Category Archives: Health

health-related posts

Distracted Driving Accidents Increased Last Year

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According to the SR22 Agency, distracted driving accidents increased last year. 424,000 people were injured, up from 421,000 the previous year. Distracted driving includes far more than texting at the wheel, which is still the most widespread and dangerous distraction.  Other common distractions include:

  • Any use of a mobile phone or smart phone, including, but not limited to: texting, calling, browsing the web, etc.;
  • Drinking and eating at the wheel;
  • Talking to the other people in the car;
  • Personal grooming, like putting on makeup or brushing your hair at the wheel;
  • Any use of non-essential technology, like using the GPS system, watching videos, fiddling with the controls on the radio/MP3 player/CD player, etc.

Despite the well publicized dangers of distracted driving, many people still have not gotten the message; a disproportionately high number of distracted drivers are young.  The NHTSA says that 27% of all drivers who cause fatal accidents by driving distracted are under the age of 20.

My Take

The education curve on distracted driving seems to be much like the one on using seat belts a generation ago. Many people resisted them for a variety of reasons, including a young female friend of mine. I remember discussing the issue with her.  She felt that if she died in a car accident there would be nothing to worry about.  I pointed out to her that most accidents involve more than one car and that most accidents don’t include fatalities. I urged her to consider facial disfigurement as a larger risk. The next time I got in a car with her, she used her seat belt.

Perhaps we’re just talking to teens the wrong way. They may value looks more than life. They may see the possibility of a fatal injury as too remote given the seat belts, air bags and crumple zones built into cars these days.  Scars may represent a far larger deterrent.

The SR 22 site contains a number of educational videos that you may want to have your teens watch.

Facebook Depression?

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In an online survey, the Center on Media and Child Health correlated the use of Facebook among college students, their feelings of envy and depression.

The study included 736 college students (68% female) enrolled in introductory journalism courses. Their mean age was 19 years,

The study found that heavy Facebook users were significantly more likely to experience symptoms of depression. Apparently, envy was the mediating factor. Users who did not feel envy when using Facebook were less likely to experience depression.

Ironically, a separate study by the Pew Foundation found that more than 80% of people on social networking sites exaggerate their profiles or outright lie.

My take: Perhaps if the budding journalists were aware of that, many would be less depressed. The congenitally honest seem to put themselves not only at a disadvantage, but at higher risk as well.

The Connected Lifestyle and Stress

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The Gallup organization today released a new survey about stress and the always-on, connected lifestyle. They studied two groups of people: those who answer work emails outside of working hours and those who don’t use email for work.

Not surprisingly, those who use email outside of working hours find that they can never get away from their work. The tug of the electronic leash creates higher stress levels for them compared to those who don’t use email for work.

Surprisingly, however, they also found that the email group was happier. I doubt it was because of getting emails from Dubai at 3am. My guess is that this study reflects from other socioeconomic divisions which just happen to coincide with email. There’s probably a high correlation between email, income and the managerial class.

Nevertheless, there’s a high correlation between stress, weight gain and cardiovascular disease.

Last year, a garbage truck managed to rip the door off my dumpster enclosure at work. The company that did the damage told me that it was my responsibility to get it fixed and that they would pay for it (but not my time). As someone who sells time for a living and works 14 hours a day, I complained bitterly. Their response: “Welcome to the American dream.”

Over Easter weekend, I got a flurry of emails in the middle of the night, from a client in the Netherlands.  Stressful? You bet. Am I ready to throw my smartphone in the dumpster? Not really.

Texting and Walking

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Years ago, a cruel joke often applied to the less coordinated was that “He couldn’t walk and chew bubble gum at the same time.” The idea of not being able to do two such mindless tasks simultaneously was seen as the pinnacle of incompetence. Fast forward 50 years. Today, it seems that texting and walking is a serious problem for most people. In the time it takes to look down and respond to a text message, you can walk across a busy intersection.

Now here’s the scary part. Many people behind the wheel are not paying attention either. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports 23 percent of all car crashes in 2010 were caused by distracted drivers. A Fox News article citing research from the Journal of Injury Prevention pointed out that pedestrians who text or talk on their phones are less cautious and walk more slowly than undistracted walkers.

Researchers monitored 1,102 walkers at 20 different intersections in Seattle, Wash. They found that one out of every three people used their phones to talk, listen to music or text while they crossed the street. On average, music listeners walked slightly faster than undistracted pedestrians, but texters took 18 percent longer to cross the street. Moreover, the texters were nearly four times more likely to disobey traffic signals, cross mid-intersection, or walk without looking both ways. Women were twice as likely as men to exhibit at least one unsafe crossing behavior.

A research team at Stony Brook University conducted a study around texting while walking and found that participants consistently veered away from walking a straight path by a 60 percent deviation. This could explain why people walk into light poles, step off curbs, fall into fountains, and even walk off piers while texting.

An study published in PLOS One (the Public Library of Science) by Siobhan M. Schabrun, Wolbert van den Hoorn, Alison Moorcroft, Cameron Greenland, Paul W. Hodges explains how this may happen. They conducted their research at the University of Queensland, School of Health and Rehabilitation Science and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Centre of Clinical Research Excellence in Spinal Pain, Injury and Health, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

According to the authors, cognitive distraction, altered mechanical demands, and the reduced visual field associated with texting are likely causes.They asked 26 healthy individuals to walk at a comfortable pace in a straight line over a distance of approximately 30 feet while 1) walking without the use of a phone, 2) reading text on a mobile phone, or 3) typing text on a mobile phone.

Compared to normal waking, “when participants read or wrote text messages they walked with: greater absolute lateral foot position from one stride to the next; slower speed; greater rotation range of motion (ROM) of the head with respect to global space; the head held in a flexed position; more in-phase motion of the thorax and head in all planes, less motion between thorax and head (neck ROM); and more tightly organized coordination in lateral flexion and rotation directions. While writing text, participants walked slower, deviated more from a straight line and used less neck ROM than reading text. Although the arms and head moved with the thorax to reduce relative motion of the phone and facilitate reading and texting, movement of the head in global space increased and this could negatively impact the balance system. Texting, and to a lesser extent reading, modify gait performance.

They concluded: Texting or reading on a mobile phone may pose an additional risk to safety for pedestrians navigating obstacles or crossing the road.

77% of the world’s population now owns a mobile phone according to the authors. Although the dangers of typing text while driving have received considerable interest, attention is now shifting to texting while walking.

People who type while crossing the street in experience more hits by motor vehicles. They look away from the street more frequently than those who are not distracted. Likewise, emailing on a mobile phone reduces gait velocity, stride length and stance phase during walking. These findings, coupled with a sharp increase in the number of pedestrians injured while talking or texting have led to bans on texting while walking in some towns in the United States.

Media Multitasking and Depression

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shutterstock_104973152In my two previous posts, I explored the relationship between depression and Internet addiction, then depression and television viewing. Academic researchers have found positive correlations in both cases. This caused me to wonder whether a relationship existed between depression and multitasking.

Increase in Multitasking

Overall media use among America’s youth increased by 20% over the past decade. However, the amount of time spent multitasking with media (simultaneously interacting with more than one form of media) increased by 119% during the same time period [1].

Study Links Multitasking to Depression

Mark W. Becker, Reem Alzahabi, and Christopher J. Hopwood of Michigan State University published a study called Media Multitasking Is Associated with Symptoms of Depression and Social Anxiety in the February, 2013, issue of the journal Cyberspychology, Behavior and Social Networking. They studied 319 people and found that media multitasking was associated with higher rates of depression.

The authors couldn’t tell whether multitasking led to higher stress and depression or whether depressed people distracted themselves with multitasking to avoid coping with negative emotions. Given the relationships previously discussed between television viewing, Internet addiction and and depression, I have formulated an opinion on the relationship.

My Take

I personally subscribe to the theory, which Becker and his colleagues cite at the beginning of their study, that multitasking may be replacing face-to-face interactions [2], resulting in lower quality social interactions [3,4] and impaired psychosocial functioning [5,6].

Talking face-to-face and working side-by-side with friends and family is an infinitely richer and more rewarding experience than self-entertainment through media multitasking. It’s like the difference between healthy food and junk food.

Instead of working out their problems with others or honing their social skills, teens escape into a world of media multitasking. This world doesn’t argue with them, mock them, bully them or ostracize them. It’s a pleasant form of escapism that numbs the senses by overloading them. It’s fun. It’s entertaining. It’s much easier than dealing with the real world. And it doesn’t have the stigma or costs associated with drugs or alcohol.

Kids can even pretend to be doing their homework while working on their laptops. The noise coming from TV, music, and video games combines with the distraction of social networks, emails and texts to help them forget whatever is causing their depression. Being able to multitask is even considered a positive trait among many in business.

Multitasking isn’t all bad unless it turns into an addiction, such as a shopping addiction. Shopping addicts shop because their purchases give them a pleasant buzz. Then, when the bill comes due (which they can’t pay), it deepens their depression, leads to more shopping and a downward spiral. A similar mechanism may be at work with multitasking for the segment of the population prone to depression.

We’ve all fallen into the trap from time to time of mistaking activity for achievement. We succumb to the tyranny of the urgent and the easy over the important. Answering emails, texts, and checking social networks somehow seems more important than that big long-term project due at the end of the week.

The scary thing about 10.5 hours of multimedia exposure per day with kids and teenagers is that it happens at a time when their cognitive and thought processes are being formed. To the extent that it becomes a habit or an addiction, the pattern becomes hard to break.

Statistics On Depression

Depression takes a huge toll on America’s health and productivity.  According to Mental Health America, It affects more than 21 million American children and adults annually and is the leading cause of disability in the United States for individuals ages 15 to 44. Lost productive time among U.S. workers due to depression is estimated to be in excess of $31 billion per year. It is also the principal cause of more than 38,000 suicides in the U.S. each year.

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  1. Rideout V, Foehr U, Roberts D., Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds. Menlo Park, CA: Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. 2010.
  2. Nie NH. Sociability, interpersonal relations, and the Internet: Reconciling conflicting findings. American Behavioral Scientist Special Issue: The Internet in everyday life. 2001;45(3):420-35.
  3.  Lee PSN, Leung L, Lo V, Xiong C, Wu T. Internet communication versus face-to-
    face interaction in quality of life. Social Indicators Research. 2011;100(3):375-89.
  4.  Moody EJ. Internet use and its relationship to loneliness. CyberPsychology & Behavior. 2001;4(3):393-401.
  5.  Kraut R, Patterson M, Lundmark V, Kiesler S, Mukophadhyay T, Scherlis W. Internet paradox: A social technology that reduces social involvement and psychological well-being? American Psychologist. 1998;53(9):1017-31.
  6. Shapira NA, Lessig MC, Goldsmith TD, et al. Problematic internet use: Proposed classification and diagnostic criteria. Depression and Anxiety. 2003;17(4):207-16.

Heavy television viewing among teens increases risk of depression later in life

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Teenagers who watch a large amount of television are significantly more likely to become depressed later in life according to a longitudinal study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

The 2009 study titled Association Between Media Use in Adolescence and Depression in Young Adulthood was conducted by Brian A. Primack, MD, EdM, MS, Brandi Swanier, BA, Anna M. Georgiopoulos, MD, Stephanie R. Land, PhD, and Michael J. Fine, MD, MSc

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Objective and Methodology

These researchers sought to assess the association between media exposure in adolescence and depression in young adulthood. They used a nationally representative sample – the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health) – to investigate the relationship between electronic media exposure in 4142 adolescents who were not depressed at baseline and development of depression seven years later. Initially, the teens were asked how many hours they had spent watching television each week. They reported an average of 2.3 hours. Seven years later (at an average age of 21.8), participants were screened again. More than 300, 7.4 percent had developed symptoms consistent with depression.

Findings: More TV Increases Risk of Depression

“Those reporting more television use had significantly greater odds of developing depression for each additional hour of daily television use. In addition, those reporting more total media exposure had significantly greater odds of developing depression for each additional hour of daily use.”

While the researchers did not find a consistent relationship between development of depressive symptoms and exposure to pre-recorded video, computer games, or radio, they did find a statistically significant correlation at the 95% confidence level with television.

Interestingly, they also found that men were more likely than women to develop depression given the same total media exposure.

How Television May Cause Depression

Results suggest that media exposure may influence development of depression through a variety of factors. Some are related to the medium itself, others to content.

Relating to the medium itself, the researchers theorize that:

  • Time spent passively watching television could displace more positive interaction with family and friends
  • The audio and video could energize the senses in ways that contribute to poor sleep.
  • Excessive viewing could interfere with development of good thinking skills, and potentially contribute to cognitive distortions.

Regarding potential links related to content, the researchers point to facts such as:

  • Large amounts of advertising which may present adolescents with unattainable images
  • Role models that exhibit high degrees of risk taking behaviors
  • Stereotypical characters that may affect self-image
  • Anxiety-provoking shows.

Why is this so crucial? The authors point to other studies that show:

  • Depression is the leading cause of nonfatal disability worldwide.1
  • Because onset of depression is common in adolescence and young adulthood,2, 3 it coincides with a pivotal period of physical and psychological development.
  • Depression can lead to poorer psychosocial functioning, lower life and career satisfaction, more interpersonal difficulty, greater need for social support, other related psychiatric conditions such as anxiety, and increased risk of suicide.4, 5

My Take

It should be noted that since this study was conducted four years ago, television viewing among teens has increased. Many now use it as a background medium while multitasking. Through multitasking, teens are now exposed to an average of 10.5 hours of media content per day – up TWO HOURS per day from an average of 8.5 hours when these researchers conducted their study.

To be sure, not all of those 10.5 hours are spent on television, but the trend is alarming – especially when you conider that internet addiction (IA) is also becoming a problem among teens and that IA has also been linked to depression. (See previous post.) This could help explain, in part, a 400% increase in the use of antidepressants reported by the CDC.

In my next post, I’ll explore the relationship between multitasking and depression.

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  1. Lopez AD, Mathers CD, Ezzati M, Jamison DT, Murray CJ. Global and regional burden of disease and risk factors, 2001: systematic analysis of population health data. Lancet. 2006;367(9524):1747–1757. [PubMed]
  2. Blazer DG, Kessler RC, McGonagle KA, Swartz MS. The prevalence and distribution of major depression in a national community sample: the National Comorbidity Survey. Am J Psychiatry. 1994;151(7):979–986. [PubMed]
  3. Commission on Adolescent Depression and Bipolar Disorder . Depression and bipolar disorder. In: Evans DL, Foa EB, Gur RE, et al., editors. Treating and Preventing Adolescent Mental Health Disorders: What We Know and What We Don’t Know: A Research Agenda for Improving the Mental Health of Our Youth. Oxford University Press; New York, NY: 2005.
  4. Paradis AD, Reinherz HZ, Giaconia RM, Fitzmaurice G. Major depression in the transition to adulthood: the impact of active and past depression on young adult functioning. J Nerv Ment Dis. 2006;194(5):318–323. [PubMed]
  5. Reinherz HZ, Giaconia RM, Hauf AM, Wasserman MS, Silverman AB. Major depression in the transition to adulthood: risks and impairments. J Abnorm Psychol. 1999;108(3):500–510. [PubMed]

Internet addiction and depression

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Is there a link between internet addiction and depression? I have often observed that Internet addicts seem less sociable than others – more focused on electronic interaction than physical interaction. I wonder if electronic interaction is somehow less satisfying emotionally and if that could contribute to depression.

The need for personal connection is one of our deepest needs. But connecting online lacks many of the elements that make physical interaction so satisfying. You can’t see people smile, shake their hands, or hug them. And you can’t smell the cookies they baked for you. Electronic interaction lacks many of the positive aspects of physical interaction. It is better than nothing, but a poor surrogate for the real thing. The electronic interaction, while good in itself, underscores physical disconnectedness.

Recently, I came across articles on two trend studies that brought this issue into focus.

  • The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics reported a 400% increase in the use of anti-depressant drugs in the period between 1988-94 and 2005-08.
  • The Pew Foundation reported exponential growth in Internet social networking during the latter period. See chart below.

Social networking site use by age group

So I looked for research to see if these two things were, in fact, related.

In 2010, the journal Psychopathology published a study called, “The Relationship between Excessive Internet Use and Depression: A Questionnaire-Based Study of 1,319 Young People and Adults” by C. M. Morrison and H. Gore from the University of Leeds in the UK.

The authors studied the link between Internet addiction (AI) and depression among 1,319 respondents. They found a close relationship between AI tendencies and depression, such that IA respondents were more depressed. Among their conclusions:

Those who regard themselves as dependent on the Internet report high levels of depressive symptoms. Those who show symptoms of IA are likely to engage proportionately more than the normal population in sites that serve as a replacement for real-life socialising.

“The internet now plays a huge part in modern life, but its benefits are accompanied by a darker side,” said lead author of the report Dr. Catriona Morrison. “There is a small subset of the population who find it hard to control how much time they spend online, to the point where it interferes with their daily activities.”

“Our research indicates that excessive internet use is associated with depression, but what we don’t know is which comes first – are depressed people drawn to the internet or does the internet cause depression? What is clear, is that for a small subset of people, excessive use of the internet could be a warning signal for depressive tendencies.”

In 2007, Psychopathology published another study called “Depression and Internet Addiction in Adolescents” by J.H. Ha, S.Y. Kim, S.C. Bae, H. Kim, M. Sim, and I.K. Lyoo, and S.C. Cho.

This group studied 452 Korean adolescents. First, they evaluated subjects for their severity of Internet addiction. Second, they investigated correlations between Internet addiction and depression, alcohol dependence and obsessive-compulsive symptoms. They also found that Internet addiction was significantly associated with depressive symptoms and obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Their data suggests the need to evaluate underlying depression in the treatment of Internet-addicted adolescents.

This year, Psyopathology also published another study on the subject. It was a survey of previously published academic research called, “The Association between Pathological Internet Use and Comorbid Psychopathology: A Systematic Review.” The authors of this study were: V. Carli, T. Durkee, D. Wasserman, G. Hadlaczky, R. Despalins, E. Kramarz, C. Wasserman, M. Sarchiapone, C.W. Hoven, R Brunner and M. Kaess.

They evaluated all of the studies about pathological Internet use (PIU) on MEDLINE, PsycARTICLES, PsychINFO, Global Health, and Web of Science. They found relationships to depression, anxiety, symptoms of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), obsessive-compulsive symptoms, and hostility/aggression.

The majority of research was conducted in Asia. Of the twenty articles they reviewed, 75% reported significant correlations of PIU with depression, 57% with anxiety, 100% with symptoms of ADHD, 60% with obsessive-compulsive symptoms, and 66% with hostility/aggression. The strongest correlations were observed between PIU and depression; the weakest was hostility/aggression.

 My Take

Could it be that lonely, depressed people self-medicate by socializing on the Internet to make themselves feel less lonely? In the end, do they only makes themselves more depressed by isolating themselves from family, friends and support networks?

The advertising industry trade journal Ad Age reports that:

Time spent with computers has tripled over the past decade among kids age 8 to 18. The bulk of this group’s time is spent on social media, followed by games, video sites and instant messaging. The average kid packs a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes worth of media content into a daily seven and a half hours of media exposure.

Facebook may be a great way to stay in touch with friends, but it’s not quite the same thing as a hug. An email to your brother or sister isn’t quite the same thing as having dinner with him or her. An online role playing game with someone in another state isn’t quite the same thing as a pickup game of basketball down at the local playground. Or playing catch with your dad. Or baking with your mom and watching the smiles as an apple pie comes out of the oven.

An electronic social life is at best a surrogate experience for personal connection. Just like the personal handwritten letters that people used to write, electronic interaction often results in bittersweet feelings: sweet because you’re connecting, bitter because you’re still apart.

This can lead to emotional burn out for Internet addicts. They find themselves going online more and more to get the same sense of connection they once felt. But the emotional mailbox is empty. The increased time they spend online simply underscores their separation from family and friends. Kind of depressing, huh? The answer may not be in pills. It may be in logging onto life.

The iPad and Physical Fitness

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Any time a new communication technology is introduced, people rapidly discover new uses for it that may go far beyond the inventor’s intentions. I’m reading a Bill Bryson book called At Home. It contains an anecdote about the early days of the telephone. The telephone, according to Bryson, was originally intended to be a means of rapidly distributing weather, emergency and other time-sensitive information. The thought that people would use it to converse with family and friends seemed wild and implausible since you could talk to them in person.

Likewise, I remember back in the early days of personal computing in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, clients having heated debates about why someone would want a personal computer. Some people actually thought housewives would want them to store and organize recipes. Other people thought kids might find them useful for playing educational games. Their potential as a serious business tool was seriously underestimated.

Thirty years later, along comes this thing called the Apple iPad. It’s diminutive form factor made it look like a more portable laptop or an smartphone on steroids. I bought one and quickly became addicted to reading e-books. At first, I rationalized it based saving trees.

Three years after purchasing my first iPad, I now look at it in an entirely new way – as a physical fitness tool.  Last year, I had bypass surgery. If you’ve never had your chest cracked, all I can say is, “Avoid it at all costs.” But I digress. During my recuperation from the surgery, I bought an exercise bike because I had too many accidents on street and mountain bikes. I also reasoned that an exercise bike would remove weather as an excuse to avoid a workout. (Houston has two seasons: summer and August. The heat and humidity here can be daunting at times.)

I quickly found that boredom was my biggest exercise challenge. Riding for an hour a day gets old quickly, but that’s what it takes to get in shape and stay in shape.

iPad to the rescue. Now, when I get on the bike, I flip my iPad case over the console. During my hour-long ride, I can answer emails, catch up with friends on Linked-in, read e-books, or watch a video on Amazon Prime or Netflix. For the last few weeks, I’ve been watching a series of fascinating TED Talks on Netflix.

At the end of an hour, I’ve pedaled between 20 and 25 miles. Dull, repetitive drudgery has turned into fascinating intellectual exploration with some of the brightest minds in the world.

Some people may say, “You could always watch TV on your exercise bike.” That’s true, but it’s not quite the same thing. With the iPad, I can start the video at the start of the ride. I also get a lot more variety. If I don’t feel like TED, I watch a documentary, or catch up on my reading.

Now here’s the best part. I’ve had the bike almost exactly a year. During that time, I’ve pedaled almost 6000 miles! That’s across the country and back again! And I, Robert Rehak, have lost 80 pounds and eight inches from my waistline! I now weigh what I did when I graduated from college and was playing competitive sports. I tell people that I feel forty again. I met a college classmate not long ago and he told me I looked exactly the same as when we went to Northwestern together (except for the gray hair).

The transformation has been remarkable. I didn’t lose the 80 pounds because of exercise or nutrition apps on the iPad. I lost them because the iPad kept me interested in working out.

Curiously, I find another factor at work, too. I find that when I get lost in a good book or video while riding that it diverts my attention. I forget how tired I am and start pedaling faster. Yesterday, I averaged almost 25 MPH while watching a series of TED Talks on the application of mathematics to everyday life.

Hey, 80 pounds is all the math I need. Thank you, Steve Jobs, wherever you are. I doubt this is what he had in mind when he and the good people at Apple conceived the iPad. It’s simply a side effect. An unintended consequence. And I love it.

Online Predators

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ABC13 News ran a story this week about a child predator putting up an ad on Craigslist to lure teenage girls. A Harris County Precinct 4 constable posing as a 14-year old girl nabbed the man when he requested the constable to send him “naughty pics” and solicited sex. The constable tracked the man to his phone via an IP address distributed from his company’s WIFI network. Authorities say this is a disturbing trend that’s growing exponentially – targeting young girls online. So I did a little research.

InternetSafety101.org says that “Often, we have an image of sexual predators lurking around school playgrounds or hiding behind bushes scoping out their potential victims, but the reality is that today’s sexual predators search for victims while hiding behind a computer screen, taking advantage of the anonymity the Internet offers.”

NetSmartz.org says, “Although the Internet did not create child predators, it has significantly increased the opportunities predators have to meet victims while minimizing detection.”

InternetSafety101.org published these 2010 statistics from the Journal of Adolescent Health:

  • Only 18% of youth use chat rooms, however, the majority of Internet-initiated sex crimes against children are initiated in chat rooms.
  • In 82% of online sex crimes against minors, the offender used the victim’s social networking site to gain information about the victim’s likes and dislikes.
  • 65% of online sex offenders used the victim’s social networking site to gain home and school information about the victim.
  • 26% of online sex offenders used the victim’s social networking site to gain information about the victim’s whereabouts at a specific time.

Microsoft advises that parents can help protect their kids by knowing the risks related to online communication and being involved in their kids’ Internet activities. The company points out that online predators:

  • Find kids through social networking, blogs, chat rooms, instant messaging, email, discussion boards, and other websites.
  • Seduce their targets through attention, affection, kindness, and even gifts.
  • Know the latest music and hobbies likely to interest kids.
  • Listen to and sympathize with kids’ problems.
  • Try to ease young people’s inhibitions by gradually introducing sexual content into their conversations or by showing them sexually explicit material.
  • Might also evaluate the kids they meet online for future face-to-face contact.

So how can your kids reduce the risk of being victimized? Precautions that kids can take, include:

  • Never downloading images from an unknown source.
  • Using email filters.
  • Telling an adult immediately if anything that happens online makes them feel uncomfortable or frightened.
  • Choosing a gender-neutral screen name that doesn’t contain sexually suggestive words or reveal personal information.
  • Never revealing personal information about themselves (including age and gender) or information about their family to anyone online and not filling out online personal profiles.
  • Stopping any email communication, instant messaging conversations, or chats if anyone starts to ask questions that are too personal or sexually suggestive.
  • Posting the family online agreement near the computer to remind them to protect their privacy on the Internet.

If your child is being targeted, the FBI advises:

  • Contact your local police. Save any documentation including email addresses, website addresses, and chat logs to share with the police.
  • Check your computer for pornographic files or any type of sexual communication—these are often warning signs.
  • Monitor your child’s access to all live electronic communications, such as chat rooms, instant messaging, and email.

For more information, see the FBI’s publication: A Parent’s Guide to Internet Safety.

Facebook and Self-Esteem

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Viewing your own profile on Facebook can boost self-esteem, but also decrease your desire to perform according to a new study published in the June, 2013, issue of the journal Media Psychology by a University of Wisconsin professor Catalina Toma.

The study is entitled “Feeling Better But Doing Worse: Effects of Facebook Self-Presentation on Implicit Self-Esteem and Cognitive Task Performance.”

Toma found that the self-edited profiles people post on Facebook present idealized versions of themselves that provide a significant boost to self-esteem after looking at them for just five minutes.

Toma measured how quickly participants associated positive or negative adjectives with words such as me, my, I and myself. “If you have high self-esteem, then you can very quickly associate words related to yourself with positive evaluations but have a difficult time associating words related to yourself with negative evaluations,” Toma said. “But if you have low self-esteem, the opposite is true.”

Additionally, Toma investigated whether exposure to one’s own Facebook profile affects behavior. “We wanted to know if there are any additional psychological effects that stem from viewing your own self-enhancing profile,” she said. “Does engaging with your own Facebook profile affect behavior?”

Self-Satisfaction Decreases Motivation to Perform Well

The behavior examined in the study was performance in a serial subtraction task, assessing how quickly and accurately participants could count down from a large number by intervals of seven. Toma found that the self-esteem boost that came from looking at their profiles ultimately diminished participants’ performance in the follow-up task by decreasing their motivation to perform well.

After people spent time on their own profile they attempted fewer answers during the allotted time than people in a control group, but their error rate was not any worse.

“Performing well in a task can boost feelings of self-worth,” Toma says. “However, if you already feel good about yourself because you looked at your Facebook profile, there is no psychological need to increase your self-worth by doing well in a laboratory task.”

Viewing Others’ Profiles May Deflate Self-Esteem

Toma cautions, however, that “This does not show that Facebook use negatively affects college students’ grades.”  Previous research has actually shown that looking at the Facebook profiles of others could have some ego-deflating effects. In a study presented last year at the meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, people with lots of Facebook friends experienced a drop in self-esteem after viewing their friends’ status updates.

My Take

This research is a valuable contribution to self-affirmation theory. This theory states that people are motivated to maintain a feeling of self-worth, especially when their self-image is threatened.

Many highly motivated people are often driven by performance anxiety, the feeling that someone might be gaining on them. A few calm moments of reassurance from time to time can be healthy. Gazing at one’s accomplishments can be a good reminder of how hard work paid off.

However, excessive basking in the fading glory of yellowing press clippings can also keep one from moving forward. The more we live in the past, the less time we have to focus on the future.