[Song Chen/China Daily]

Overuse brings problems for young adults and teenagers, Yang Yang reports.

After yet another late night spent browsing the Internet, Tracy Zheng, a 30-year-old PhD student at Nanjing University, swore to stop wasting time she could hardly spare.

"I had a lot of books and papers to read, but instead I wasted my time online." She said she spends about five hours a day reading micro blogs, Lily BBS - a site for students at her university - and other sites.

At most, she spends eight to nine hours online, switching from one service to another. "Sometimes when I was reading academic papers on my computer I would stop for a rest and read other things online. But I would continue doing that for a couple of hours without thinking.

"I had a lot of reading plans, but I just couldn't get anything done," she said. "The problem was that what I got from those websites was just mostly campus gossip. Sometimes I became very frustrated and anxious."

Zheng said she tends to put off important activities until a deadline looms, and feels the social networking services have worsened this tendency.

The services are a direct descendant of basic e-mail, which evolved into Bulletin Board Systems, then Facebook or its Chinese equivalent Renren, on to Twitter or Weibo, through to MySpace or QQ space and a wide range of other sites.

Facebook has more than 1 billion registered users across the globe, and one-half of them sign in every day. Twitter boasts 550 million active registered users, while Renren has 280 million. Weibo has more than 500 million and WeChat, which has been growing rapidly since it started in January 2011, now has more than 500 million users.

Chinese Internet users spent more time on social media sites than their counterparts in Japan and the United States, an average of 46 minutes per day, compared with seven in Japan and 37 in the US, according to a 2012 report by McKinsey & Co.

Rationing online time

However, things may be changing. Procrastinators on douban.com, one of the leading social networking services favored by well-educated young Chinese, have formed support groups to fight the problem. Group members pledge to reduce their daily browsing time to five hours. They share their experiences and handy tips, such as the StayFocusd application.

By inputting "bad" websites into StayFocusd and setting a specified time period, users ration the amount of time they spend viewing those sites. Similar software includes SelfRestraint for Windows, Anti-Social and SelfControl for Apple devices.

However, the problem is being exacerbated by the widespread use of smartphones, which, once the relevant apps are installed, are even more convenient for visiting social media sites. Even if they can't get online via a computer, users can check in through their phones. Research conducted in the US found that some heavy users check Facebook via their smartphones every 15 minutes or even less and some even check if they wake during the night.

The overuse of social media has become a problem for young adults and teenagers. Although to some extent the sites can help people to build up social networks and feel less isolated, the researchers found that social media can also make people less happy. Excessive use can even point to psychological problems, such as anxiety, mania and narcissism.

Judith Wright, author of The Soft Addiction Solution, included "endlessly surfing the Internet" in her definition of "soft addictions". They "are those seemingly harmless habits like over-shopping, overeating, watching too much TV, procrastinating - that actually keep us from the life we want. They cost us money, rob us of time, numb us from our feelings, mute our consciousness, and drain our energy," she wrote.

According to Wright, the deeper cause of soft addiction is that people who are stressed out are trying to comfort themselves and constantly visiting these sites can provide reassurance and rewards, such as positive comments from friends about photos they have posted. The addiction becomes a problem when it begins to bother the addicts instead of soothing them, according to Wright.

After a serious of fruitless, unproductive evenings, Zheng realized that she needed to address her problem. "At the beginning, it was fun to read friends' or schoolmates' information online. However, later I realized that I wasted a lot time doing so, which bothered me a lot because it didn't leave enough time to read all the books and essays in the time allocated. Every night, I promised myself I would quit the next day and focus on my essays, but the next day I repeated the previous day. So I stopped working in my dormitory and instead went to the library, where you can't just idle away time checking the social media. Things are becoming much better now."

Zhu Yanshao, a researcher at the Institute of Psychology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said, "Some social media addicts feel anxious when they can't use their computers, cellphones or tablets to access the social media. Once they are able to, they will unconsciously click on social network services and waste their time there, resulting in inefficiency in study and work".

In addition to the negative influence on work and study, for some people overuse of social media can have a disastrous effect on real-life communications.

'It's as if we are not there'

Qiu Yonghong said her 17-year-old son is a social media addict, and that's led to serious strains between the parents and the child.

"My son goes directly to the computer in his room when he gets home after school. Except for meals, he doesn't walk out of the door. I really want to know about his school life, but I don't know what to do," said the 42-year-old from Shenzhen in Guangdong province.

Once, the high school senior told his father in front of the whole family, "I have nothing to share with you", a statement that embarrassed and upset his parents.

"We know that he plays online games, has a girlfriend and uses WeChat and Weibo, but he seldom talks to us. He never stops looking at his smartphone during meals - it's as if we are not there at all. We want to know about his world, but everything we have tried has been in vain. I registered a WeChat account to see what he posts and know more about him, but he blocked all of us," said Qiu.

Zhu explained that addicts become so used to expressing themselves in virtual space, that their real-life communication skills may become passive and they may feel uneasy during face-to-face conversations.

In addition, social media also influences mental health, according to Zhu, who said that memory and attention spans are changing as a result. He cited academic research showing that the average attention span of US citizens dropped to eight seconds in 2012 from 12 in 2000. That decline suggests people are switching the focus of their attention more rapidly. Moreover, in a small number of Internet addicts, some regions of the brain - often those associated with speech, memory, and the control of movement and emotions - can be 10 to 20 percent smaller than usual.

Research conducted in 2012 by a team led by Larry D. Rosen, a professor of psychology at California State University, found that young people checked their smartphones every 15 minutes or less, sleeping with them next to the bed, disrupting their sleep (which is when the brain cements learning from the day), and become highly anxious if they can't check in as often as they wish.

High anxiety

"We performed a study with 163 college students, mostly aged 19 to 24, where we took away their phones and measured their anxiety levels. If they only used their phones sparingly during a typical day they didn't become anxious during a 60-minute test in which they were not allowed to use them. However, if they were heavy smartphone users they got progressively more anxious as time went on without their devices, ending up highly anxious after one hour," said Rosen.

"If heavy smartphone users are checking their phones every 15 minutes or less, and feeling anxious if they cannot 'check in' with their social media and electronic communications such as text messages and e-mail, it means that they are doing so because of a build-up of neurotransmitters in the brain that signal anxiety."

"In the long run, this is not healthy for the brain as these neurotransmitters have a negative impact on the body, including excessive sweating, a queasy stomach and other signs of anxiety that are not a problem if infrequent, but become a psychological problem if they occur often," he explained.

Rosen and his team also found that social media use can "predict" symptoms of certain psychiatric disorders, such as mania or narcissism. By contrast, having a large number of social media "friends" suggests fewer symptoms of depression.

"So it can help and harm at the same time," he said.

Rosen's team found that there are three different types of Facebook usage: General usage; impression formation (using it to post about oneself, post personal pictures or make personal comments); and friendships. Having a large number of Facebook friends was seen as a predictor of fewer symptoms of depression (both mild and major) when allied with talking more on the phone.

Although there is no way to tell whether the social media were responsible, researchers factored out many other possible explanations and concluded that having a wide circle of social media friends and talking on the phone to friends can help people deal with feelings of depression.

"We feel that this is because social media provides 24/7 access to people with whom you can talk (as well as talking on the telephone) and that allows you to get help when you are feeling depressed," said Rosen.

On the negative side, they found similar results for some disorders - mania, narcissism, antisocial personality disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and histrionic personality disorder. Those who spent large amounts of time on Facebook and also posted a large number of photos and comments showed more symptoms of these disorders, most of which are anxiety-based.

However, it's difficult, if not impossible, to tell if being narcissistic leads one to use Facebook more, or vice-versa.

"Many researchers are arguing about this in their research. I prefer to believe the studies by Campbell and Twenge (Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, authors of The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement) which found a steadily increasing trend of narcissism among college students as we have adopted more social media," Rosen said.

'Facebook depression'

In recent years, an increasing number of researchers have spoken of a phenomenon called "Facebook depression". Rosen said the term was coined to indicate that everybody writes positive comments on Facebook and, in comparison, our lives look less interesting and we become sadder and more depressed.

One of the latest studies, published in August, was conducted by researchers from the University of Michigan; 82 participants were tracked for two weeks and the researchers concluded that people spent more time on Facebook when they were feeling lonely and that using the site can reduce young adults' sense of well-being and satisfaction with life.

"I have yet to see a solid study on this topic, although researchers are examining 'Facebook depression'. The Michigan study is a start, although it was a small-scale study with only 82 subjects. It did show that use of Facebook predicted lowered subjective feelings but these were measured only with a few short questions and need to be replicated to show that they are valid results," said Rosen.

A report on the BBC's website quoted the Michigan researchers as saying: "On the surface, Facebook provides an invaluable resource for fulfilling the basic human need for social connection. Rather than enhancing well-being, however, these findings suggest that Facebook may undermine it".

Contact the author at yangyangs@chinadaily.com.cn