By Godlove Kamwa, Local Journalism Initiative
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About 20% of Canadians say they have accumulated fewer hours of sleep and been more sedentary due to their use of social media, according to a Statistics Canada survey conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The federal agency relied on data from the 2018 Canadian Internet Use Survey (CIUS) which examines negative experiences with using sites, apps and social media..
19% of respondents aged 15 to 64 said they had lost sleep in the past 12 months due to using social media. The same data indicated that 22% of people reported having had less physical activity while 18% had difficulty concentrating on their activities for the same reasons.
Age is said to be a determining factor in negative experiences.
“About 47% of respondents aged 15 to 19 and about 28% of those aged 20 to 24 reported losing sleep due to their use of social media, compared to 16% to 21% of users aged 25 to 49 years, ”stated in the Statistics Canada study.
She found that in 2018, 78% of Canadians online regularly used at least one social media account like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat or Instagram. They were over 90% among people in their teens, twenties and early thirties.
In addition, social media users with multiple accounts “were three times more likely to report negative experiences, including loss of sleep, difficulty concentrating, feelings of anxiety and depression, and feelings of envy. of the lives of others, that users who had only one account ”.
Statistics Canada has not provided any details on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on this situation and its implications in the more or less near future.
Icimedias
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