The article, “Media Use, Face-to- Face Communication, Media Multitasking, and Social Well-Being Among 8- 12 Year-Old Girls is a survey that was conducted within North America to examine the relationships between social media use between younger girls and how it affects their social well-being. The survey looks at various relationships between social media use, face-to face communication, using multiple social medias, and social well- being or in other words, how they feel about themselves and if they feel included among their peers (Pea, et al. 2012).
The survey asks a variety of questions concerning social media use, ow they feel about their friends, how they feel about themselves, how their parents see their friends, and if they get enough sleep at night. The article aims to answer five questions: 1) How do media use and multitasking relate to feelings of social success, an important indicator of social well- being and of how one is dealing with the developmental task of intimacy? 2) How do media use and multitasking relate to the developmental task of maintaining feelings of normalcy and not feeling rejected, compared with peers? ) How do media use and multitasking relate to how many friends one’s parent think re a bad influence.
4) How do media use and multitasking relate to hours of sleep? And 5) How do media use and multitasking relate to the predominant source of girl’s experience of both positive and negative feelings? (Pea, et al. 2012) The population the article is trying to gather information about is girls between in the ages of 8- 12. The sampling frame is girls’ ages 8-12 in North America who read Discovery Girls, a magazine that specifically targets girls between 8-12 and reaches out to 1 million girls within North America.
Finally, the sample is 3,461 North American 8-12 aged girls who read the Discovery Girls magazine (Pea, et al. 2012). The magazine regularly advertises surveys similar to these, and entices girls to take part in the survey in order to be possibly win an iPad. By having this advertisement, it’s lead to believe that all responses were voluntary. This itself can create a bias within the data due to convenience sampling, which means only people who are particularly interested will participate.
Additionlly, the sample was not reasonably chosen because it creates a bias in favor for girls who read Discovery Girls and does not include all girls. There may be a certain demographic of girls that read these agazines, depending on what type of articles the magazine publishes; as well the price and where it is available which overall can skew the data. Also, the survey was taken online which eliminates the population of girls who do not have a computer or access to one.
To fix this problem, researches could have advertised the study in multiple magazines that also target girls from the ages of 8-12, in order to get a more diverse group of girls. They could have also had a non online option, to reach girls who do not have access to a computer. The article uses an online survey to collect data about girls ages 8-12, and asks a ariety of questions relating to social media and social success, which can be defined as the way one feels about themselves when it comes to interacting with peers, and if one believes they are social accepted among their peers.
There are a great deal of variables within this study which are the amount of social media one uses (media multitasking, which was found through an equation they created by asking questions about specific social medias), how long one uses social media, their overall social success/well being, their parent’s feeling of their friends being a bad influence, online friends vs. n-person friends and their feelings towards them, their sleep schedule, and amount of usage for each certain social medias (i. e. , computer, cell phone, video use, etc.).
The survey consisted of five sections, which first asked about general questions about the girl’s friends and life. Secondly, the average daily use of social media and how they interacted with friends whether it is face to face or through social media. Thirdly, asked about their general social outlook. Then they were asked to compare their online friends with their in-person friends through a various amount of scenarios. Lastly, hey were asked about their sleep schedule and cell phone usage (Pea, et al. 2012).
Throughout the majority of the sections, the girls were asked to rate the questions on a scale of 0 to 5, with O being the least amount/degree of something they agreed with and 5 being the most amount/ degree they agreed with. Some sections have the girls rate questions on a scale of 1 to 6, with one being strongly disagree and 6 being strongly agree (Pea, et al. 2012). Given that this is a survey, the girls were only able to answer to the best of their abilities with the pre-set scales. This was the best way to receive answers from the girls ecause this way would be easy to put within a category and thus become less work to decipher.
This is the most reasonable way to measure the results because of the categories. Not only is this way easier, the researchers have to take into account the age of the girls taking the survey and if they had any questions that required more complex answers, the girls could easily become confused an answer incorrectly. The researchers seemed to cover a good amount of variables when considering social well being, however they seemed to ignore how the family affects how much social media the girls are exposed to, as well s how they impact their social well-being.
For example, some girls may not be exposed to as much social media as others because their parents limit it extensively. These are important variables due to the age of the girls in the survey. Girls between the ages of 8 to 12 still heavily depend on their parents for basic needs as well as advice. They are just learning how to make their own decisions and are becoming more aware of others react to their behaviors and such. At this age, their parents are a huge impact and variable in their life.
The variable, number of friends one’s parents think are a bad influence, brings addresses he parents influence in the child’s life, but still leaves out important factors that can change the girls responses. The study has about nine tables that show correlation between the variables. The titles for each table describe what variables they are comparing, and then show how strong/weak each correlation is. For example, in Table 3, the title is Summary for Regression Analysis for Variables Predicting Media Use While Face to Face.
In the table, they have the overall correlation of the social media, and then they have the correlation for each specific social media, such as music use, video use, talking use, nline communication, face to face communication, cell phone ownership, television in room, computer in the room, and then media multitasking (Pea, et al. 2012). Media multitasking consists of all of the previously stated categories, and was found through an equation to help them create an index for social media.
The equation used is as follows: (Pea, et al. 012) Researchers main focus is to look at the correlation between the variables and media multitasking. The tables are pretty clear to read, but they have some columns that are unclear as to what they are. They do not explain these columns within the write up f the study, but they make clear what the correlation is for each table. It is very clear as to why each table is within the study, because they show the various correlations between variables.
There is a section within the study where they discuss the descriptive summary of key variables. Girls this age typically are on an average of 6. hours a day on social media. They also talk about the 25th and 75th percentiles 4. 3 hours and 5. 9 hours, and standard deviations, 1 SD, within the data (Pea, et al. 2012). The average MMI was 1. 4 social media during face-to-face interaction. This is the only descriptive data summary for the tudy, and should remain included within the paper because it helps the reader understand how much girls are on social media. It seems that there are so descriptive statistics that are omitted; they focus on the main summary that is beneficial for the study.
The main plan to analyze the results is to use regression. The predictor variables are each of the categories of media use and face-to-face communication, as well as age. However, once looking at the data and using these predictor variables, they determined that none of these terms were significant enough to include (Pea, et al. 2012). I think by not including these predictor variables, it helps the researchers focus on what is important within the data, which is the correlation between the various variables.
The authors of the study only use correlation between the variables when talking about the significance of their data. When it came to the six categories that make up media multitasking, there was no significant correlation between them. In regards to Media Multitasking and the other variables, they found strong positive correlations with face-to-face communications and social success. However, when it comes to ifferent types of social media uses, it was negatively associated with social success.
Along with this, media multitasking was also negatively correlated with social success. The level of face to face communication was negatively correlated with media multitasking (Pea, et al. 2012). All of these results mean that the use of multiple social medias has a negative outcome, which may suggest that the growth of social media may be a concern for young girls. Concerning the correlations found these results are not surprising. It is understandable why young girls may have less social success if they use social media more.
By using social media, they are preoccupied with one task at a time and it may become difficult to concentrate on more than one thing such as social media and friends like the data suggests. Even though many of these correlations are strong, they cannot come to any conclusions. Correlation does not mean causation; therefore the data cannot be used to make conclusions about social media. However, they can use this data to bring awareness about how social media may impact girls of ages 8-12. It can be suggested that the more face to face interaction a girl has, the less they feel the need to use social media; and vice versa.
Relating to the previous questions that were asked in the beginning of the study, it can be said that media use and multitasking are negatively correlated with social success, meaning the more media that one may use, the worse one will feel about their social success and how they feel among their peers. Media use and multitasking are also negatively associated with maintaining feelings of normalcy and not feeling rejected among peers; the more social media used, the more left out one will feel among their friends.
Social media is also positively correlated with the idea of parents believing their child have friends who are bad influences. Additionally, the more social media one uses, the less sleep they will get. Lastly, social media can negatively impact a girls experience of feelings. Media multitasking was strongly associated with more intense feelings, both positive and negative. With these questions being answered through the survey, the researchers conclude that “the clear positive correlates of face-to face communication and the negative correlated of media multitasking are highly suggestive.
These results can suggest that even though social media is supposed to help girls interactions with one another, they can still create unhealthy and negative social experiences for the girls involved. The study helped support the idea that social media negatively impacts younger children in regards to their development and social well-being. It was well done, interesting, and relevant for future generations as well my studies in the future given that I am interested in working with children.
