Why Facebook is good for you

Health

Do social networking sites, or the internet generally, cause loneliness and poor health? If anything it's the reverse, says Michael Marshall

By Michael Marshall

4 March 2009

Do social networking sites, or the internet generally, cause loneliness and poor health? If anything it's the reverse — Do social networking sites, or the internet generally, cause loneliness and poor health? If anything it鈥檚 the reverse
(Image: Etienne Ansotte / Rex)

IT STARTED with an article in the journal by the psychologist . He argued that the increasing use of electronic media was causing a decrease in face-to-face social contact. Given that loneliness and isolation are linked to an increased risk of illness and death, might the internet and social networking sites be a health risk?

Inevitably, this was misreported as 鈥�How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer鈥�, which Sigman rightly condemned. But while his article gives much evidence for the well-established link between loneliness and illness, it offers none at all to support the idea that internet use causes loneliness.

That could be because using the internet and social networking sites actually appears to reduce loneliness and improve well-being, as was reported as long ago as 2002 in the Journal of Social Issues (). People who have difficulties with conventional socialising, such as those with Asperger鈥檚 syndrome, experience great benefits (快猫短视频, 30 June 2007, p 26). As for social networking sites being a poor alternative to real-world socialising, surveys reported at a conference in 2006 () indicate that Facebook users mostly use it to with people they meet offline.

The most recent warning about the ills of social networking came from the neuroscientist Susan Greenfield, speaking in the UK鈥檚 House of Lords. Greenfield argued that science needs to answer two questions: why are social networking sites growing, and what features of the young mind, if any, are being threatened by them?

These are perfectly reasonable questions, which are being addressed. Unfortunately, Greenfield then recited several scary anecdotes, none of them backed up by research, and suggested that the internet might be behind the rise of ADHD over the last 30 years. True, ADHD is linked to 鈥渋nternet addiction鈥� (), but it is unclear which causes which. What鈥檚 more, internet addiction is not the same thing as internet use.

The lesson is clear: pronouncements about how society is changing should be based on hard evidence, not speculation.

Topics: Mental health

快猫短视频

Health