Do you check your wall too many times a day to count? Do you add everyone you so much as heard of to your friends list? Have you painted your bedroom walls Facebook blue? Maybe you have become dependent on Facebook.
Being depressed may be a predictor of whether or not you become unhealthily dependent on Facebook, according to a small study done in Poland. Other predictors are being young, male, and spending a lot of time online.
Dependency on Facebook is also called Facebook intrusion. The authors of the study describe Facebook intrusion as being excessively involved with the social website to the point where other activities and interpersonal relationships suffer.
The study recruited 672 Facebook users in Poland to answer questionnaires that included tests intended to detect depression. Although the age range of the participants was 15 to 75, the average age was 28. The goal of the study was to see if there was any association between general use of the internet, use of Facebook, and depression.
The authors found that the amount of daily time spent o the Internet was positively associated with levels of Facebook intrusion and that Facebook intrusion was linked with higher levels of depression as determined by the questionnaires. However, they found that the daily amount of time spent on the internet was not linked to depression.
Previous studies of the relationship between depression and Facebook addiction or intrusion have had ambiguous results.
"On the basis of this study, it is possible to conclude that there are certain demographic - variables, such as age, gender, or time spent online - that may help in outlining the profile of a user who may be in danger of becoming addicted to Facebook. This piece of knowledge may serve for prevention purposes," the authors stated.
The study was published in the journal European Psychiatry.
