Digital Minds Forum

Too much of a good thing?

Written by Neil Kelley on Friday 19th February 2010 at 2:32 pm

I was reading the following article with interest this morning “There is a strong link between heavy internet use and depression, UK psychologists have said.”

Now internet usage is a major part of ‘modern life’, we pretty much all use it for one reason or another – I’m guilty of quite heavy usage – checking on my generic smartphone for emails , status updates and news numerous times during the day, using my PC at work and laptop at home.

It worried me a little at first, what’s going to happen to my mental faculties if I use th internet (?), but then you read deeper and come across statements like “The study, reported in the journal Psychopathology, found 1.2% of people surveyed were “internet addicts”, and many of these were depressed.” – OK, so I thought to myself what does this actually mean?

So, being cynical as always, I checked the sample size – 1,319 people – not a massively representative sample of internet users. Using simple maths we can work out that 16 people from the sample of 1,319 (this represents 1.2% – not 18 as reported – I know I’m being picky but 18 people from a sample of 1,319 is 1.4%!) are ‘internet addicts’ – and “many” of these were depressed.

Taking ‘many’ to be a majority that would mean 9 people from a sample of 1,319 are internet addicts and also suffer from depression – is this really a strong link between the two factors that warrants such huge media coverage as we have today – BBC, Reuters, Sky News (112 articles on the ‘net as we speak!)?

Ah statistics, the quote oft attributed to Benjamin Disraeli “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics” rings true here. Scaremongering seems to be the order of the day… control your internet usage – or you’ll become depressed or maybe I’m just reading too much into things… which often happens!

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