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Depressed? Lonely? Exhausted? Maybe Blame the Internet

by Amar Toor on February 4, 2010 at 10:20 AM

And here we thought it was just another case of the wintertime blues that had us laying in bed and staring blankly at the ceiling for hours. Turns out, though, it may just be a simple case of Internet addiction that's been getting us down. According to researchers at the University of Leeds, spending too much time online can unleash a "dark side of the soul," and can even lead to legitimate depression. Out of a sample of over 1300 people, researchers picked out 18 individuals they classified as "hard-core" users, and found that these addicts scored about five times higher "depression scores" than normal surfers. As Daily Mail reports, the serious addicts were also relatively young, with an average age of 21, and tended to spend most of their online hours on porn, gaming, or online community sites.

As head researcher Dr. Catriona Morrison admits, though, the lines of causality aren't exactly clear. Morrison acknowledges that "we don't know is which comes first - are depressed people drawn to the Internet or does the Internet cause depression?" And that's a pretty significant caveat: Given the amount of time that pretty much anyone spends online today, you've probably got to do a lot to fall under the "hard-core" umbrella. We're guessing that Internet addiction, like any other, springs from some pre-existing addictive personality that some people possess. Sure, the accessibility of the Net may make it easier to get addicted to than, say, mountain climbing, but until a study shows us irrefutable evidence that the Internet turns us into a bunch of Eeyores, we'll hold off on stocking up on Prozac. [From: Daily Mail]

Tags: addiction, depression, eeyore, health, internet, internet addiction, InternetAddiction, mental health, MentalHealth, psychology, top

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