At the end of the recent film The Social Network, Mark Zuckerberg's character, by now a wealthy and successful entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, types in the name of the young woman from Boston University who had dumped him at the beginning of the film. He sits all alone before the computer and stares at the screen, suggesting to filmgoers that the billionaire with millions of "friends" still yearns for a truly human connection.
But would it be fair to say that Zuckerberg, played in the film by Jesse Eisenberg, is depressed?
A study in the April issue of Pediatrics, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, posits that there is a "new phenomenon" known as "Facebook Depression," in which kids can become depressed when they compare such metrics as their number of "friends" and "status updates" to those of their peers.
This study follows last year's vote by the American Psychiatric Association to include Internet addiction in the Appendix but not in the actual body of the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-V.
Just as the APA hedged its bets about whether Internet addiction will someday merit inclusion in the DSM, the pediatricians group did not state that "Facebook Depression" is an actual diagnosis. It is not clear that the "phenomenon" of "Facebook Depression" is unique to users of the social networking site or whether it represents an extension of latent depression in a child. Such a qualifier by the researchers shows some understanding that there is a difference between technology-driven disappointment and true depression, a term that is used far too promiscuously.
As I have written before, depression of a clinical nature does not come and go based on technological success or popularity. Clinical depression often remains with a person for his or her entire life.
Still, I recognize that we are all facing pressures now that we never faced in our hunter-gatherer past. We are not used to leading a 24/7 existence and being besieged by technology.
According to a Kaiser Family Foundation study from last year, children and teens from the ages of 8 to 18 engage in more than seven hours of electronic activity daily.
Adults have been known to spend time on their computers and even to write for online publications such as The Huffington Post, as this writer does. Fortunately, most adults know that the most valuable friendships are those of a face-to-face variety, not those separated by the scrim of a computer screen.
Kids, on the other hand, need to be taught the value of real, palpable friendship, the kind that you can only forge through offline contact with another individual.
Facebook itself seems to be learning this principle as Zuckerberg woos former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, an actual human being, to communicate primarily in non-electronic, as well as electronic, means with the press.
I share the concerns of Norman Mailer, who late in his life contended that "technology was invented by Satan." Mailer was not referring to mechanical products, such as typewriters, which have a heft and a feel to them. Rather, he was referring to electronic gadgets such as computers, which have no true connection between them and human beings. That seems to be the lesson and the irony of The Social Network and the lesson and irony for children of all ages.
Beth Arnold: Letter From Paris: 28 Days (Without the Internet)
Larry Magid: 'Facebook Depression': A Nonexistent Condition
Carole Bennett, MA: Can Cyberspace Pave the Road to Addiction?
Dr. Hendrie Weisinger: What to Tell Your Depressed Friend
New Illness: Facebook Depression?
Could 'Facebook Depression' Affect You? - FoxNews.com
Docs warn about teens and 'Facebook depression' - Health - Mental ...
"Facebook depression" seen as new risk for teens - The Early Show ...
Docs warn about Facebook use and teen depression - Yahoo! News
Pediatricians Should Discuss 'Facebook Depression' with Kids ...
I think a lesson and irony for Jaffee and Mailer lies in the fact that "gadgets such as computers" do indeed have connections between them and human beings, in ways that buggy whips and typewriters never could.
Mailer's complaint was ignorant yammering.
"Get your gigabytes off my lawn. They never done nuthin for me. They're of the devil I tell ya!"
The ancients had analogous complaints about the written word. More recently such complaints were aimed at the novel, record albums, the radio etc.
One set of counter-examples: Social computing is a godsend for countless severly alienated youth (and adults) unable to find anyone within their physical reach with whom they feel they can identify, even if crushing social pressures wouldn't tend to keep them isolated from these peers even if they could be identified. They can find one another on the web. They can reach out with a kind of safety absent in the schoolyard, the city street or the rural roadside.
They can relate, finally, meaningfully.
The presence of a scrim is not necessarily a barrier to value in a relationship. It is silly (facile and wrong) to suggest that it is. Literature is rife with epistolary romances, and other epistolary relationships of great depth and meaning. This is so because life is the same way.
Men in the Hanoi Hilton (and many other prisons throughout history) maintained their sanity under excruciating conditions via "scrimmed" relationships, sometimes with no more bandwidth than morse code can provide. In any event far less bandwidth than FaceBook.
Great achievers in many areas of the arts and sciences had hugely influential relationships with mentors from who they were rigidly "scrimmed".
Your contention, in being being stated categorically, ignores or denies facts. Reveals prejudice.
I like FB for helping me reconnect and stay connected to friends who are far away and whom I haven't seen in years, but everything in moderation.