Internet has already become an important part of our life since long time age. It enables us to explore the world outside without actually walk out of the door. For college students, internet surfing means obtain of information that saves lots of time looking in the library which also helps us to relax in many ways. However, have you ever think that using Internet so frequently can cause high blood pressure if you spend much time on it?
Recently an article on society for science illustrates the hypothesis that spend too much time on internet may cause high blood pressure which leads to extra pressure and anxiety. The definition of heavy use of internet, according to this passage, is more than 2 hours a day and 7 days a week while light use of internet is defined as less than 2 hours a day and no more than 4 days a week. In order to find if there is really the relationship between use of internet and bold pressure, the scientists do an experiment on teenagers that examine the BMI index of each one and compare with their blood pressures each.
This experiment is mainly an observational experiment. The conclusion of “use of internet affects blood pressure” is made after analyzing the data they gather from the measurement. Just like what professor Wartella mentions, one of the limitations is lack of convincing which means the measure of just once on blood pressure is not enough to get the conclusion. As the blood pressure changes over time, the time when the scientists measure their blood pressure can be easily affected by many third variables or chance that may completely change the result if the experiment is repeated. This also indicates that although they successfully reject the null hypothesis and the data they collected is correct or false positive, the conclusion may still be wrong and even may be affected by the file drawer problem. Since this article is published on a school magazine, there exists the possibility that school want students to reduce the use of internet so they eventually influence the study to have this conclusion in the end.
The coloration find in this article still needs to be proved and they need to have further studies and experiments in order to find the caution behind how exactly the use of internet affect students’ blood pressures. However, this research still reminds us that the potential danger of using internet frequently does exist.
Articles like these are so sad because they’ve become true in our modern society. I have found, by personal observation, that when my brother spends too much time on his PlayStation or phone or watching TV, he becomes extremely angry, anxious, and irritated. Even the smallest thing will set him off after he’s has a few hours in front of a screen. You talked about “heavy” vs. “light” use of the internet and how that can affect it. But what I’m wondering is, could your blood pressure rise more depending on what you’re doing on the internet rather than how long you’re on it? For example, if you were on the internet for 2 hours a day, 7 days a week doing research for a project or completing homework, would that still increase your blood pressure more than if you were on the internet for less than 2 hours a day, no more than 4 days a week reading pointless news articles simply to waste time? I think it would be interesting to look into. Because I feel that if I am being productive, although it’s annoying to have to sit on the computer, it doesn’t make me agitated because I know that I am at least being productive. If I am on the computer for even an hour, though, searching up pointless stuff and wasting my time, that’s when I become irritated. I definitely think it’s something worth looking into!