University of Texas Shooter Wasn’t Social Media ‘Addict’ Like His Peers
Despite a recent study by the University of Maryland indicating that American college students are “addicted” to social media, online searches show Colton Tooley—the 19-year-old University of Texas suicide shooter—didn’t have a presence on Facebook, Twitter or MySpace.
In this day and age, Tooley’s absence on the social media landscape is an anomaly.
In fact, a recent survey by Ypulse Research pointed out that American teens and college students spend an average of 11.4 hours a week on Facebook, and 42 percent of them use Twitter. However, the survey also revealed that a little more than one-fourth of the students surveyed said they’re logging less time or no time at all on Facebook.
The University of Maryland study, conducted by the International Center for Media and the Public Agenda, deprived 200 college students of any type of media for 24 hours. Participants expressed the most frustration with their lack of access to text messaging, phone calling, instant messaging, email and Facebook.
Students’ responses to the media drought—part of a class assignment—showed that their “lives are wired together in such ways that opting out of that communication pattern would be tantamount to renouncing a social life,” the University of Maryland reported.
Tooley appeared to have renounced an electronic “social life,” but he was in the minority among college students.
Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in Harrisburg, Pa., recently imposed a one-week moratorium on accessing Facebook and other social media sites through the campus’ computer network. According to FoxNews.com, early assessments indicate the ban made some students realize they had become extraordinarily dependent on social networking, sometimes checking Facebook 20 hours a day.
Dr. Keith Ablow, a psychiatry correspondent for Fox News Channel, wrote that “Facebook, Twitter and other Web activities have the potential to increase narcissism and decrease the ability to empathize with others. Calling 1,652 people your friends (and sort of believing it) will do that to you. It’s a very big lie, and telling big lies about oneself has psychological consequences.”
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