Mitigating the Negative Effects of Internet Browsing on Young People’s Resilience and Outlook on Life Through Classic Grimms' Fairy Tales: Exploratory Randomized Controlled Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Internet browsing is a daily activity for many young people. However, how internet browsing affects young people's resilience and positive (vs negative) outlook on life remains largely unaddressed. Critically, how reading classical fairy tales may help mitigate the influence of internet browsing on resilience and foster a more positive rather than negative outlook on life has yet to be explored. OBJECTIVE: This study examines the influence of internet browsing on young people's resilience and positive (vs negative) outlook on life. Furthermore, this study aims to examine the potential mitigating effect of reading classical Grimms' fairy tales, such as Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood, on the relationship between internet browsing and postgraduate students' resilience and outlook on life. METHODS: A randomized controlled study was conducted using a 2 (internet browsing vs no internet browsing) × 2 (reading a classical fairy tale vs no classical fairy tale) between-subjects design. All study participants (N=412) were postgraduate students and randomly assigned to one of the study's 4 conditions and answered a brief questionnaire, examining their resilience and positive versus negative outlook on life. To examine the potential mitigating effect of classical fairy tales on the relationship between internet browsing and resilience as well as positive versus negative outlook on life, we conducted an exploratory bootstrapping-based moderated mediation analysis with 5000 resamples. RESULTS: The results showed a significant moderating role of reading classical Grimms' fairy tales on the negative effect of internet browsing on postgraduate students' resilience and outlook on life. Specifically, when study participants browsed the internet, they reported a more positive outlook on life when they read a Grimms' fairy tale (read fairy tale: mean 5.46, SD 0.151 vs not read fairy tale: mean 3.01, SD 0.150, SE 0.213, 95% CI -2.860 to -2.024; P<.001). Furthermore, the results showed that when participants browsed the internet, they indicated significantly greater resilience when they read a Grimms' tale (mean 4.62, SE 0.179, 95% CI 4.271-4.976) than when they did not (mean 2.59, SE 0.179, 95% CI 2.243-2.945). In addition, an exploratory analysis demonstrated that the effect of internet browsing on outlook on life is mediated by resilience (effect 0.85, SE 0.17, 95% CI 0.52-1.20). CONCLUSIONS: The findings of this study show that reading a classical Grimms' fairy tale, such as Hansel and Gretel or Little Red Riding Hood, helped mitigate the negative effects of internet browsing on postgraduate students' resilience and outlook on life. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN 16972408; https://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN16972408.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.010 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.012 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".