i thought i was going to look all edgy posting this as a thread having only seen it on the ticker on bbc news before i left the flat. then i saw it on the front page of the metro.

anyway.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8493149.stm

my first instinct seeing the headline was "omg what shocking news!" but...take a look. it's not really that enlightening. what the story suggests is that 18 out of 1,319 people in a survey were internet addicts, and 'many' of them were depressed.

surprising? that people who "[replace] real life social interaction with online chat rooms and social networking sites" are pretty depressed?

the sad thing is i'm increasingly convinced every day/week/year that people who use the internet excessively, or as a major outlet for emotion-feeding, whether through livejournal-style sympathy fishing or common-or-garden anger-seeking trolling, are probably afflicted with something or other that might, like a lot of mental illnesses, benefit from treatment of some description. this survey looks like a bit of flimsy evidence that highlights only on a superficial level something which may be a more sadly serious issue than people consider

tl;dr? boring thread? probably. there's another story (again, reading the metro over someone's shoulder) about straight-A students being four times more likely to suffer from bipolar disorder. we can talk about that too, if you like. hell, why not even tell me that you're feeling a bit gloomy. bad thread

can we unban Bamnan for just this one thread? i reckon his contributions would be interesting