Mediaboss Marketing

Albany

Facebook can be addictive.

If you're one of the 1.35 billion active users of the social media site, you may have joked about that.

Julia Hormes means it. The University at Albany psychologist conducted a study published in the December issue of the journal Addiction that not only concluded that excessive online social networking is addictive, but that it also can be associated with other disorders involving impulse control, including substance abuse.

Hormes studied 292 undergraduate students, 18 years and older.

Participants were evaluated on criteria commonly used to assess alcohol addiction.

Questions were modified to measure addiction-like symptoms related to excessive Facebook use. "How good does Facebook make you feel?" was one example.

Nearly 90 percent of respondents had an active Facebook page, spending on average one-third of their online browsing time on the social networking site.

Sixty-seven percent received Facebook push notifications on their smartphones.

About 10 percent of users experienced what Hormes classified as "disordered social networking use."

Read more:
One-tenth of Facebook users in study reported addictive behavior