A couple of months ago, Marisa Murray stepped out to grab a bite to eat with a friend.

The restaurant 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 kids to grandparents, was nose deep in an electronic device.

"It was so strange. There was no conversation. Within the family, everyone had a cellphone.

They ordered their appetizers, then they all got back to their device. There was minimal conversation among the family," said Murray, who studies at the University of Ottawa.

The limited conversation "was along the lines of who was updating Facebook, what they were tweeting or a game they were playing. I couldn't believe it. To witness firsthand what I have been reading in peer-review journal articles, it boggled my mind."

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.

She was interested in how the proliferation of Internet devices and social media affects the family dynamic and, more specifically, what impact it has on healthy eating habits created during familial meal times.

Goldfield was intrigued by Murray's questions and observations - they seemed to support anecdotal observations of his own - but he wanted to delve deeper.

In an age when online devices are always on, meeting face-toface is becoming increasingly rare as people choose to meet screen-to-screen. Goldfield wants to know what this new dynamic is doing to social interaction? How do these devices and social media services, such as Facebook, affect the way we socialize and communicate with each other?

Also, what impact do these social networks have on their user's mental health?

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

They aren't alone.

John Lyons, director of the Children's Hospital's mentalhealth research group, has applied to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for a grant to conduct his own study into the topic. However, Lyons's study will be laser focused. With so much anecdotal evidence about the effects of cyberbullying and online taunts, he wants to know what role social media plays in a person's decision to end his/her life, and if there is a way to leverage social technologies to reach out to people considering suicide. "It's becoming the medium by which young people communicate with each other. It's a significant social change," said Lyons.

"There are some very valuable things about social media and networking, and there are also some dangers. Historically, the [societal] changes have been in musical taste and style of dress.