an alternative dating arena [translation: s/he who f**** around without Tinder, is also expected to so on Tinder; what insights might we gain?]. We will also explore the effects of mate value. In summary, is Tinder a qualitatively new mating arena, or will dating behavior on Tinder largely be influenced by the same evolved mechanisms that govern traditional mating behavior?

Running the risk of pointing out, once again, the obvious, here are the ‘methods’ and ‘results’ of this study:

We recruited participants from lectures in social sciences, natural sciences and humanities at the two major university campuses in Trondheim, Norway (N = 678) [not a representative sample]. To increase the homogeneity of the sample, we excluded students aged 30 or older and those who stated preference for same-sex partners. Among the remaining 641, only those responding to the specific questions regarding current or former Tinder use were included (n = 283) [the term ‘selection bias’ is absent here]. Of the remaining, six participants had extremely high number of matches (above 1000) and were removed. Based on their relationship status and Tinder use, the final sample eligible for analysis covered three distinct groups of Tinder users: Single participants currently using Tinder at the time of data collection (n = 108), single participants who were former users of Tinder (n = 73), and partnered participants who were former users of Tinder (n = 88). Mean ages for women (n = 168) and men (n = 101) were 21.59 (SD = 1.72) and 21.88 (SD = 1.63) respectively. More women (38.7%) than men (22.8%) reported being currently partnered…

The typical pattern seems to be that half of Tinder users who had matches actually met up with at least one of their matches, and the large majority never had sex nor had a meeting with an interest for a long-term relationship [I’m convinced that Match Group knows this, too—what business model, eh?]. To get an impression of the pay-off of using Tinder, we calculated the ratios of matches, meet ups, one-night stands following Tinder and meeting a potential long-term committed romantic partner. Overall, across all subgroups, the matches:meet ups ratio was 57:1, the meet ups: One-night stands following Tinder ratio was 5.4:1 (5.9:1 and 4.8:1 for women and men respectively), and the ,meet ups:meeting a long-term committed romantic partner ratio was 5.1:1.

If I’m Tinder or its parent company, this is awesome: the majority uses the ‘product’ without any benefit to users; put differently, the only benefactor is Tinder (except for those who’d be ‘successful’ without the app, too, I presume).

Here’s the ‘discussion’ section:

Contrary to expectations, number of one-night stands outside Tinder use showed only a weak positive association with number of one-night stands following Tinder. When controlling for length of use and age, there was no effect of one-night stands outside of Tinder use on one-night stands following Tinder. In the final model, controlling for sociosexuality, matches and meet ups, the effect was actually negative. Botnen et al. (2018) and Sevi (2019a) suggested that dating apps such as Tinder are merely a new arena for evolved short-term sexual behavior, rather than a facilitator of new sexual behaviors. Given the current results, we suggest that Tinder indeed seems to provide new sexual opportunities, but mostly for a very small minority. Of the 54 participants who reported one-night stands following Tinder use, only 7 individuals reported no one-night stands outside of Tinder use. However, the general claim still holds for the majority of Tinder users. For those who are most successful outside of Tinder, Tinder adds few extra short-term sexual encounters. A small number of individuals who are unsuccessful in more traditional dating arenas may turn to Tinder in order to have short-term sexual relations. Based on the ratio of matches to meetings to sexual encounters, Tinder may not be described as a sex app that largely increases the number of one-night stands and hook-ups, at least not in our sample…Most meetings do not lead to one-night stands. There is a potential mismatch between cues used to decide to swipe right and the short-term attractiveness perceived in a face-to-face meeting. Information provided by the short biography, picture, and age are highly relevant; however, other evolutionary relevant cues for assessing casual sex attractiveness are only available in a physical meeting…

Those who succeed in traditional hook up arenas, in physical interactions, where both parties are in the mood and with some degree of intoxication [WTF?], will perhaps not succeed more by adding Tinder. Swiping and searching on Tinder may have limited effect, and as such may not be considered cost efficient [oh, neoliberal utility theory, I’ve missed you]. A large number of matches are required in order to achieve a sexual encounter…

Tinder is neither a very efficient way of meeting a long-term committed romantic partner. Women, more than men, meet more people with an interest for potential long-term committed relationships…findings support that individual differences in sociosexuality attitudes and sex differences overlap, with women being less short-term oriented in general and also report greater interest in long-term rather than short-term encounters. There was also an overlap in what factors influence meeting someone for either a long-term committed romantic relationship or one-night stands. Most likely, this is due to most people being interested to some degree in both short-term as well as long-term relationships.

So, what didn’t we know before that study?

Limitations incl. that fact that the sample is from ‘a highly sexually liberal and gender egalitarian population’ and ‘Norwegian samples report less restrictive sociosexual behavior and attitudes compared with the US samples’. Reader, beware.

Let’s move on to see how pervasive social media use is.

Social Media (Ab)use by Norwegian Young Adults

On social media use by Norwegian young adults, we shall now go through Finserås et al., ‘Reexploring Problematic Social Media Use and Its Relationship with Adolescent Mental Health’, Psychology Research and Behavior Management, vol. 16 (2023): 5101-11.

Purpose: Previous approaches used to assess problematic social media use risk inflating prevalence numbers and classifying unproblematic social media use as problematic. The main aim of this study was to take an exploratory view as to how different types of activities, experiences, and motivations on social media are associated with problematic mental health outcomes in adolescents.

Patients and Methods: This study is based on a cross-sectional survey of 2023 adolescents (mean age 17.4 years (SD 0.9), 44.4% males) from the year 2020. Exploratory graph analysis and exploratory factor analysis were performed on 28 pre-selected items assessing adolescents’ use of social media, to identify underlying potentially problematic factors associated with social media use. Sets of gender-adjusted multiple linear regression analyses were performed to assess the degree to which social media factors predicted depression, anxiety, well-being, and time spent on social media.

Results: Three factors were identified: 1) “subjective overuse”, 2) “social obligations”, and 3) “source of concern”. All three factors showed significant positive associations with mental health problems. The factor “source of concern”, which identifies feelings of being overwhelmed and concerned over social media use, had the strongest association to mental health problems and simultaneously the weakest association to time spent on social media.

Conclusion: Three identified factors measuring problematic social media use showed positive associations with mental health problems. This lends support to the notion that problematic social media use is a multidimensional phenomenon and demonstrates the need to move beyond addiction criteria when assessing problematic social media use.

In the introduction, we read the following (and note that the data is from 2020, i.e., it’s close to the experiences of that young woman who appeared in yesterday’s piece).

The last decade has seen a rapid increase in adolescent social media use, with about 90% of Norwegian adolescents using social media, and 37% stating that they use social media more than 3 hours a day [no wonder grades, proficiency, and loneliness are skyrocketing]. There have been concerns that this use may become problematic and lead to detrimental consequences, such as poorer mental health, reduced quality of life, or addiction. In fact, research has shown associations between social media use and negative effects such as depression and anxiety. However, there continues to be disagreements as to what constitutes problematic social media use, and how to operationalize and measure it.

IYI is a useful acronym to know: ‘intellectual yet idiot’.

Many of the previous studies that report associations with mental health problems have considered time spent on social media or frequency of use as core features of problematic social media use [no shit analysis]. However, recent studies have shown that even though some studies find statistically significant associations between high levels of use of social media and mental health outcomes, the strength of the associations are so small that they are of questionable practical significance [fair point]. It has also been suggested that it is possible to get addicted to social media and that addiction is what constitutes problematic use.

Nothing new under the sun, then. What do we do with other ‘things’ or ‘substances’ that induce addiction? Oh, yes, we ban them (illicit substances), tax them heavily (alcohol, tobacco), and/or regulate them massively (apart from booze and tobacco, this applies both to meds as well as guns).

So, here’s a fair question: why don’t TF we do that with social media apps (e.g., age limits, like 18 or 21 or older?), internet use in general (i.e., very limited screen time in schools and at home)? Instead, we ‘digitise’ everything, hand out ‘smart’ devices to toddlers, and wonder a bit later about ‘the weird next generation’.

As such, the following lines are the perfect example of everything that’s wrong with ‘the Science™’, technocracy as a form of socio-political arrangement, and the gullibility of virtually everyone:

Research concerning assessment of problematic social media use seems to have followed the same development as the research on assessment of Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD)…As now seems to be the case with social media, time spent on gaming did not necessarily reflect problematic use [go ahead, re-read that one]. Furthermore, it was pointed out that, although similar, gambling entails different aspects than gaming, such as monetary aspects, which meant the two concepts could not be directly compared…While the debate is ongoing [I call you cowards], similar criteria as the ones included in assessment of IGD are now used as part of social media addiction scales [oh, so this is being compared because…] Some of these have been criticized for potentially pathologizing normal behavior and for including items that are not associated with psychopathological symptoms.

See what I mean? Social media causes virtually the same problems as IGM, but it’s not the same. The amount of time wasted on social media ‘did not necessarily reflect problematic use’. I cannot make this up, hence a drastic ‘comparison’:

Imagine, if you will, taking your kids to the playground; there’s a single man sitting there, on a bench in the sun, observing what goes on. It might be that this person is just resting, yet the longer this person lingers at the playground, watching children play without being there as parent/guardian of a child, the odder it gets, isn’t it?

As now seems to be the case with pedophiles, time spent watching someone else’s children does not necessarily reflect problematic behaviour. Someone criticising or disagreeing with such conduct may now be criticised for potentially pathologising normal (sic) behaviour and for including items that are not associated with psychopathological symptoms.

See it now?

The paper gets worse, though, and quickly so:

Another disputable aspect of published studies on problematic social media use is that they have seldom considered the view of the primary users: adolescents [ask an alcoholic or drug addict for public policy advice, maybe?]. Adolescents report that social media is an important social arena and part of their daily lives, where they communicate with friends, develop new friendships, and fulfill their needs for intimacy and connection with others. However, adolescents also acknowledge that their social media use might become problematic…users with low overall use and mostly passive use (ie, browsing others posts) of social media experienced less social media benefits [they aren’t listed], but also less social media stress. Specific motivations for using social media have also been found to be inversely associated with well-being, such as using social media to pass time, escape everyday life or to receive feedback on appearance. In addition, gender [oh, I hate these pseudo-correct bums] has been shown to be an important differentiating factor in social media use, as girls seem to be more emotionally invested in social media and spend more time there.

Do you see it? I mean, there’s a reason we don’t let addicts devise policy about addiction. That ‘gender’ reference is particularly insidious, esp. in light of the other paper we discussed earlier that showed clear sex differences.

The present study adopts an exploratory view to better understand what can be considered problematic social media use. This includes a wide range of activities, experiences, and motivations for using social media. This approach is informed by a questionnaire derived from a qualitative study of adolescents, resulting in a closer alignment with adolescents’ actual experiences on social media.

Oh, great, another ‘exploratory’ and ‘qualitative’ study. Well, it’s what we’ve got, right? Let’s go.

Data Input and Methods

This study employs cross-sectional data from the “LifeOnSoMe”-study. Participants aged 16-21 years were recruited from upper secondary schools in Bergen municipality, Norway (mean age 17.4 years (SD 0.9)). Participants had to be at least 16 years old to participate [oh, look, age limits, that’s unexpected]. The data employed in the present study was collected in September-October 2020 through a web-based questionnaire [note the absence of Covid mandate confounders]. The total number of respondents were 2116 (54% response rate). A total of 93 responses were excluded from the dataset because of duplicates (n = 9), missing gender (n = 2) and age (n = 69), and those reporting other/non-binary gender were excluded due to privacy concerns (n = 13). The final sample consisted of 2023 participants.

Statements about social media were developed based on focus group interviews with adolescents in a previous study. The results from the interviews formed the basis for three different themes and 13 subthemes of what adolescents themselves think is important to understand social media use and mental health and well-being among adolescents. The results and themes from the interviews formed the development of 50 statements regarding activities, experiences, and motivations for social media use that were included in the “LifeOnSoMe”-survey. As the statements were based on the interviews with the adolescent, they included words adolescents used to describe their experience with social media, as for example being addicted to social media. 22 of these items were removed prior to the analysis based on face value (eg, they gauged positive aspects related to social media use) and exploratory analysis. Examples of statements from the final 28 items (see Appendix A [do click on this one]) included “There is so much happening on social media that I often feel overwhelmed” and “I fear I might miss out on something if I’m not on social media”. The response options ranged from 1 (never) to 5 (very often).

The paper then briefly sketches and defines a laundry list of symptoms:

• depression measure with the Short Mood and Feelings Questionnaire

• anxiety measured along the Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale (GAD-7)

• mental well-being using the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale

• time spent (“Less than 2 hours”, “2–4 hours”, “>4-5 hours”, and “More than 5 hours”).

These categories were then statistically analysed using Exploratory Graph Analysis (EGA) that was performed on the 28 social media items.

Results

Table 1 shows descriptive data for the sample. Girls had a higher mean score on depression (21.7) and anxiety (14.0), and a lower score on well-being (46.2) than boys (52.0). Girls also reported spending more time on social media than boys. See Appendix B for a correlation matrix of included variables.

The most used social media platforms were YouTube (91%), Snapchat (91%), Instagram (84%) and TikTok (60%) for boys, and Snapchat (97%), Instagram (96%), TikTok (81%) and YouTube (78%) for girls. See Appendix C for the full list of social media platforms.

Despite the problems with the sample generation, I think this is a fair description: isn’t this breathtakingly absurd?

Table 2 shows the final factors, which were named “Subjective overuse”, “Social obligations” and “Source of concern”. The factors consisted of four, five, and three items, respectively. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.83 for subjective overuse, 0.85 for social obligations and 0.71 for source of concern. Table 2 shows descriptive statistics of the retained factors across gender (see Appendix D for percentiles of each factor).

Table 3 shows the results from the simple linear regression analyses. All measures of potential problematic social media use were positively associated with depression and anxiety, and negatively associated with well-being…There were significant positive differences between subjective overuse and source of concern on anxiety (p<0.01) and time spent on social media (p<0.001), where source of concern showed a stronger association. There was also a significant positive difference between social obligations and source of concern on time spent on social media (p<0.001), where social obligations showed a stronger association.

Table 4 shows the results from the multiple regression analysis where gender is included as a control variable. All of the associations between the retained factors and the dependent variables remained statistically significant but some changes in estimated associations are notable. The strength of the association between social obligations and the mental health variables changed the most, with a fall of 32% for depression, 29% for anxiety and 52% for well-being. On the other hand, the strength of the associations between the factors and time spent on social media changed very little, and not at all for subjective overuse when gender was added to the model. See Appendix E for results of each gender-adjusted model.

What table 4 shows, in other words, are biological differences in depression, anxiety, and general well-being, all of which affects girls much harder than boys.

From the Authors’ Discussion

The present study of 2,023 Norwegian adolescents identified three distinctive factors gauging potential problematic social media use that were associated with mental health problems and therefore can be considered facets of problematic social media use. The strength of the associations between the factors gauging different aspects of problematic social media use and mental health problems and time spent on social media differed. The factor that resembled previous measures of social media addiction the most was subjective overuse of social media. This factor covered an overuse of time on social media and had the weakest association with mental health problems of the three factors (B=1.2, equivalent to 0.3 standard deviations (SD) increase in the dependent variable per unit increase in the independent variable). The factor source of concern, which covered feeling overwhelmed and concerned over social media use, had the largest estimated association with mental health problems (depression: B=2.0 (0.3SD), anxiety: B = 1.7 (0.4SD)) and notably the weakest association with time spent on social media (B = 0.2 (0.1SD)). This finding supports earlier claims that time spent on social media is not a pertinent measure of problematic use.

I call BS, if only for this comparison: time spent in bars drinking is a pertinent measure of problematic alcohol consumption (sure, not everyone gets drunk all the time he or she walks into a bar, but you know where this argument is going…).

The factor subjective overuse of social media entails a perception of an addiction to social media and an overuse of time on social media. Some of the items in this factor resembles items often used to assess social media addiction. The item “my parents/guardians think I spend too much time on social media” may be indicative of arguments with parents and is therefore similar to the problem-item in the Social media disorder scale. Similarly, the item “I wish to reduce the amount of time I spend on social media” resembles the addiction criterion “persistence” or “relapse” which may be formulated as “trying to spend less time but failing”, though “wishing” to reduce might be more common than “trying but failing” [remember: they asked teens who are legally barred from voting, buying and drinking beer, or driving—because they are minors]. While social media addiction has been shown to be associated with mental health problems, the strength of the association between “subjective overuse of social media” and mental health was weakest among the three factors. This may be because the factor is less extensive than scales measuring addiction, or that the wording of the items reflect less problematic use. Even so, the fact that the factor most similar to addiction scales is least associated with mental health problems could be indicative of a needed change in items measuring problematic social media use.

Again: they asked minors. Why don’t we let minors do a lot of stuff adults may engage in? Because their brains aren’t yet fully developed. It’s like asking your child if she or he thinks they’re eating too much candy. Can’t make this up.

As a follow-up: if you don’t consider peer-review broken, wait until we look at some queer theory ‘research’.

The factor subjective overuse of social media entails an item assessing parents’ concerns and may indicate an attitude imposed on the adolescents that using social media is bad for them [at this point, I do wonder if the authors have children, but I’m not going to look this up]. The factor source of concern may instead be more indicative of concerns originating from an adolescent’s own experiences of their social media use as problematic and may therefore have a stronger association to mental health problems [sure, ask a minor who’s heavily using social media if he or she considers himself an addict; how does this kind of BS pass muster?]. This factor might more closely resemble digital stress, which is defined as the feeling of stress triggered by the heavy use of information and communication technology. Similar to source of concern, digital stress goes beyond amount of use and is instead characterized by a subjective experience [so there’s no way ever to measure it, which kinda renders the entire paper…irrelevant, I’d argue]. In addition, digital stress has also been associated with mental health problems, like depression…

Participants in a qualitative study reported experiencing guilt over violating a social contract after withdrawing from their mobile phone for 10 days [I didn’t look at the study]. This might be related to the theory of needing to belong, which is the motivation to be accepted by others, in relationships and social groups. For adolescents, social media is an important arena for socializing and maintaining friendships [this is an assertion, not a fact], and it is likely that certain norms and unwritten rules are established for how to behave towards others on social media. Missing out on social obligations on social media may therefore have consequences for relationships for the adolescent [no shit; it also renders such people highly neurotic, I’d argue]. Studies have shown that not receiving enough feedback on social media may have similar negative effects as being excluded in real life, and that these effects are stronger for people with a high need to belong [read: girls/women].

Implications

The present findings show that there are several different aspects to problematic social media use. The present study has identified a few of these aspects, though there might be several more [grifters of the world, unit]. Future research should investigate if similar results are found for different age groups and across different cultures, and if the factors are associated with the use of specific social media platforms. Furthermore, longitudinal studies should explore if there is a causal pathway between the factors and mental health outcomes [perhaps FOIA such data from social media platforms?]. Finally, individual differences such as personality and level of concentration could be explored in association with the factors, to identify potential antecedents and moderators for problematic use.

In terms of ‘strengths and limitations’, we note the qualitative, and thus subjective, interviews/questionnaire that provide the basis for this analysis. My favourite passage about the uselessness of the ‘study’, though, is this one:

The study is cross-sectional and cannot explain causality between the investigated factors and mental health [why then claim this, as shown above?]. As a result, while the identified problematic use factors predict symptoms of poor mental health, we cannot conclude whether this is a result of problematic use or if individuals with more symptoms of poor mental health tend to use social media in these ways [or perhaps individuals with poor mental health/self-esteem use such social media platforms more than others, but it would be strange, indeed, as the shares of social media use are so high]. In addition, these factors are made based on adolescent qualitative interviews and tested on adolescents and may therefore not be generalized to other age groups.

So, the one take-away that is actually worth keeping in mind is: a snap-shot in time this is, and nothing more. We learned that 80-90% of all Norwegian teens are using social media, some excessively so, and that such use affects well-being. The call for longitudinal studies is hilarious as many internet companies quickly die, and the more successful ones are often bought up by megacorporations that have ‘other’ incentives.

Care for Some Spin? Here We Go…

This ‘paper’ is about as useful as a wart, I’d argue. Sure, some effort went into it, and we do glean some useful information, but in general this is as useless as most ‘Science™’ products.

Never to miss out on spinning stuff in a certain way, though, public health officialdom reads the same paper in the following way (source, courtesy of a press release by the Institute of Public Health; translation mine):

It's not high time use that's the source of concern on social media

Researchers at the IPH have asked 2,000 young people at upper secondary schools in Bergen about their life on social media and their mental health. The researchers found that young people who had symptoms of anxiety and depression were more likely to respond affirmatively to these three statements:

• There is so much going on in social media that I often feel overwhelmed.

• I wish we could learn more about how social media affects us.

• Sometimes I feel like I'm being watched on social media (because what I do/where I am/who I'm with is visible).

‘So it's something other than excessive time use that is problematic with social media’, says Turi Reiten Finserås, researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

The researchers collectively labelled the three statements as a ‘source of concern’.

‘Even though we have found correlations here, we cannot conclude that social media causes mental health problems in some young people. Mental health problems may be due to other factors that we have not investigated. We can therefore conclude that there is a correlation here, but we need further research to establish whether there is a causal relationship’, says Finserås.

Does this spin still qualifies as ‘cognitive dissonance’?

Bottom Lines

There’s not a lot left to say: this ‘study’ is yet another example of the ongoing crapification of scientific-scholarly enquiry. Personally, I fail to see how such studies pass peer-review (although I do acknowledge the possibility of an earlier version having been even worse in terms of arguments, findings), but then again, I’m not surprised.

What I find so appalling is that, as I may have mentioned the other day, the absurd mis-match between perceived dangers here in Norway. A few weeks ago, my children went ice-skating in school. We received emails, calls, and texts about providing helmets for the girls (which we didn’t consider necessary). At the same time, schoolchildren from grade 1 onwards receive tablets for ‘schoolwork’ and ‘homework’ that have no restrictions whatsoever as regards internet access. Once connected, kids could theoretically go everywhere. This is insane.

The other day, our 4th-grader reported that all her classmates said they don’t want to get married ever. Talk about peer-pressure, odd topics discussed with 10 year-olds, and the pathological absurdity of having such ‘themes’ discussed in school. Welcome, to the shit-show known as Social Emotional Learning.

All that I can say to parents and grandparents, as well as to everyone else: do whatever it takes to protect your children. I’m not saying this merely as a concerned parent, but I’m also mentioning this for another reason: no children, or only severely unwell children, is tantamount to no future at-all.