Comments on: Is Web Working Harming Your Health?

By: Keep Going: How to Create and Maintain New Habits

Keep Going: How to Create and Maintain New Habits — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 16:55:26 +0000

[...] Keep Going: How to Create and Maintain New Habits By Celine Roque Apr. 24, 2010, 9:53am PDT No Comments 0 Web workers are creatures of habit. Those of us who are lucky enough to control all aspects of our work — schedule, location, process, and output — depend on such habits. We may schedule work hours for peak productivity, batch process our email, and even find a way to do household chores in between. But most of us also have destructive habits. These may include digital fiddling, spending too much time on social media, and working such long hours that our health pays the price. [...]

By: sem

sem — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:57:32 +0000

I find this to be a bit far-fetched. Possibly the increase of social media networks hurts your health, but its harmful because you spend more time on this and less time exercising or going to meet others. Until there is some solid information backing up these claims, I am selling this argument.

By: Remote access software

Remote access software — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:11:39 +0000

It seems far more logical to assume that increased web usage is more likely for folks who are not out being active and social. Perhaps it is a symptom and result of those factors rather than the cause of the health problems.

By: Simon Mackie

Simon Mackie — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 17:06:41 +0000

Exactly, Dan.

This kind of paper is the type of thing that newspapers salivate over as it’s easy to put a sensationalist spin on, but it didn’t sound too conclusive to me, lots of “could”s in there.

By: Dan Thornton

Dan Thornton — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:26:38 +0000

I posted a slightly lengthy response to the media reports on my blog agreeing, as you did, that there are definitely health risks associated with spending excessive time doing anything, including social networking.

But without being able to access the original paper, it appears that social networking is lumped in with all electronic media – and while there are definitely some health risks with new technology, there is also a lot of potential, and some anecdotal evidence, that it can lead to more socialising offline as well as online.

I can’t remember many times I’ve gone out in the last 12 months which haven’t been accompanied by a Facebook invite – even for drinking down the pub after work.

And I’ve also met a number of people having originally connected via Twitter – including events like Twestival etc.

Any new technology has always had a certain level of risk – flying, driving, even building two story houses – but these are always balanced by the benefits they bring, and reduced over time.

What I’d like to see is Stigman showing how we can continue to have the benefits of the collaborative, connected world, whilst reducing the risks – until then it’s a pointless argument because so many of us are in front of PCs for 8 hours+ a day as a necessity for working.