Cambridge: A new study suggests that nearly 50 percent of teens believe they are addicted to social media.
Some people’s relationship with social media can be like a behavioral addiction, researchers say in preliminary results from a study conducted at the University of Cambridge.
In the research, the Cambridge University team is analyzing data from the Millennium Cohort Study. The study was conducted by the Center for Longitudinal Studies at the University of London.
The study looked at the lives of more than 18,000 children born in the UK between 2000 and 2001 to record the background of children born at the start of the 21st century.
Cambridge researchers found in a review that 48 percent of 7,022 people surveyed agreed or strongly agreed with the statement ‘I think I’m addicted to social media.’
The data was collected between January 2018 and March 2019, when the participants were 17 years old.
Of all those surveyed who thought they were addicted, more girls (57 percent) than boys (37 percent) did.
Georgia Turner, a graduate student at the University of Cambridge and head of the research, said the researchers are not saying that people who think they are addicted are. But it’s not a good feeling to feel that they have no control over their own behavior, so it’s quite surprising that so many people feel this way.
Georgia Turner added that research suggests that social media addiction can influence drug addiction patterns.
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