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Social Media's Role In Peer Pressure

Posted by Soulskill on from the if-everyone-else-tweeted-off-a-bridge,-would-you-do-it-too? dept.

Daniel_Stuckey writes "The Fear of Missing Out phenomenon is part of why people tend to get addicted to social networking and then depressed. And if you're a young, impressionable teenager, it could pressure you into making sure you, too, are happily intoxicated the next time someone snaps a group shot. That's the gist of the latest study to find that social media photos of people drinking and smoking can influence teens into partaking in the same degenerate behavior. The University of Southern California study was published online today in the Journal of Adolescent Health."

6 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. Afraid I missed this by Cyfun · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've had these fears for as long as I can remember. Always wondered if this problem had been documented, and was afraid that it already had been announced and I'd missed out on it.

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    1. Re:Afraid I missed this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Whether or not you're missing out really depends on what your friends are posting. My friends constantly nag me about getting a Facebook account, and now and again there are conversations I'm slightly left out of where they'll say "See, if you had Facebook you'd know this".

      Thing is, those conversations tend to be about incredibly inane things like cat videos and pictures of people at a party. Very rarely are they about something which is actually interesting or which actually matters, and in those situations you usually hear about it by word of mouth anyway. Facebook doesn't have a monopoly on information transmission, if you can live with not knowing until you see people the next morning it's not a big loss.

    2. Re:Afraid I missed this by chromas · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's why kids don't want to go to sleep—something will happen and they'll miss out.

  2. Amazing! by sidevans · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I thought it was movies, TV shows, rock music, rap music, computer games, friends and family that were at fault for the evil's of society, I'm glad we can blame social media now, people were starting to point the finger at religion for causing these issues and we can't have that happening now...

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  3. Nothing Groundbreaking Here by EzInKy · · Score: 2

    The bottom line is this: "the frequency of adolescent SNS use and the number of their closest friends on the same SNSs were not significantly associated with risk behaviors." It has been known since at least Aesop the birds of feather flock together.

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    Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
  4. Re:Euphemisms by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

    Sounds like the usual state of affairs. Facebook is fueled by boners and sex drives generated by the Large Hard-on Collider

    No, that's grindr.

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    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"