Comment by Lerc
13 days ago
There are certain statements that should make you wary of study findings.
People who x reported y is one of those phrases.
“people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness and social comparison,”
This is the same argument you see in cosmetic advertising as "Women who used this serum reported reduction in wrinkles"
If the study has evidence that people who x actually shows y, It would be irresponsible to not say that directly. Dropping to "people reported" seems like an admission that there was no measurable effect other than the influence of the researchers on the opinions of the subjects.
Mental state can be difficult in this respect because it is much harder to objectively measure internal states. the fact that it is harder to do, doesn't grant validity to subjective answers though.
I was once part of a study that did this. It was fascinating seeing something that appeared to have no effect being written up using both "people reported" and "significant" (meaning, not likely by chance, but implying a large effect to the casual reader).
Dude, who cares about study design and methodological validity! Let's just burn Meta down and put Zuck to jail! /s
What you a saying is valid criticism of the study but people here already made up their mind, so they downvote.
Another point to add is that 1 week is way too short - assuming there is an effect it might disappear or go in reverse after 1 month.
To all downvoters: if you think of yourself as smart rational people, please just use search/AI to see for yourself whether there is high quality evidence of _causal_ impact of social media on kids/mental health. The results are mixed at best.
Interestingly the post is climbing it's way back to zero.
I find the downvote without counterargument to be an odd response to a good faith post. It seems like it would strengthen the argument if the message they send is "I don't have a counter to this but I don't like it and I don't like that others will see this point of view"
I have come to realise that I have a much higher threshold when it comes to upvoting, downvoting, or rating things. It seems like a lot of people freely upvote, like, heart, or downvote without a care. We live in a world where a 4.8 star rating (comprised entirely of an aggregate of zero and five star ratings) is considered a concern. So I try not to be bothered by it, but I'm pretty sure subconsciously a downvote hurts more than someone saying "I disagree"