Researchers at the University of Maryland asked 200 students to put down their cell phones, iPods, Facebook, Twitter and all other media devices for 24 hours to study the effects of an addiction to these applications/products.

Susan Moeller, a journalism professor at the university, is behind the project and found that students started showing withdrawal and anxiety after the 24 hour time period.

One student was quote as saying:

“I clearly am addicted and the dependency is sickening. Between having a Blackberry, a laptop, a television, and an iPod, people have become unable to shed their media skin.”

This goes to show you that you don’t realize its a problem, until you realize its a problem. Confusing?
A recent episode of everyones favorite cartoon, South Park, did an entire episode on the popular and addicting social media networking site, Facebook. It showed the battle people go through to try and accumulate more ‘friends’ than their other ‘friends’. I recommend watching it and try and look at your use of Facebook in the same way again. The episode is title “You have 0 friends“.

How many relationships have been damaged due to the result of these online networking sites? How much conversation is lost between friends, parents, teachers and everyone else because someone is listening to their iPod all day. Whatever happened to board games? Oh, right, we play them online now against other people in the world.

Do you think you might have a Facebook addiction? Click here to find out and get more info on it.

Source: Reuters