HALO researchers Marisa Murray (PhD candidate) and Dr. Gary Goldfield (Clinical Scientist) are planning to conduct a study this summer that looks at the impact Facebook has on the mental health and everyday lives of people. This weekend, their proposed research was featured in the Ottawa Citizen.

From the Ottawa Citizen article:

A couple of months ago, Marisa Murray stepped out to grab a bite to eat with a friend. The restaurant they chose was busy, and the table they sat at was shoehorned between two large families. They didn’t mind, but as Murray settled in, she found herself paying more attention to the people at the tables beside her than the person at her own.

What caught the clinical psychology student’s eye was that the families were socializing, but not with each other: Everyone, from the children to the grandparents, was nose deep in an electronic device.

Murray left the restaurant shocked by what she had seen and took her observations to her supervisor, Gary Goldfield, a clinical scientist in the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute.

Murray and Goldfield have teamed up and have scraped together funding to conduct a study this summer examining the impact Facebook has on people’s mental health and their everyday lives and interactions.

To read the full article, click here.