The Impact of Shallow Reading in Social Media

Overview

Social media is pervasively used in our life. There is a research hypothesis that the information in social media is "shallow" and the long-term use of it will cause readers' addiction, insomnia, and inability to pay attention, thus reducing the efficiency of learning and working. However, there is no systematic study on the relationship between "shallow reading" in social media and attention, addiction, sleep quality, and other mental health. Therefore, the investigators intend to explore the effect of "shallow reading" in social media on mental health based on about 300 healthy subjects by conducting questionnaire, cognitive scale assessment, multi-mode MRI scanning and EEG monitoring. A cross-sectional study will be combined with a longitudinal study to explore the clinical characteristics its relationship to brain function.

With the development of social media such as "twitter", "Facebook" and "Microblog", "shallow reading" has gradually become the main way for people to obtain external information and relax. "Shallow reading" is characterized by incomplete and intermittent reading patterns, and readers often "dip into it" without thinking. There is a research hypothesis that the information in social media is "shallow" and the long-term use of it will cause readers' addiction, insomnia, and inability to pay attention, thus reducing the efficiency of learning and working. Some researchers even concern that "shallow reading" is destroying human beings' suspicion spirit, thinking ability and rational thinking which are based on writing and print culture. However, there is no systematic study on the relationship between "shallow reading" and attention or other mental health, not to mention its fMRI and EEG characteristics. Therefore, the investigators intend to explore the effect of "shallow reading" in social media on mental health based on about 300 healthy subjects by conducting questionnaire, cognitive scale assessment, multi-mode MRI scanning and EEG monitoring. A cross-sectional study will be combined with a longitudinal study to better understand both the short-term and long-term effect of "shallow reading" habit to the mental health and imaging characteristics. The collected indexes will be analyzed to explore the clinical characteristics of people with the habit of "shallow reading", and its relationship to mental health, brain imaging characteristics will finally be clarified.