Cell phone bans, babies crying, and my latest research

Sapiens, how are you?

I greatly enjoyed all the responses to our recent post about whether some families are more likely to have all boys or all girls.1 Lots of discussion of “sibship size” and your stories of families with 5, 6, or more kids all of the same sex (!).

On my end, I’ve reached the stage of pregnancy where strangers look at my very round belly and reference a beach ball2 multiple times per day.

Which, speaking of round, leads us to this month’s research roundup! [I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist].

Today we’ve got:

• New research from my lab on teens’ social media experiences

• The latest data on adults’ support for school cell phone bans

• And a bonus for paying subscribers: a new study on infant crying and nighttime wakeups, plus some fun footnotes

Let’s get to it!

1. From my lab: on social media, teens are…having fun?

We hear a lot about teens’ “social media use” as if its some amorphous blob lurking behind their screens, never stopping to think about what’s actually happening on there. So, what kinds of experiences are teens having on social media? And how is it affecting their emotions day-to-day?

In this study, my colleagues and I set out to find the answer. For 15 days, we3 texted 94 early teens (ages 12 to 15) with 3-5 short surveys everyday. We asked them about a range of positive and negative social media experiences they might have had in the past couple hours, as well as how they were feeling at the moment.

Here are the highlights:

• Teens reported more frequent positive than negative social media experiences

• When teens reported more positive social media experiences at a given moment, they also reported more positive emotions at that moment. Same thing with negative experiences and negative emotions.

• But social media experiences did not predict any future emotions, suggesting either that these effects are very short-lived, or that social media use isn’t actually causing the changes in emotion

My take: This study is incredibly innovative, well-run, importa—oh, what’s that? I might be a little biased? Fine. But if you’ll indulge me, here’s what I find to be one of the most interesting aspects of the paper: the number of teens reporting negative social media experiences (surprisingly low!) and positive social media experiences (surprisingly high!) during the 15-day study period.

Over the ...