Just under two-thirds of readers say that they have noticed a change in the tone of conversations on social media platforms like Facebook, an online poll showed this week.
Some 88 per cent said that social media platforms had affected young people's mental health for the worse, and about two-thirds said that local news was very important to their social media experience.
(Full disclosure: Village Media is preparing to launch its own social media platform, Spaces)
Interestingly, responses weren't much affected by readers' age groups:
However, older readers were more interested in local content:
As for the effects of social media on the young, it makes no visible difference whether readers had children under 18 in the home or not:
As for seeing a worsening of the tone of conversations on social media, readers' political affiliations seem to matter quite a lot, with those with politics to the right seeing less of a problem, and those with politics to the left seeing more of one.
University graduates were more likely to see a worsening:
People who said that social media was bad for young people's mental health also said that it had deteriorated, and vice versa:
The lower the income bracket, the more likely readers were to say that local news is important: