Social Networking and Eating Disorders
It can be hard to tell how much media affects us, given that our worlds are so completely saturated by it. So it can be telling when scientists poke around a society just getting acclimated to all of our media bells and whistles. Scientists recently zeroed in on a population of school girls in Fiji—an ideal place to gauge the effect of media and social networking because of the disparity of influences there: More than 85 percent of girls who live in urban areas own a television, while only 8 percent of those who live in more rural populations own a set. The scientists say that girls who were exposed to television were 60 percent more likely to suffer from an eating disorder than those who weren’t. Researchers also found that eating disorders could be transmitted—almost like a virus—through social networks to girls who didn’t have a TV. “Our study not only showed a secondhand effect but demonstrated that this secondhand effect is the exposure of interest,” said Dr. Anne Becker, a professor at Harvard University. “Even among those without direct exposure, the harm from the exposure couldn’t be avoided because there may be friends and a social network who can transmit the exposure.” (Time)

Self-Esteem Feels Better than Sex, College Students Say
College students value self-esteem over pretty much everything, according to a new study from Ohio State University. It was particularly important for male students, who valued self-esteem over everything from money to sex to their favorite food. For women, it still ranked high—but finished neck-and-neck with friendship and finances. “College students love sex; they love to eat—any place there is free food, they are there,” says Brad Bushman, lead researcher for the study. “Yet they love self-esteem more.” (LiveScience)

Amber Alerts Now on Facebook
Facebook and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children have instituted an Amber Alert system for the ubiquitous social network. Facebook users now can follow Amber Alert pages for their states, and news of missing children will land right on their news feed. “We try to be as innovative in safety as we are in any other aspect of our business,” says Andrew Noyes, public policy communications manager for Facebook. A few law agencies already have used Facebook as a tool to locate missing children and teens. When Jessica Lawrence, a 16-year-old girl from Athens, Ohio, vanished without explanation, Sheriff Patrick Kelly quickly hopped on his own Facebook account and posted details of her disappearance. More than 200 folks posted responses—some with messages of support, some with bits of information they hoped would help the case. Turns out, Lawrence wasn’t abducted at all—she just took off from school early—but Kelly learned firsthand that Facebook can be a powerful tool for finding missing people. “Facebook is an excellent tool to get the word out,” Kelly said. “I’m finding that most people don’t subscribe to a newspaper here. This is a way that I can get it to them.” (ABC News)

Quote:
“People would rather text than talk, because they can control how much time it takes. They can control where it fits in their schedule. When you have the amount of velocity and volume [of communication] that we have in our lives, we have to control our communications very dramatically. So controlling relationships becomes a major theme in digital communication. That’s what sometimes makes us feel alone together—because controlled relationships are not necessarily relationships in which you feel kinship. One of the things I chart…is that people begin to have relationships where they use each other for validation. I talk about the groups of teenagers who went from ‘I have a feeling—I want to make a call’ to ‘I want to have a feeling—I need to send a text.’ People start to use each other for validation, not really for relationships. When we use each other for validation, we’re really just picking and choosing little bits of each other to use and to respond to. It’s not a full exploration of another person, it’s turning a person into part object.” -Sherry Turkle, head of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self and author of the book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Turkle says technology is having a profound effect on youth. “One of the most important things that we’re really losing is the ability to be alone in a restorative way,” she said. “If you don’t know how to be alone, all you ever can be is lonely. If we don’t teach our children how to be alone, all they ever can be is lonely.” (Time)