The stories themselves continue bellowing this seeminly dire news by stating, for example, "(a) 'dark side' to the internet suggests a strong link between time spent surfing the web and depression, say psychologists." (UKPA). Or that "(p)eople who spend a lot of time surfing the internet are more likely to show signs of depression, British scientists said on Wednesday." (Reuters)

But don't rush to take an Internet-break right now, nor do you need to do an intervention with that friend who just always seems to be on Facebook. First, the reported link is between depression and compulsive Internet-use, not Internet-use. Before you unplug or consider changing any habits remember there is a link between compulsive hand washing and depression, but that is no reason to question normal hygene.

Second, as a couple of the more sober-minded stories included as a brake on the hysteria they were simultaneously feeding, there is that pesky "chicken-and-egg" thing in correlational studies like this one.  The implications of the actual research are much less dire than even the most sober media response would suggest. Other than arguing the political point (yes, there are politics even in research!) that "Internet Addiction" should be included as a distinct disorder in the upcoming DSM V diagnostic manual, the research says nothing more alarming than depressed people will do depressing things even when they are online, like spend too much on "sexually gratifying websites, gaming websites and online community/chat websites" (Abstract: "The Relationship between Excessive Internet Use and Depression: A Questionnaire-Based Study of 1,319 Young People and Adults"). No surprise here but people are people online and off.

So lets look a bit more closely at the actual research generating the media hype to see how much we really can learn from the work that was done.

The researchers got 1319 people to click the link they provided and complete their online questionnaire. No data is provided about how many people viewed the questionnaire without replying, nor how many started but did not finish, but I think it safe to assume that many, many more people viewed the link than those who chose to participate. We have to ask who would decide to participate. Well, in this design only those already bored by or uninterested enough in what they were doing online would bother to take the time to participate, hardly the unbiased group one would want for a study such as this.

Moreover, this biased group presents an even more serious problem because the researchers are interested in studying people who are compulsive users of sex sites, gambling sites, and social networking sites. Why would the researchers think these compulsive users would stop what they are compulsively drawn to do to complete a questionnaire? Doesn't their online questionnaire method miss the very people they want to study? Rather than including the compulsive people of interest, their research design excludes them and pulls instead for people who spend lots of time online and are already kinda, sorta uninterested and bored (depressed?) by what they are doing. Of course, and I am not imputing any motive here, this group consists of the very people who would support the researchers' agenda of advocating for inclusion of the "Internet Addiction" diagnosis because the members of this group are already dissatisfied with what they are doing online (depressed?). No one spending lots of time online and having a great time of it would stop what they are doing to complete a Beck Depression Inventory and an Internet use survey.

The researchers found 18 users (1.2%) who showed a pattern of compulsive and excessive use of specific sites, but not so compulsive that they don't mind an interruption. They called this group "Internet Addicted." Out of the 1319 looking for something to do online they also found 18 normal users who were demographically similar to the "Internet Addicted" 18. They then compared them on how much time was spent online, what people did online, and how depressed they were.

What they found were that those 18 compulsive users not so "addicted" that they won't interrupt their addiction for science did in fact spend more time online and were more depressed.

It would be really easy to sink deeper into snark, psychology journalism frequently makes it very easy to do so. But I won't because what I really want to do is close with the point that people really (REALLY!) want to know what our emerging culture of simulation is doing to us. We all want to better understand what our intuitions tell us; time online does make life better for some, but only for some because there are susceptible others for whom going online becomes an occasion for suffering, isolation, and depression. We all want to understand what that is about. But change happens faster than research can get done and the media is still going to feed our hunger to understand even when there is not enough data. Media outlets, online and off, just won't plaster a headline announcing "We Still Don't Know" or, as would fit the research discussed in this post "People are people!"  And while this study deserved to be done—we need lots of data-points even to begin understanding what the tools we've made are doing to us—it did not deserve all the media hype it has received.

[I don't want to sign-off without noting that this my first Over-Simulated post here at Psychology Today. I am delighted to be to join such an illustrious and interesting blogging team. Hopefully, you'll find my writing an interesting addition to the offerings you already find. If you want to read more of my work you can also find me over at True/Slant where I write Simu-Nation, a more political and "newsy" take on how we can build a good life in our emerging culture of simulation and enhancement. For example, there you will find yesterday's post about autobiographical memory, Krapp's Last Tape, and David Pogue's struggles to save family videos from getting lost to "data rot." ]