• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, August 8, 2011

While social media is still too new to gauge its long-term effects on human psychology, a handful of studies suggest seem to confirm conventional wisdom to the effect that social media -- including online gaming -- can has addictive qualities that are harmful to vulnerable people who over-use the new technologies.

In the most recent study, Larry Rosen, a social media researcher at California State University, Dominguez Hills, surveyed more than 1,000 urban adolescents and found a number of negative effects from overuse of social media, varying by the type of activity. For example, teens who play online games all the time are more likely to experience physical and psychological symptoms including insomnia, agitation, depression, and stomach aches. Meanwhile teens who log into Facebook more than average are also more likely to be "self-absorbed," "narcissistic," belligerent, paranoid, and -- ironically enough -- antisocial. "Obsessive" social media use can also result in truancy, lower test scores, and bad grades.

One of the most interesting findings from Rosen's survey showed that teens and young adults who log into Facebook very frequently are more likely to abuse alcohol than others. I have no idea why this might be, since it seems equally plausible that alcohol abuse could just as easily be correlated with social behavior (binge drinking at parties) as antisocial behavior (binge drinking alone).  Maybe it's a little of both.

As a matter of fact this isn't the first study to suggest that apparently unrelated negative behaviors, like substance abuse, are correlated with excessive social media use. In November I wrote about a study from Case Western Reserve's School of Medicine, warning that excessive use of social media -- specifically, "hypertexting" (sending more than 120 messages per school day) and "hypernetworking" (spending more than three hours per day on sites like Facebook) -- is linked to dangerous health problems and antisocial behavior in teens.

Among the Case Western findings, teens who hypertext are twice as likely to have tried alcohol; 3.5 times more likely to have had sex; 40% more likely to have tried cigarettes; 41% more likely to have used illicit drugs; 43% more likely to be binge drinkers; 55% more likely to have been in a physical fight; and 90% more likely to report four or more sexual partners. Hypernetworkers were 60% more likely to have four or more sexual partners; 62% more likely to have tried cigarettes; 69% more likely to be binge drinkers; 69% more likely to have had sex; 79% more likely to have tried alcohol; 84% more likely to have used illicit drugs; and 94% more likely to have been in a physical fight.

All this may seem pretty damning at first glance. However, I would argue (as I have in the past) that excessive social media use and texting are just symptoms of longstanding social ills. It's well known that adolescents, struggling with unstable identities and mood swings, are more likely to engage in self-destructive behavior. I believe excessive social media use is closely related to the sense of incompleteness and insecurity which bedevils many teens (not to mention a good number of adults): like alcohol, tobacco, drugs and sex, it serves to occupy a restless, wandering, attention-seeking personality, which believes itself totally unable to find peace and tranquility on its own terms.