psychology of internet & facebook

Are You Addicted to Internet/Facebook?Psychologists Respond

Assist.Prof.Dr. Ulas Basar Gezgin, PhDUpper Iowa University

Department of Psychology [email protected]

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 2

Internet Addiction Test

Widyanto, L., and McMurran, M. (2004). The psychometric properties of the Internet Addiction Test. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 7(4), 443-450.


S.: 1-5: How Often...


E.U.: 1-5: How Often...


N.W.: 1-5: How Often...


A.: 1-5: How Often...


L.C.: 1-5: How Often...


N.S.L.: 1-5: How Often...


Uses of Facebook

Joinson, A. N. (2008) Looking at, looking up or keeping up with people?: Motives and use of Facebook. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, San Jose, CA.

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 10

S.C.: How Often Do You Use FB for the Following Purposes? (1-5)

• Finding out what old friends are doing now• Reconnecting with people you’ve lost contact with• Connecting with people you otherwise would have

lost contact with• Receiving a friend request• Finding people you haven’t seen for a while• Maintaining relationships with people you may not

get to see very often• Contacting friends who are away from home

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 11

S.I.: How Often Do You Use FB for the Following Purposes? (1-5)

• Organizing or joining events • Joining groups • Communication with likeminded people

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 12

P.: How Often Do You Use FB for the Following Purposes? (1-5)

• Viewing photos• Being tagged in photos• Tagging photos• Sharing / posting photographs

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 13

C.: How Often Do You Use FB for the Following Purposes? (1-5)

• Applications within Facebook • Playing games• Discovering apps because you see friends have

added them• Quizzes

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 14

S.I.: How Often Do You Use FB for the Following Purposes? (1-5)

• Virtual people watching• Using advanced search to look for specific

types of people• Meeting new people• Stalking other people

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 15

S.N.S.: How Often Do You Use FB for the Following Purposes? (1-5)

• Looking at the profiles of people you don’t know

• Viewing other people’s friends • Browsing your friends’ friends

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 16

S.U.: How Often Do You Use FB for the Following Purposes? (1-5)

• Updating your own status• The news feed• Seeing what people have put as their status

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 17

Some Findings & Discussions

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 18

Internet Addiction

• Internet addiction and • “social isolation,• increased depression, • familial discord, • divorce, • academic failure, • financial debt, • and job loss” (Young et al., 2000).

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 19

Internet Addiction

• Internet addiction • highest degree of loneliness, • depressed mood, • and compulsivity • Whang, Lee & Chang (2003).• Low self-esteem• but not associated with psychological problems• Niemz, Griffiths, & Banyard (2005)

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 20

Internet Addiction

• Internet addicts among • Taiwanese high school students • not raised by their parents, • parent-adolescent and inter-parental conflicts • low levels of family satisfaction,• parents and siblings which are habitual users of alcohol, • perceived that parents exhibited positive attitudes

towards adolescent smoking, alcohol, and substance use. • Yen, Yen, Chen, Chen, & Ko (2008)

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 21

Meta-analysis

• 39 empirical articles on Internet addiction published between 1996-2006

• the Internet addiction criteria utilized were inconsistent;

• the data were contaminated by sampling biases. • Comparability of results? • Byun, Ruffini, Mills, Douglas, Niang, Stepchenkova,

Lee, Loutfi, Lee, Atallah, and Blanton (2009)

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 22

Addiction or What?

• No agreement on whether the so-called ‘Internet addiction’ should be defined as a substance abuse disorder without a substance or as an impulse control disorder just like gambling or eating disorders.

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 23

Addiction or What?

• Excessive Internet use alone can’t be equated with Internet addiction, as many people use Internet excessively for hobbies, for keeping touch with friends and family members that live apart, and for many other reasons.

• In such functions, excessive Internet use is necessary and self-enhancing.

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 24

Addiction or What?

• In cases of social deprivation due to geographic isolation such as living in a remote area, excessive Internet use can be considered as a survival strategy, regardless of the kinds of use.

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 25

Addiction or What?

• The term addiction and the analogy of substance abuse disorder are misleading, as there is no substance equivalent to Internet which is used for academic purposes, for jobs or to keep in touch with others.

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 26

Addiction or What?

• ‘Internet addiction’ studies are built on a deficiency model, which means they show what is wrong or abnormal about this particular person.

• However, development of Internet skills and software skills requires excessive use of computers which is not necessarily harmful.

• Adolescent Bill Gates as a computer addict? • Excessive use is the key to future career prospects in at

least IT and engineering fields; • These excessive uses usually start as hobby and then

transform into academic and/or career uses.

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 27

Addiction or What?

• The assumption of serial processing which leads to the belief that for example when people use Internet for social networking, they do only social networking.

• Social networking can be for social purposes as well as for the job and for academic purposes.

• Universities with Facebook pages, accounts and groups are not exception, but the norm.

• The same Facebook tools serve social, job and academic purposes.

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 28

Some Quotations

“(…) [T]he Internet is now a source for everything society desires. Through the Internet, users may indulge in gambling, shopping, chatting, and viewing sexually explicit material, to name just a few. In other words, the Internet is just a way through which people may access to whatever they want. If users of the Internet are addicted to “something,” that might be some content or services that the Internet provides, rather the Internet itself: Internet users are no more addicted to the Internet than alcoholics are addicted to bottles” (Kim & Kim, 2010, p.389).

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 29

Some Quotations

• “Historically, new media have endured periods of reactionary alarm from politicians, activists, and scientists alike until youth themselves age into the elders of society and acceptance becomes commonplace. In that time, opportunities for the positive use of a new medium may be delayed” (Ferguson, 2010, p.66).

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 30

Then?• The Internet Paradox• The negative consequences and not the hours of use should be

the main criteria for diagnosis of the so-called ‘Internet addiction’• Avoid the following terms: • Internet Addiction• Pathological Internet Use, • Internet Abuse, • Compulsive Internet Use, • Excessive Internet Use, and • Internet Overuse • Prefer ‘Problematic Internet Use’

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 31

Hot Topics: Who Uses Facebook?(the most, in what ways etc.)

• A1) The Social Compensation Explanation• A2) The “Rich Get Richer” Explanation• B1) The Idealized Virtual Identity Hypothesis• B2) The Extended Real-Life Hypothesis

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 32

Some Highlights From Facebook Research

• ‘Facebook friends’ is a misnomer• Researchers without Facebook accounts• Sampling students• Nonymous vs. Anonymous; offline vs. online• Privacy issues• Selective self-presentation and narcissism• The Gap: Psychodynamic approaches to

Facebook

04/10/2023 Intro to Psy 33

So...

•Are you an Internet/Facebook addict?

What Do Psychologists Really Do?An Introduction to Psychology

Assist.Prof.Dr. Ulas Basar Gezgin, PhDUpper Iowa University

Department of Psychology [email protected]

psychology of internet & facebook

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