Social media tempts teenagers to skive and the family cat benefits!

High rates of school absence because of Internet addiction in teenagers leads to social media tempting teenagers to skive, stay at home, and as a consequence be company for the family cat. 💕😊 - if there is one.

If a person is prone to stay at home no matter whether they are a teenager at school or a worker at work, they will be with their cat more often and it would be an antidote to what I see is a major problem with domestic cats: separation anxiety as their owner is at work all day and the kids at school.

The story is about Internet addiction in teenagers concerns skiving and not going to school but for me this is as much a story about that as it is about keeping the cat at home company. 💕🙄

A study decided that teenagers skive as mentioned. It found that teenage girls seem to be more vulnerable to this than boys and more vulnerable to excessive use of the Internet. The more often a teenager uses the Internet the more likely it is that they are addicted to it.

The research took place in Finland. They took data from a national biennial survey. They asked children how much they neglected friends and family and failed to eat or sleep because of their time online. They asked how anxious they were when they weren't online.

Just over 2% of the more than 86,000 children in the school years eight and nine (aged 14 to 16) in Finland who participated were found to use the Internet excessively. Girls were 96% more likely than boys to fall into this category.

3 to 4% of the children reported high rates of absence from school. Those who spent excessive amounts of time on social media had a 38% higher risk of truancy. They also had a 24% higher risk of medical school absences.

The researchers decided that digital media may be tempting teens to stay at home and avoid school which affected their learning. The research is published in the British Medical Journal's Archives of Diseases in Childhood.

As you can see the study was based on self reporting from teenagers. They may have overestimated or underestimated the amount of time they spent on social media online.

Excessive Internet use is not the same as addiction. There is no agreed clinical definition of Internet addiction. It was suggested by another scientist that the research does not help understand the effects of Internet use in children.

But as mentioned above, I would suggest that there is one benefit if there is a family cat. They have some company and social media Internet addiction can remove the problem of separation anxiety for domestic cats.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.