Social networking generation mentally "vulnerable", warns expert

 

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Posted on 7 Jul 2008 at 15:18

Young people who have grown up interacting with peers through social networking websites, such as Facebook, Bebo or Myspace, may be developing a potentially dangerous view of the world and their own identity.

According to Dr Himanshu Tyagi, a psychiatrist at West London Mental Health Trust, people born after 1990 are more vulnerable to impulsive behaviour, and even suicide, than previous generations.

Tyagi claims that people who were five years old or younger, when the internet became mainstream in 1995, have been adversely affected by the anonymity they enjoy when interacting with society through networking sites. He sounded his warning at the Annual Meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

"This is the age group involved with the Bridgend suicides and what many of these young people had in common was their use of the internet to communicate," explained Tyagi. "It's a world where everything moves fast and changes all the time, where relationships are quickly disposed at the click of a mouse, where you can delete your profile if you don't like it and swap an unacceptable identity in the blink of an eye for one that is more acceptable."

He warned that young people who were used to the fast pace of social interaction online may find the real world boring, and may exhibit more "extreme behaviour" to get a sense of stimulation.

"It may be possible that young people who have no experience of a world without online societies put less value on their real world identities and can therefore be at risk in their real lives, perhaps more vulnerable to impulsive behaviour or even suicide," Tyagi cautioned. "This is definitely a line of reasoning that warrants more investigation and research."

The anonymity of interacting online is more likely allow users to lose inhibitions and create an altered perception of events. Not being able to see a person's expression or body language, or hear the subtle changes in their voice, shapes their perceptions of the interaction differently. According to Tyagi, this results in a "dream-like state, an unnatural blending of their mind with the other person; something that rarely happens in real life."

Tyagi did, however, acknowledge that there is some virtue in the social networking culture, claiming that the trend promotes equalised status, with wealth, race and gender playing a lesser role amongst online communities.

"No one is a pariah on net, it works great in flattening the hierarchies of the real world," Tyagi added.

Author: Dawinderpal Sahota