Social Networking Will Kill You... Or Maybe Not
from the scary dept
A story doing the rounds says a new article in a British biology journal claims that social networking is harmful to your health, running under headlines like "How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer." Apparently replacing face-to-face human contact with online socializing "could alter the way genes work, upset immune responses, hormone levels, the function of arteries, and influence mental performance," according to the BBC, leading to an increase of serious health problems -- or, put a slightly more sensationalized way, Twitter will kill you. Charles Arthur at The Guardian's tech blog actually bothered to read the entire article, not just the press release, and says the breathless stories are based on more on bad journalism than junk science. The original article doesn't ever really get into the direct effect of online social networks, beyond saying people are spending more and more time on them, and never mentions any by name; it just says people are spending less time with other people, and that biologists should work to create more awareness of the detrimental effects that can have. But hey, that's way less interesting than saying MySpace is going to rot your insides.
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Filed Under: dangers, social networks, studies
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WFH v. Facebook
For example, I believe that telecommuting has a far greater negative impact on spending time with other people than does MySpace or Facebook. In my experience, social networks help to keep you in contact with people who are already your friends, which increases the odds that you'll get together with them in person. But working from home decreases the odds that you'll make friends with your co-workers, which obviously decreases the odds that you'll get together with them in person. If all that you do is e-mail or telecon with a co-worker, you're far less likely to establish any kind of relationship with that person, much less have any chance of becoming their friend.
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Yeah?
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Its not the Facebook that will kill you, its the fat that will kill you.
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Re: Its not the Facebook that will kill you, its the fat that will kill you.
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Re: Its not the Facebook that will kill you, its the fat that will kill you.
The geeks you are referring to, me, are the ones who spend their time programming, gaming, and being overall asocial. We disklike social network sites because of their fakeness and because we don't like the people in the previous paragraph. Please don't lump social network geeks with us real techies.
Thanks.
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Re: Re: Its not the Facebook that will kill you, its the fat that will kill you.
shut up moron.
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Re: Its not the Facebook that will kill you, its the fat that will kill you.
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Re: Its not the Facebook that will kill you, its the fat that will kill you.
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Re: Its not the Facebook that will kill you, its the fat that will kill you.
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Re: Its not the Facebook that will kill you, its the fat that will kill you.
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Re: Its not the Facebook that will kill you, its the fat that will kill you.
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I also know very few people who use the internet instead of having a social life. It usually replaces time that they might have spent reading, watching TV or even sleeping rather than the time they would have participated in other activities. So, I doubt there really is any net reduction in the way people socialise, and what reduction there is probably has little directly to do with the internet.
Anyway, "bad journalism"? Of course. It's no surprise that the linked article is from that right-wing reactionary rag the Daily Fail. If I read that they said the sky was blue, I'd look up to check.
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Haven't we heard this before?
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Re: Haven't we heard this before?
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And I agree with the comment that people use facebook to organize getting together in real life, not replace real life interaction.
Hell, people use video games and facebook as a way to stay in touch with friends from real life that have moved away. How does that factor in to the less face time, spending time chatting with an old friend you would never talk to otherwise?
www.adaptiveengine.com
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Ban Books
One of the basic assumptions in the original article is very commonly made, but is totally wrong. Everyone assumes that social networking/internet use is done by people sitting at home in a dark room. I run a college computer lab. Even though all the students have computers in their dorm rooms, they come to the computer labs and get on facebook/myspace, et.al. They chatter away verbally as they visit various websites, often having several people visit the same page at once. At home I have noticed that my kids take their laptops to the same room and chatter away as they surf and use social networks.
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Beginning epidemic of bad journalism and junk science?
Is the news business that bad that they see a need to compete with The Onion? Who comes up with this stuff?
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Socail Networks cause CANCER?
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Lick your keyboard
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Re: Lick your keyboard
A shared keyboard is a whole different kettle of fish.
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Twitering as a threat
Pegging is bad, and when a news report "pegs" it can be disastrous.
Recently the LA Times published an article saying "vitamins do not help" (paraphrased, but correct). The ScienceDaily article they got that from said, in effect, "vitamins are good for you, but C and E do not prevent heart attacks" - not that anyone ever said they would, to my knowledge.
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Here is a solution.
I would suggest taking a look at http://batchchat.blogspot.com. I've used it at work for a while now and it works where ever there is file sharing in place. No need to install anything. It makes it fun to chat with friends that you work with. Maybe not social networking, but it is nice to connect with peoples.
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