Health & Science blog

By Rebecca Knight

A study by psychologists at the University of Leeds has found that people who spend a lot of time surfing the internet are more likely to show depressive symptoms.
 
Hmm. I spend a lot of time on the internet. I mean a lot. Some of it is productive: I pay bills, I glance through the news, I shop for groceries, and I locate sources for stories I am writing. But admittedly, a lot of it is frivolous: incessant emailing, Facebook-checking, blog-browsing, Tweet-reading, and vain, idle Google searches for whatever happens to occupy my brain space at any given moment.

What was the number one pop music song on my birthday? Which yoga poses are best for people with bad knees? Whatever happened to TV star Ricky Schroder, my childhood heartthrob? I don’t think I am addicted, though it can feel that way at times.
 
But am I depressed?
 
The Leeds researchers say that there exists a small subset of people who find it hard to control how much time they spend online, to the point where it interferes with their daily activities. These users have developed a compulsive internet habit, whereby they replace real-life social interaction with online chat rooms and social networking sites. The researchers found that these ‘internet addicts’ spent proportionately more time browsing adult websites, online gaming sites and online communities.
 
Okay, that’s not me.
 
The results of the study – The Relationship between Excessive Internet Use and Depression: A Questionnaire-Based Study of 1,319 Young People and Adults - which will be published in the journal Psychopathology next week (Feb 10th), are somewhat imperfect. They are based on an online questionnaire that was used to measure participants’ internet use, the functions for which they used the internet, and their depressive tendencies.

A little over 1,300 people aged 16-51 filled out the survey, and of these, 1.2 per cent were classified as being “internet addicted”.

What’s more, the researchers conceded that while there is a strong link between excessive internet use and depression, it is yet not apparent whether internet addiction triggers depression, or whether depressed people are drawn towards it.
 
“What is clear, is that for a small subset of people, excessive use of the internet could be a warning signal for depressive tendencies,” said Catriona Morrison, the study’s lead author. “This study reinforces the public speculation that over-engaging in websites that serve to replace normal social function might be linked to psychological disorders like depression and addiction.”
 
In spite of the study’s limitations, consider me warned. I will log off, talk a walk outside, and seek out some human-to-human interaction.