Comment Re:The next line states... (Score 1) 360
Unfortunately, that article is worthless and I don't know where I can find the actual paper.
While the article describes 1.2% of Britons between 15 and 51 years of age as being "internet addicted, it does NOT tell us how much the likelihood of depression increases among those addicts when compared to non-addicts.
I don't see a discussion of depression rates by age or other socioeconomic factors, either. People under the age of 30 are more likely to have been online their entire adult lives, people from wealthy families are likely to have been online sooner in life. People over 40 have divided experience- life before the internet, and life after - examining the mental health history of this particular subset of study participants would be very illuminating. I honestly would not be surprised if the study discusses all these factors and more.
This moment in history is the ONLY time we will have the opportunity to study differences between people who experienced life without the internet and people who have had access their entire lives, and it's a damned shame that these lousy newspapers distill such interesting science down to water cooler conversation points.