What’s social media doing to us? Is it stressing us out
with its never-ending pings announcing new baby pictures, engagements, and
unimportant messages to respond to? Or is it keeping us connected to people,
and therefore happier?
In a survey conducted by Pew called the Perceived Stress
Scale, or PSS, which asks how often, in the last 30 days, someone has been
upset by something that happened unexpectedly, felt out of control, and so on ,
and in asking them very specific questions about how and how often the
respondents used social media.
In women, though, “the use of some technologies is tied
to lower stress” — albeit to a modest extent.
Specifically, a woman “who uses Twitter several times per
day, sends or receives 25 emails per day, and shares two digital pictures
through her mobile phone per day, scores 21% lower on our stress measure than a
woman who does not use these technologies at all.”
In other words, women might be, on average, better than
men at putting social media to psychologically healthy uses:
Sharing through email, sending text messages of pictures
of events shortly after they happen and expressing oneself through the small
snippets of activity allowed by Twitter may provide women with a low-demand and
easily accessible coping mechanism that is not experienced or taken advantage
of by men. It is also possible that the use of these media replaces activities
or allows women to re-organize activities that would otherwise be more
stressful.
Source: new survey from Pew
Photo credit: SHOLA
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