What is Social Networking Addiction? / By Doha Shaabien

Social networking addiction is a situation when person spend a lot of time surfing Facebook, Twitter or any other kind of social media in the way that influence his life. Although there is no medical admission that classified this addiction within disorders or diseases, this issue is becoming focused on researches and discussions. This mandatory behavior could achieve undesirable results like any kind of addiction that harm the basics of a person's life such as school and work. In the same track, the addicted person might overuse social media by checking people updates and follow their profiles for hours. But we can’t decide exactly if those activities lead to addiction or harmful habits.  

 

Researchers from Chicago University found that social media addiction could be more intense than smoking or drinking alcohol addiction. After researches on sample for weeks, people desire on social media more than smoking and drinking alcohol. Other researchers from Harvard University scanned sample of people’s brains with MRI and let them talked about themselves like what the people say on social media. They conclude that detect some of self-aspects activates the pleasure centers on brains. It’s effect is just like sex and food effects on brains. A lot of clinicians found anxiety, depression and psychological disorders symptoms on people who use internet too mush but they couldn’t relate it to social media. The information on this track are little. Some sociologists and psychologists asking if social media influences people lives and relationships and if it leads to divorce. The Wall Street Journal published that 1 in 5 couples ended their relationships because of Facebook. There was no evidence endorse this data. Moreover, Sherry Turkle, the Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology focuses on the bad effects of technology in people relationships. She has a theory that technology makes us isolate at the time we think we are more connected. On the contrast, some researchers have opposite opinion about the issue. They see that social media helps people to communicate with each other and feel good towards themselves.

 

 Finally, Using social networks too much is considered as "Internet Addiction Disorder," nowadays. In the 90’s, people started to notice internet overusing could impact people in works, schools and relationships between family members. Till nearly years, people can’t decide if spending long time surfing is disease or just medical disorder.

http://personalweb.about.com/od/socialmediaaddiction/a/Social-Networking-Addiction.htm