Causation or correlation
The original report declines to discuss. Does anorexia cause facebook-use ? We should be told....
A survey carried out in Israel shows that the more time young girls spend on Facebook the more likely they are to develop an eating disorder. The evil health consequences of overindulging oneself on the globo-dominant social webbening site were unmasked by profs Yael Latzer and Ruth Katz of Haifa uni's Faculty of Social …
We have a similar problem here.
It is possible that the cause of the weight loss is due to the fact she ain't doing no cooking and the rest of the family haven't worked out the microwave controls yet.
(yes, deliberatly mis-read for effect and the possible sexist remark countered by the inept nature of the rest of the household's members, but I ought to put this bit even lower down to encourage more mis-reading by others)
I've been noticing the opposite, the age at which bingo-wings set in seems to be early twenties, at least in my friends list!
Given the levels of obesity which the USA has reached, and the UK seems desperate to equal, anything which can restrain the trend (and waistline) should be welcomed!
I was in a restaurant, and on the next table a couple with there approx 20yr old daughter. The whole time I was in there, she had two phones on the go, contantly relating what was happening to her awestruck parents. Firstly, I'm surprised she had time to eat anything with the constant attention on the phones, then she ordered the Lamb Chiang Mai, but with no lamb.
Madness I tell you, madness,
Whatever the cause this is exactly what we need to get the economy back on track: people who feel bad about themselves are more likely to indulge in persistent retail therapy or perhaps even expensive medical treatment.
This message has been brought to you by the Amalgamated Association of Shop Owners and Doctors.
It ain't just the BBC it's almost all the current affairs meeja.
Any story will get more coverage if you can shoehorn Twitter or Facebook into it. Actually it seems that Twitter is in the meeja ascendant at the moment, Facebook's news value seems to be falling unless somebody dies or goes missing.
A couple of years ago we would see stories like "Facebook Campaign Causes Government U Turn" in the red tops or on ITV. The slightly more upmarket meeja would tend to be a little more honest with "Government U Turn After Facebook Campaign" allowing, only slightly, for the possibility that the Facebook campaign may not have caused the U Turn. These days it's more likely to be Twitter.
Facebook seems to make the news if somebody dies or goes missing. It's not usually in the headlines, but every story on a missing person seems to contain the lines "family and friends have set up a group on Facebook to find them". Then of course every time a death makes the news we hear that somebody has set up the Facebook equivalent of a book of condolence for those too lazy to go and sign the real thing.
...to stuff you face with enough pies causes death. Failing to breath also found to be dangerous.
Being a teenage girl causes all kinds of disorders in parents as well, tell me about it! I'm praying for a boy next time, at least he will only paint his room black and hibernate in there during those years (please, please let him steal my Heavy Metal/Indie/Goth CD collection and not listen to Justin Beeper type crud). BTW, any word on the real big number self inflicted kiddy killer and not "hurted feeellinz": Suicide. (~21 per 100K in the USA) No? I wonder why...
Between this load of nonsense and the "ZOMG! FAST FOOD MAKES KIDS STUPID AND THERE COULDN'T POSSIBLY BE OTHER FACTORS INVOLVED" guff published by Bristol University recently (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12381041 and http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/documents/pr-junk-food-and-iq-jan-11.pdf) it's evidently "Confuse Correlation With Causation Day".
*sigh*
.. this morning where it seems that kids who eat lots of junk food in their formative years "become" less intelligent.
Of course - the research didn't consider that they may eat "junk" food because of their social background and therefore there may be many other factors in their lack of intelligence.
Junk food (physical garbage) = Facebook (virtual garbage) ?
So the study showed that teenage, female facebook users are more likely to suffer from eating disorders that a control group. I don't doubt those findings. What I do doubt is that there is a causal link between facebook use and eating disorders.
There is almost certainly a causal link between peer pressure and eating disorders. So would it make more sense to say that teenage girls who are more susceptible to peer pressure are more likely to use facebook than those who are less susceptible to peer pressure?