Facebook behaviors associated with diurnal cortisol in adolescents: Is befriending stressful?

Facebook(©) is changing the way people interact and socialize. Despite great interest in psychology and sociology, little is known about Facebook behaviors in relation to physiological markers of stress. Given that the brain undergoes important development during adolescence and that glucocorticoids--a major class of stress hormones-are known to modulate its development, it is important to study psychosocial factors that may influence secretion of stress hormones during adolescence. The goal of the present study was to explore the associations between Facebook behaviors (use frequency, network size, self-presentation and peer-interaction) and basal levels of cortisol among adolescent boys and girls. Eighty-eight adolescents (41 boys, 47 girls) aged between 12 and 17 (14.5 ± 1.8) were recruited. Participants provided four cortisol samples per day for two non-consecutive weekdays. Facebook behaviors were assessed in accordance with the existing literature. Well-validated measures of perceived stress, perceived social support, self-esteem, and depressive symptoms were also included. A hierarchical regression showed that after controlling for sex, age, time of awakening, perceived stress, and perceived social support, cortisol systemic output (area under the curve with respect to ground) was positively associated with the number of Facebook friends and negatively associated with Facebook peer-interaction. No associations were found among depressive symptoms, self-esteem, and cortisol. These results provide preliminary evidence that Facebook behaviors are associated with diurnal cortisol concentrations in adolescents.

A time to be stressed? Time perspectives and cortisol dynamics among healthy adults.

Perceptions of past, present, and future events may be related to stress pathophysiology. We assessed whether Time Perspective (TP) is associated with cortisol dynamics among healthy adults (N=61, Ages=18-35, M=22.9, SD=4.1) exposed to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST). TP was measured according to two profiles: maladaptive Deviation from Balanced TP (DBTP) and adaptive Deviation from Negative TP (DNTP). Eight salivary cortisol samples were analyzed using area under the curve with respect to ground (AUCg) and to increase (AUCi). Statistic analyses involved partial correlations controlling for depressive symptoms. Results for both sexes showed that higher DBTP scores were associated with lower cortisol AUCg scores, while higher DNTP scores were associated with higher cortisol AUCg scores. These novel findings suggest that maladaptive TP profiles influence hypocortisolism, whereas adaptive TP profiles influence hypercortisolism. Thus, TP profiles may impact conditions characterized by altered cortisol concentrations.

There is no news like bad news: women are more remembering and stress reactive after reading real negative news than men.

With the advent of specialized television channels offering 24-hour coverage, Internet and smart phones, the possibility to be constantly in contact with the media has increased dramatically in the last decades. Despite this higher access to knowledge, the impact media exposure has on healthy individuals remains poorly studied. Given that most information conveyed in the media is negative and that upon perception of threat, the brain activates the stress system, which leads to cortisol secretion, we decided to determine how healthy individuals react to media information. Accordingly, we investigated whether reading real negative news (1) is physiologically stressful, (2) modulates one's propensity to be stress reactive to a subsequent stressor and (3) modulates remembrance for these news. Sixty participants (30 women, 30 men) were randomly assigned to either twenty-four real neutral news excerpts or to twenty-four real negative excerpts for 10 minutes. They were then all exposed to a well-validated psychosocial stressor, the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), which consists of an anticipation phase of 10 minutes and a test phase of 10 minutes. A total of eight salivary cortisol samples were collected, at 10-minutes intervals, throughout the experimental procedure. One day later, a free recall of the news was performed. Results showed that although reading negative news did not lead to change in cortisol levels (p>0.05), it led to a significant increase in cortisol to a subsequent stressor in women only (p<0.001). Also, women in the negative news condition experienced better memory for these news excerpts compared to men (p<0.01). These results suggest a potential mechanism by which media exposure could increase stress reactivity and memory for negative news in women.