Social media tools can build deep dependence Several months ago, a heavy storm hit Connecticut and left me with no Internet access. Immediately, the panic set in. I couldn’t send an article to my editor or e-mail back a friend traveling in Africa.
The panic I experienced in the absence of communication — e-mail, cell phones and Facebook — may be more than just a slightly unhealthy dependence. According to a new study called “24 Hours: Unplugged,” our craving for social media is closer to an addiction.
What started out as a simple journalism class assignment may shed new light on how dependent our society is on technology.
“The intention of the course was for students to be more self-reflective about their media consumption, like how many hours they spend on Facebook and what Web sites or TV outlets they rely on for news,” says lead investigator Susan Moeller, a journalism professor at the University of Maryland.
In the study, 200 undergraduates at the University of Maryland agreed to give up all media during a 24-hour period. After a day of abstinence, the students blogged on class Web sites about their experiences. After the 24 hours without social media, many students described feeling withdrawal, craving, anxiety, depression and loneliness — the same language addicts use when abstaining from drugs and alcohol, Moeller said.
The students’ self-reports included statements such as: “I clearly am addicted and the dependency is sickening,” and “Between having a BlackBerry, a laptop, a television, and an iPod, people have become unable to shed their media skin.”
Moeller concluded that most college students were unable to function normally without their electronics, even for a day. The undergrads said they missed sending text messages, phone calls, e-mails or instant messages because the electronics gave them the feeling of being connected with friends. One student wrote: “Texting and IM-ing my friends gives me a constant feeling of comfort.”
Even behavior changed.
“Without personal communication at their fingertips, people ate lunch by themselves or went out less on a Friday night,” Moeller said. Students also became more cautious about where they went alone because they could not call friends to say they were lost or out of gas, Moeller added.
More than just social connections, being cut off from information in general — whether it was access to TV news, online test scores or the latest episode of “Family Guy” — seemed to lie at the heart of the addiction to social media, according to Raymond McCaffrey, a doctoral student in clinical psychology and a researcher on the study.
“They care about what is going on among their friends and families and even in the world at large,” McCaffrey said in an interview with Reuters. Loyalty “does not seem tied to any single device or application or news outlet.”
Although the addiction to social media appears to be similar to an addiction to drugs, Moeller’s research did not establish a biological link.
“Next, it would be interesting to study the brain science behind media addiction,” Moeller said.
