Salon.com: Here’s a cautionary note for students who find adjustment to college life particularly stressful: Your phone may not be your friend.
A new study suggests university freshmen are more vulnerable to a variety of emotional problems if they (a) find themselves in difficult personal relationships, and (b) text more frequently than the average student.
16 comments:
The content in this article does not surprise me at all. Whenever I walk around campus, I would say about 90% of people are walking while staring at their phones. I myself am a culprit of this act. While it may be fun and entertaining, texting can be a very dangerous way to communicate with others. Our generation has become very attached to our phones and social media in general. I very rarely have the opportunity anymore to sit in a room with my friends and just talk. There is always someone who is on their phone, texting someone else. It is sad that we are beginning to communicate almost completely in a way where we lose all human interaction. Of course students will experience lack of sleep or depression if they do not have any human interaction outside of Facebook posts and texts! I am terrified to see what communication will become among young people 10 years from now. My little brother is severely attached to his phone, and my younger cousins are even worse with this problem. If a 10 year old is growing up by communicating with her friends over text messaging, what will that 10 year old do when they grow up and have zero human interaction and communication skills?
Yeah, our phones have become a part of us, which I think is terrible. I am even guilty of doing it too. I think it's sad that we've created these forms of communication. We constantly use them to the point that we forget that we can go up to a person and talk to them face to face. Lack of sleep make sense because we are always wondering what someone else is doing or if anyone is thinking about you. It's made us all very self conscious. Why do we post things on Facebook? So people can see what we're doing with our lives. Why do you text someone "hi!"? So that they'll recognize that you want attention. We become extremely lonely and narcissistic. Maybe it's just me, but I need human interaction because I go mad without it. I constantly check my phone hoping for something new to pop up.
We base our self esteem on how many likes we get on that selfie we just took or that status we just updated. We judge each other on how fast someone responds to a text. And then we stay up late waiting for a response to a stupid message that says "hi!" oh and don't forget the emoticons! and "LOL" who actually laughs out loud or sticks their tongue out (:P) when they are texting (not including me because I actually do the emoticons as I type them... but most people don't)!
Depression and lack of sleep is caused by something different for everyone but I am not surprised that texting and social networks on phones is a reason for it. Phones are easily accessible and so we can be trapped in this superficial world all the time.
I am definitely someone who checks my phone often. I'm not going to say more often than I should, because there isn't a standard for that (yet), and everyone is going to have a different idea of how much is too much. Nonetheless, I check the thing a lot. However, I'm not sure I believe that texting is directly linked to emotional problems in students. I suppose some people do base their self esteem on who is texting them and who isn't, but there are plenty of others who text as a means of communication without a thought to how many messages, when, where, how, and who. The fact is, cells phones are not going to disappear. The way we are using them today is often automatically pointed to as being something negative, when in fact it is, for the most part, just different from that which we have experienced in the past. Maybe we should work towards better integrating modern communication into our society instead of using it as a scapegoat and trying to abolish it.
This article outlines something that should be common sense to most people in our society. People who use their phones to text often have a higher rate of emotional problems. The same thing can be said for a lot of things though. People who use Facebook more often, write blogs more often, drink more often, probably have a higher rate of emotional problems as well. People who have a need to connect with other people and insert themselves into social situations will do it via whatever avenue they can. It's all the same thing. Texting has turned into the new "hanging out at the lockers" for students. It's just one more thing that our generation needs to learn how to balance.
I do not believe texting's inability to convey social nuances is the main reason why it causes emotional stress. I would rather assume that its tendency to cause lack of sleep as well as the unsubstantial conversations that can be had through text such as "hey" or "what's up" that do not lead to great friendships are more likely culprits.
Yet another article about how technology changes our interaction. I definitely have an attachment to technology and I overuse it most days but I certainly have spent time completely removed from technology which was great. It really comes down to what you allow to stress you out. This study was done on college freshman which is not a great group to study this phenomenon in. Greater amount of texting when in your first year of college means that you are talking to more people and being more social which in turn means you will be making more plans and doing more things. If you are a college freshman and on your own for the first time I am sure that you will make many mistakes in time management. You are trying to find your new social circle and that will make you overextend yourself socially which will drop your sleep level or your academic level. This study just proves that your first year of college you will pull stupid hours and over extend yourself more than once if you want to be social. Texting is not the cause of more stress, learning who you want to be and how much work your major requires is the cause of more stress. If you did the study with college seniors I think that you would find a direct correlation between the amount of texts and number of social events attended per week. People's stress level goes up as you are trying to deal with more items and it has nothing to do with the type of communication, it has everything to do with how well you know yourself and how well you manage your time. If you are great at time management and know your limits you will have no problem even if you text an obscene amount. Social media and technology are not the problem it is that people can't find their limits and so stress rises. One generational thing that I have noticed is that most people who are going into their career still try to hold onto the same amount of social interaction that they had in college once they have a career and kids and this is a great cause of stress. You can't have everything and most folk think that you can in our modern world. People need to slow down and find what truly makes them happy and work to make that happen. If you can live and be happy with a 1 bedroom apartment in the bad part of town while only working 25 hours a week that is great. If you are only happy at work then go for it. Find your zen place and make it happen.
I definitely think that this article makes very good points about how texting affects our everyday lives and our well being. Having been born in the age of technology, I don't really know what its like to not always have a cell phone, but the fact that my generation is attached to our phones is a very obvious fact. My jeans have an imprint in them where my phone always sits and I sleep with my phone 6 inches away from my head. When my phone isn't on me I feel a strange sense of anxiety that is unlike any other emotion. Its hard to step back and see the side effects of cell phone use and modern day technology, but there are definitely underlying social expectations that come with being a part of this age. In the end, I think that our phones give us a sense of happiness that is very fragile and has the tendency to break down when we are least expecting it.
I believe that texting doesn't help adjusting to a new situation, but I disagree that my phone is a strong contributor to my sleep schedule and my stress levels. I find that my phone keeps me close to those that I care about across the country and having a small conversation with them via text actually makes me feel less stressed, not more. I agree with Albert that our phones give us a "sense of happiness that is very fragile," but I also think that for as long as new technology has existed people have found ways to blame it for things that don't necessarily have to do with what we use it for. Students are very stressed these days; is that because our teachers, our families, and our friends are holding us to high expectations that we might not always think we are capable of? Or are we stressed because we text our friends? Yes, being in constant communication with people can be tiring, but phones have off buttons. There is no rule that states that we have to be attached to our phones 24/7. It's a choice to be so connected, and people need to think about what they do to contribute to their stress levels before they blame them on their phones and the internet.
I spend most of my summer working in the middle of the woods with no cell service and I can tell you that it's the most refreshing thing I've ever experienced. Getting constant text messages makes me feel obligated to respond quickly, even if I'm in a situation where I can't. Even now, I prefer to call the people I'd normally text, just because it's easier to get the point across, where sometimes text messaging leaves out important concepts, like inflection, as the article states.Furthermore, while this article raises many accurate depictions, I want to know why the study was so unevenly distributed. They interviews 56 women and 27 men for their study. That's probably not an accurate depiction of their college and all of its social constructs. I'd love to see some statistics, too, but that's my own personal preference.
While at first skeptical, I can totally understand how this article is absolutely true. While I must admit that I am one who probably texts way too much, texting is such an odd form of communication where it takes absolutely no direct interaction with the other individuals. I understand how it can be so easy to hide behind forms of texting in order to communicate quickly and easily. To try to fix this in my own life, I've started to try not to say anything that I wouldn't say in person especially not in some mixed up text jargon, or "textese." But still, I think its important for me to start cutting back on the texting and instead try to push for solid personal relationships.
I certainly have an attachment to all of my electronics, my phone included. I hate to admit it but the article presents a very scary point. I would argue that I have no emotional issues when I have my phone, so I don't really see that side of the issue. However, without my phone or computer I'm a mess. I absolutely hate the idea of being disconnected and un-informed as to whats going on around me. I feel lost if I can't connect with others via electronics. It's actually kind of sad that most people like me can't even fathom the idea of being without their electronics for even a day. Whats scary about this is society becoming fully dependent on their electronics in order to function. If anything ever caused us to loose all of our networking at once we would be absolutely crippled. This sounds dramatic but its 100% true, live as we know it would end the second everything goes down. Society would be thrown back into an earlier time which most people born into computers have never even experienced.
Disclaimer: I tried to read the study publication, but I wasn’t able to access it though our library’s databases. So what I say might be totally ignorant.
I’m not entirely sure that I believe that the study discussed in this article is a fair study. The study indicates that those students who most texted also suffered from the most sleep deprivation issues. But how does this study prove the sleep problems were caused by the texting? I don’t think it does. Perhaps some individuals had an underlying social issues which they felt was best resolved by texting. This issue also caused those individuals to lose sleep.
I’m not a psychologist, but I don’t think this is a great scientific study.
I can't not totally agree on sending text message more frequently than others is the direct cause in emotional problems, but I can see how it can contribute to those problems. First of all, most people in our age tend to put the cell phone where it is easily reachable while sleeping. I, too, put my cell phone near my bed, but I make it silence, so that I don't get distracted. However, I saw so many people who tend to answer any message at anytime. I think this will greatly increase sleeping deprivation and gradually emotional depression. Secondly, since text messaging is indirect communication, this will also cause miscommunication and conflict within friends. Although text messaging is a great way to keep in touch especially for college freshman, who just got separated from their high school friends, everyone should be cautious for its potential problems it carries.
I was not surprised by this article. Although it didn't include very much substantial evidence, I think the claims could be accurate. Texting is very stimulative for your brain, and doing that sort of activity right before bed is going to make it hard to go to sleep. I feel like my entire generation claims to be insomniacs, but some of them may be able to help themselves out by not texting in or before bed. I also completely agree that text messaging cannot communicate the way that face-to-face communication can, but people try to use it the same way. I can see how this could be damaging to personal relationships, some conversations need to be had in person.
I don't believe that texting is the devil incarnate, as some people seem to believe. It is a convenient method of communication for trivial things- meeting up with friends, checking in with someone to see how they're doing, and entertaining yourself when you're somewhere boring (on the bus, in line, etc). Texting is useful when it is used correctly. However, when texting becomes the main method of communication, relationships start to break down. Having had a few fights over text before, I agree that trying to go through emotional turmoil and having the only way to communicate be a text message is terrible mentally and emotionally. It doesn't surprise me that people who behave like this are exposed to more stress. I do wish articles like this would not just point out a problem, but suggest a solution other than "everyone should stop texting." People aren't going to just stop texting, so is there any way that we can make it more personal and a better form of communication, on invent something more effective that could replace it? Can we teach children what is and isn't appropriate to use texting for, and figure out a way to make it possible to still have real conversations?
This is a really interesting research although a really have a hard time believing in it.
I feel like the connection that was made between the excessive texting and the emotions was a bit forced.
I know it's not my place to judge a physiological research but maybe if the research had more than a 83 people it would be more convincing.
However, I do believe that it has become a real problem of our generation that we are just living in our cellphones. We lose contact with the world and with the people around us. Texting is great but it can't replace real human on human interaction.
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