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A blog post by social media marketer Jason Thibeault, 'Why I just quit Facebook,' is sparking new debate about the risks of social media addiction. Thibeault's essay went viral soon after he posted it on LinkedIn on Thursday, getting more than 700,000 views the next day.
Thibeault wrote that he quit Facebook because 'my news feeds were becoming an addiction. They were a constant interruption pulling me away from the work that I was otherwise enjoying.'
'Just imagine that Facebook is like a digital water cooler. I was drinking A TON of water every hour,' he wrote. 'Although I'm not a neuroscientist, I'd venture to say that what was happening was related to my Dopamine levels--when I was checking status updates on Facebook, my brain was rewarding itself with Dopamine; when I wasn't, and Dopamine levels dropped as a result, I started 'jonesing for a fix.'
'So I quit,' he wrote. 'Cold turkey.'
Thibeault is certainly not alone in his experience of getting a rush online. Internet addiction was first proposed as a psychiatric disorder in 1996, soon after the Internet entered our everyday lives.
According to a 2012 study posted on the National Institutes of Health website, 'Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) ruins lives by causing neurological complications, psychological disturbances, and social problems.' It is still not officially listed as a psychiatric disorder in the bible of psychiatric disease, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), though the more narrowly defined Internet Gaming Addiction was added in May 2013.
Other subtypes of Internet addiction -- such as social media addiction -- have not been studied enough to receive their own clinical definitions or treatment recommendations. But some of the research on Internet addiction in general may shed light on Thibault's observations about social media.
Psychiatrist and neuroscience researcher Sean Luo of Columbia University told CBS News studies have shown that '3.7 to 13 percent of U.S. and 10 percent of South Korean Internet users express some symptoms of of inappropriate Internet use.' He estimates that at least 1 percent of Internet users worldwide need treatment.
Symptoms for Internet addiction can be similar to addiction to anything else, and fall into two types of behaviors: an ever increasing need to engage with the object of the addiction, and a bad feeling when not getting enough of it. Luo says an Internet user worried that their online use is getting out of control should seek a professional evaluation. 'It is not so much the particular behaviors' that lead to a diagnosis of inappropriate Internet use or addiction, he said, but 'the severity, the functional status of the patient' and whether their behaviors 'interfere with school, work, or social activities.'
According to several recent brain imaging studies, severely effected Internet addicts show structural and functional brain abnormalities similar to those found in people with substance abuse problems. Other research has shown that Internet addiction frequently coexists with anxiety, depression, or an addiction to other things like alcohol or drugs.
Why did Thibault find Facebook, in particular, so addictive? He writes that it's because 'we are essentially narcissistic and want to be the center of attention.... I want them to pay attention to me, to 'like' me, that's why.'
According to Luo, so far 'there are no published studies that demonstrate a correlation between personality disorders [narcissism] and any Internet addiction.' But some aspects of social media activity (for example, getting 'likes') appear to stimulate reward centers in the brain.
While Thibault's solution -- quitting cold turkey -- may work for him, Luo says it's not for everyone. (And it's worth noting that while Thibault quit Facebook, he remains active on LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media sites.)
According to Luo, 'cold turkey might work for some, but others may need more help.' He says there are 'no FDA approved medications, and no randomized trials published for medications to treat Internet addiction.'
Luo says long-established protocols for talking therapies for addiction can be worthwhile components of a treatment plan for Internet addiction. For example, he notes cognitive therapy and motivational interviewing have been proven to be especially useful for changing unhealthy behaviors.
In addition, studies of people who received treatment for conditions like depression or anxiety did report 'improvement of symptoms of Internet addiction' when the other condition was treated.
Luo notes that potential treatments have to work in their own cultural contexts, and what works for one group may not work for another. The Daxing Internet Addiction Treatment Center in Beijing, China, for example, treats addicted teens with military-like exercise and discipline, as well as medication and other therapies, which may not go over so well in other countries.
Social networking addiction is a phrase sometimes used to refer to someone spending too much time using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other forms of social media — so much so that it interferes with other aspects of daily life.
There's no official medical recognition of social networking addiction as a disease or disorder. Still, the cluster of behaviors associated with heavy or excessive use of social media has become the subject of much discussion and research.
Defining Social Networking Addiction
Addiction usually refers to compulsive behavior that leads to negative effects. In most addictions, people feel compelled to do certain activities so often that they become a harmful habit, which then interferes with other important activities such as work or school.
![Brain Brain](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125681106/985614866.jpg)
In that context, a social networking addict could be considered someone with a compulsion to use social media to excess — constantly checking Facebook status updates or 'stalking' people's profiles on Facebook, for example, for hours on end.
But it's hard to tell when fondness for an activity becomes a dependency and crosses the line into a damaging habit or addiction. Does spending three hours a day on Twitter reading random tweets from strangers mean you're addicted to Twitter? How about five hours? You could argue you were just reading headline news or needed to stay current in your field for work, right?
Researchers at Chicago University concluded that social media addiction can be stronger than addiction to cigarettes and booze following an experiment in which they recorded the cravings of several hundred people for several weeks. Media cravings ranked ahead of cravings for cigarettes and alcohol.
At Harvard University, researchers actually hooked people up to functional MRI machines to scan their brains and see what happens when they talk about themselves, which is a key part of what people do in social media. They found that self-disclosure communication stimulates the brain's pleasure centers much like sex and food do.
Plenty of clinicians have observed symptoms of anxiety, depression and some psychological disorders in people who spend too much time online, but little hard evidence has been found proving that social media or Internet use caused the symptoms. There's a similar lack of data about social networking addiction.
Married to Social Media?
Sociologists and psychologists, meantime, have been exploring the impact of social networking on real-world relationships, especially marriage, and some have questioned whether excessive use of social media could play a role in divorce.
The Wall Street Journal debunked reports that 1 in 5 marriages are ruined by Facebook, noting that there appeared to be no scientific evidence supporting such data.
Sherry Turkle, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has written extensively about the impact of social media on relationships, theorizing that they actually weaken human ties. In her book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, she chronicles some of the negative impacts of constantly being connected by technology, which paradoxically can leave people feeling more alone.
![Social media and brain chemicals Social media and brain chemicals](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125681106/302406058.jpg)
Still, other researchers have concluded that social networking can make people feel better about themselves and more connected to society.
Internet Addiction Disorder
Some people consider excessive use of social networks simply the latest form of 'Internet Addiction Disorder,' a phenomenon people first began writing about in the 1990s when Internet use was starting to spread. Even back then, people theorized that heavy use of the Internet might impair people's performance at work, in school, and in family relationships.
Nearly 20 years later, there is still no agreement that excessive use of the Internet or social networking services is pathological or should be considered a medical disorder. Some have asked the American Psychological Association to add Internet addiction to the official medical bible of disorders, but the APA has so far refused (at least as of this writing).
If you’re wondering, though, whether you might be spending too much online, try taking the Internet addiction test.