Could Facebook Be Destroying your Social Life?

Even though most of us check our facebook pages obsessively throughout the day, remembering why we initially signed up for one in the first place can be a challenge. Don’t worry, I’ll give you some time to think. Assuming your answer wasn’t so you could stalk your ex girlfriend, the answer generally should be to maintain and create new social connections, right? It turns out, however, that a recent studydone in part by a psychologist at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia, suggests that facebook could be doing the contrary (if you already have Social Anxiety Disorder, that is).

The study was conducted on 37 participants, all clinically diagnosed with Social Anxiety Disorder. Internet use and social networking sites initially seemed to be reducing anxiety, since subjects that spent more time on the internet suffered less anxiety because of their wider network of social support as well as their access to online resources for support. However, it was also noted that almost none of these subjects followed up with an actual evaluation for therapy or medication. It was then noted that the amount of anxiety in “face-to-face” social situations was higher with people that used the internet.
For the most anxious of the test subjects, use of the internet and social networking sites reinforced their anxiety and fears of being evaluated in a negative light by their pears. Basically, the results seemed to suggest that the internet and social networking sites would generally offer you more social connections and support for your social anxiety, while simultaneously exacerbating your social anxiety in “face to face” social situations, causing a lesser likelihood of maintaining real life social connections.

Although this experiment found some strong correlations between internet use and levels of social anxiety, the test sample was only 37 people, so the margin of error would be higher than a test with many more participants. And remember, all of the participants were diagnosed with social anxiety to begin with, so if you have no history of social anxiety, it could just be that you’re spending too much time playing on the internet and not out actually having a social life.