Too much Facebook makes teenage girls depressed

[Adsos Letter]

Source: cnet News

The big question is: does your teenage daughter co-ruminate? Please check now, as this is a very serious matter.

Researchers from Stony Brook University have declared that excessive co-rumination--perhaps you would refer to it as "chatting with your friends about your problems"--by text, e-mail and on social-networking sites leaves impressionable teenage girls more prone to anxiety and depression.

"There is a wealth of communication technology available to teens today that allows them to talk over and over again about the same emotional difficulties," declared Joanne Davila, the psychology professor who led the research.

The researchers examined the lives of 83 13-year-old girls. No, they didn't do it online. And yes, the girls were accompanied by their parents. They re-examined them after a year.

They concluded that the more the girls discussed their romantic ups and downs with their friends online, the more they became candidates for Prozac. And the more extensive their romantic adventures, the more they wanted to talk about them. With depressing consequences.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10153941-71.html?tag=newsLatestHeadlinesArea.0

[Lex]

1. 13 year old girls have romantic "adventures"?

:shrug:

[MineralMan]

7. Oh, absolutely...

It's mostly fantasy, of course, but that is the precise age for such fantasies to begin.

[Posteritatis]

2. Therefore we should all start bottling up!

Pardon me if I doubt their conclusions.

[valerief]

3. Depressing talk is depressing. Duh. nt

[TheFriendlyAnarchist]

8. My cat's breath smells like cat food

:shrug:

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

4. And here I am...

Thinking this was about the chewing of cud.

I must get out more.

[BlooInBloo]

5. I'm the farthest thing from an expert on teenage girls but....

(there's just GOTTA be an awesome punchline for that!)

but I would have assumed that pretty much EVERYTHING makes teenage girls depressed.

[Desperadoe]

6. A typical 14 yr old girl's response on Facebook

My granddaughter's response to a screenshot of Windows 7 that I posted on my page...

"omqqqq;;
itss soooo coool;;;
now i am qoinq tooh tryy veeeeerrrrrrrryyyyy hard in school so i ckan qet a computer soon;
my grades are better than last markinq period;
:]"

This response was aimed at the fact that I have promised to build her a new computer if she can stay out of her parents doghouse long enough to get their ok.

When I say typical, I mean, boy-crazy, slacker, drives her mom nuts and her dad to drink....you know the type. And I just love her to death because she is really a sweetheart underneath all of the growing pains.

When I was that age, the girls hung out with their girlfriends at the malt shop and drug store and gabbed about boys and each other, in the afternoon and then it was telephone tag in the evenings until their parents would scream at them to get to bed. Same thing as Facebook today, just a different medium.

[ogneopasno]

9. Correlation/causation? Did they check with girls who nattered in person instead of online?

The flip writing makes this sound not-so-scientific.