Students and Social Media...what research tells us?

(this note appeared on the Inside Higher Ed Daily News Update this morning: http://www.insidehighered.com/newsletter/html)

Ellen's comment: Hmmm, do we know if this happens to faculty too?

Students and Their Social Media Addictions: American college students -- cut off from social media for 24 hours -- use the same words to describe their feelings as as associated with those addicted to drugs or alcohol, according to a new study by the International Center for Media and the Public Agenda, at the University of Maryland at College Park. In the study, 200 Maryland students were asked to abstain from using social media for 24 hours and then to write their feelings. The words frequently used: in withdrawal, frantically craving, very anxious, extremely antsy, miserable, jittery and crazy.

Susan D. Moeller, a journalism professor at Maryland and the director of the center that conducted the study, said that students see social media as key to their relationships with others. She said that researchers "noticed that what they wrote at length about was how they hated losing their personal connections. Going without media meant, in their world, going without their friends and family."

The University of Maryland press release is at http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/sociss/release.cfm?ArticleID=2144
The study itself is at http://withoutmedia.wordpress.com/