Last but not least: Are media the new cigarettes?
Most students around the world appear to be addicted to media. Withdrawal from media—cell phones, Facebook, and MP3 players—led to an emotional crisis. These were the findings of a study conducted by the Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change at the University of Maryland.
To investigate this, 1,000 students from ten countries gave up their cell phones, laptops, televisions and MP3 players for just 24 hours. They wrote down their experiences. The media deprivation led to emotional chaos in students, which was described with the adjectives "angry, anxious, insecure, crazy, lonely, unfree, nervous and depressed to paranoid", according to the study's press release. Study director Susan D. Moeller reported that the most surprising thing was that despite differences in cultures, economic situations and political systems, the consequences of media deprivation were the same everywhere. The study was carried out in Argentina, Chile, China, England, Hong Kong, Lebanon, Mexico, Slovakia, Uganda and the USA. Most of the participants were bored and had problems filling empty hours with other activities. A few reported positive effects of online abstinence, such as better self-reflection, higher quality of direct encounters and even a return to simple pleasures.
It seems as if a new era has dawned: away from the stigmatization of all smokers and towards the fight against the new media - the new addiction. In Germany, and on the web, an association has already been formed to combat this addiction. It calls itself "Active against media addiction". In an interview with Pressetext, Christoph Hirte from this association describes the problem as follows: The misuse of electronic media has long since become a wildfire and a widespread disease for an entire generation. Not only does it take away concentration for everything else and impair writing and speaking skills. It also demonstrably reduces the work performance of one in three people. According to Hirte, society is suppressing the problem. This is due to economic interests. Even though every family is affected.
Armin Koeppe from the German Center for Addiction Issues sees the concept of addiction in the media primarily as being appropriate for online gaming, online sex and online betting addicts, while addictions to everyday use are difficult to assess. As he told Pressetext, even students on vacation are happy not to be reachable all the time. However, it always makes sense to regularly review your own relationship with media by consciously giving it up, just as you would with sweets during Lent.
