[Air-L] Air-L Digest, Vol 105, Issue 32

[Kim Witten]

Articles like this make me cringe. People engaging in social activity with their friends feel less inhibited and enjoy cookies more than granola bars at that time? Why is this so surprising? To me, it goes back to that technological determinism/digital dualist argument that SNSs and the like are Doing Things To Our Brains. Danger point!

Seriously though, the framing of this Wired story suggests something of the deterministic sort, even though the published article title ("“Are Close Friends the Enemy?...) and a statement by the author (1) say otherwise. Still, the Wired article title ("Does Facebook Praise Kill Self-Control?") and other statements (2,3) frame it differently.

1. "Wilcox cautions that those findings do not necessarily mean that spending time on social networks causes any of those things."
2. "the “likes” prompted by your status updates and photo posts might also have a negative impact, especially on your waistline and pocketbook." ("likes" being the cause here, not the content of the update, the social engagement or the people participating in it.)
3. "those people who reported higher self-esteem and lower self control *from* browsing Facebook happen to have a higher body mass index and more credit card debt." (emphasis mine)

Also, people are fat, have debt, read CNN, or like/dislike granola bars for various reasons. The latter two are not good controls.

Thoughts?
-Kim

> -----------------
> 
> Message: 5
> Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:16:19 -0400
> From: nativebuddha <nativebuddha at gmail.com>
> To: Deanya Lattimore <deanyalattimore at gmail.com>
> Cc: "air-l-aoir.org at listserv.aoir.org"
> 	<air-l-aoir.org at listserv.aoir.org>
> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Facebook, cookies and self-control?
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAF-xTaak-_FaqNmSUQttYRUSExe4mGhwt3wXb0OoLwFFY9Q72A at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> that was my impression as well.
> 
> -robert
> 
> 
> On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 8:49 AM, Deanya Lattimore <deanyalattimore at gmail.com
>> wrote:
> 
>> Here'e the study itself, downloadable -
>> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2155864
>> 
>> It's hard to say anything about a study that doesn't say anything.
>> The researchers do everything that researchers do these days who want
>> their studies to become public and picked up by the media; in this way, the
>> media draws its own conclusions that the researchers themselves are too
>> cautious to draw.
>> 
>> I think this one deserves to be put up for an Ig Nobel.
>> :-)
>> Deanya
>> 
>> 
>> On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 9:20 PM, nativebuddha <nativebuddha at gmail.com>wrote:
>> 
>>> Wondered what others thought about the validity of these findings:
>>> 
>>> http://www.wired.com/business/2013/01/self-control-and-facebook/
>>> 
>>> -Robert
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