The Mental Health of Yonger Users

Internet Use and Psychological Well-Being among 10-Year-Old and 11-Year-Old Children

Paula Devine & Katrina Lloyd, Child Care in Practice, 2012

This paper uses data from the 2009 Kids' Life and Times Survey, involving 3657 children aged 10 or 11 years old in Northern Ireland. The survey indicated high levels of use of Internet applications, including social-networking sites and online games. Using the KIDSCREEN-27 instrument, the data indicate that the use of social-networking sites and online games is related to poorer psychological well-being among girls, but not boys. Boys and girls who experience "cyberbullying" have poorer psychological well-being. This association between psychological well-being and some Internet applications merits more attention in future research and policy development.

Review 

The purpose of this article is to analyse data from the 2009 Kids’ Life and Times Survey (“involving 3657 children aged 10 or 11 years old in Northern Ireland representing a response rate of 30% of schools and 15% of pupils”) and in their analysis of this data, the research team argue that, the use of online media can have a negative effect on the mental health of 10 and 11 year old girls, but the evidence suggests that young boys are not effected in the same way (Devine & Lloyd – 2012) Devine & Lloyd are specifically interested in data that related to the physiological well-being of respondent’s, and the use of online with a focus on the two applications, social networking and multi-player online games (MPOG).

 The findings of the 2009 Kids’ Life and Times Survey revealed that almost all respondent’s (94%) lived in homes with access to the internet and that there are high levels of use among 10 and 11 year old children for both MPOGs and for social networking. In addition the data also indicates that the use of social-networking website sites and the use of online games is related to poorer psychological well-being among girls, but interestingly, not in boys.

The ‘high levels’ of usage, regarding on-line media in the 10 to 11 year old age group, is also providing an increased opportunity for cyber bullying. Cyber bullying which can be loosely defined as ‘‘sending or posting harmful or cruel text or engaging in other forms of social aggression using the Internet or other digital technologies’’ (Willard, 2007), and often associated with social networking platforms such as Facebook, Bebo or MySpace. Girls who said that they used Socal networking websites ‘‘a lot’’ were the group of individuals, that most likely to have “the lowest mean scores on the PWB scale, and the mean score among these children differed significantly from those who used SNS ‘‘a little’’, ‘‘hardly ever’’ or ‘‘never’’” The results of the Kids’ Life and Times Survey indicated that One in 10 of all respondents to the 2008 KLT had experienced cyberbullying either on the Internet or by mobile phone, this is an issue because both boys and girls who had experienced ‘‘cyberbullying’’ had a poorer state of psychological well-being.

Findings from the 2009 Kids’ Life and Times Survey suggested that the use of multi-player online games (MPOGs) had a statistically significant, negative effect on the psychological wellbeing of young girls, but not on young boys. The results show that “Girls who said they used MPOG ‘‘a lot’’ had the lowest mean scores and these mean scores differed significantly from those of girls who never played online games”

The article suggested that the increasing use of technology in schools should be accompanied by strategies to help, teachers and administrators become more knowledgeable about cyberbullying” in order to develop “appropriate preventive and intervention strategies to ensure the safety of all students.”

References
ARK -  Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, 2010 - Research Councils UK - 2010

Paula Devine & Katrina Lloyd - Internet Use and Psychological Well- being among 10-year-old and 11-year-old Children - Child Care in Practice - 2012