A survey conducted by Professor Candice Odgers of University of California and her colleagues found that spending too much time on social media will create problems in real-life relationships. The study revealed that teenagers from low-income families reported more physical fights, face-to-face arguments and trouble at school that spilled over from social media.
Adolescents from economically disadvantaged households are also more likely to be bullied and victimised in cyberspace.
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‘The majority of young people appear to be doing well in the digital age, and many are thriving with the new opportunities that electronic media provides. But those who are already struggling offline need our help online too. What we’re seeing now may be the emergence of a new kind of digital divide, in which differences in online experiences are amplifying risks among already vulnerable adolescents,’ said Odgers, who is also a fellow in Canadian Institute for Advanced Research’s Child & Brain Development programme.
For the last 10 years, Odgers has been tracking adolescents’ mental health and their use of smartphones.
In her survey of North Carolina schoolchildren, 48 per cent of 11-year-olds said they owned a mobile phone as did eighty-five per cent of 14-year-olds. The study showed that teenagers from families with a household income of less than $35,000 per year spent three more hours a day on screen media watching TV and online videos than teenagers in families with an annual income of more than $100,000.
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