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 So-called Facebook intrusion is similar to an addiction, but the
emphasis is on the way a person’s relationships with others are
affected. Being young, male and spending a lot of time online also
predicted a greater likelihood of unhealthy dependence on Facebook.
“We know a little bit already about Facebook usage and personality,”
said Dr. Robert Cloninger, a psychiatrist with the Washington
University School of Medicine in St. Louis who wasn’t involved in
the study.
Cloninger told Reuters Health that he is concerned the study didn’t
properly take personality traits into consideration.
“If you are introverted and socially shy, then your social skills
may not be very good,” he said. “So using your intelligence to
navigate the Internet allows you to create an image that may not be
very accurate, but that gets you social contacts - it’s like you can
kind of live a lie or a fantasy on the Internet.”
For the study published in European Psychiatry, Agata Blachnio, a
researcher at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin and her
colleagues recruited Polish Facebook users to answer questionnaires,
including mental health tests. The main goal, Blachnio’s team
writes, was to examine “potential associations” between Internet use
in general, Facebook in particular and depression.
“A large body of research . . . shows that Internet addiction often
co-occurs with other disorders, such as depression, loneliness,
sexual dysfunction, or other addictions,” the study team writes.
“The main aim of our study was to answer the question of whether
depression and daily Internet use time was related to Facebook
intrusion.”
They define Facebook intrusion as “excessive involvement in Facebook,
disrupting day-today activities and interpersonal relationships.”
Blachnio and her colleagues enrolled 672 native Polish-speaking
participants between the ages of 15 and 75. The average age of the
participants was about 28, and almost two thirds were women.
Each participant answered two questionnaires. One was designed to
measure levels of Facebook intrusion, and the other to detect
depression.
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The study team found that the amount of time spent on the Internet
daily was positively associated with levels of Facebook intrusion,
and that Facebook intrusion was linked with higher depression
scores. But time spent on the Internet every day was not linked to
depression.
Cloninger said that people likely to become addicted to Facebook are
those who are low in self directedness and high at novelty seeking.
These people use social media sites like Facebook as a substitute
for meeting people face to face and keep other people at a distance,
he added.
“That just doesn’t give you real intimacy; it doesn’t build your
capacity for trust and confidential relationships that are really
deep and honest,” he said.
Cloninger thinks a lot of people using Facebook in this manner are
also vulnerable to being shamed and rejected.
“The people who try to use it are the ones who are going to be the
most vulnerable to being shamed and attacked and rejected and not
being able to handle crisis well,” he said. “You’ve got this paradox
of the people most likely to use it are the ones who are then going
to be most vulnerable to its dangers,” he said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1FORlF3
European Psychiatry, online May 8, 2015.
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reserved.] Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
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