Facebook Can Make You Psychotic

If you’re very lonely or vulnerable because you’ve lost a love one and you begin obsessively using Facebook and other social media, you may gradually develop psychotic symptoms like delusions, anxiety, confusion and an overreliance on your computer.

According to researcher Uri Nitzan of Tel Aviv University, some people get entangled in intensive virtual relationships that can lead to feelings of hurt, betrayal and invasion of privacy. He recently studied three people whose psychotic episodes were linked to Internet communications.

“All of the patients developed psychotic symptoms related to the situation, including delusions regarding the person behind the screen and their connection through the computer,” Nitzan says. Two patients began to feel vulnerable as a result of sharing private information, and one even experienced tactile hallucinations, believing that the person beyond the screen was physically touching her.

Nitzan notes that some of the problematic features of the Internet relate to issues of geographical and spatial distortion, the absence of non-verbal cues and the tendency to idealize the person with whom someone is communicating, becoming intimate without ever meeting face-to-face. All of these factors can contribute to a patient’s break with reality and the development of a psychotic state.

Nitzan plans to do more in-depth research on Facebook, studying the features and applications that have the potential to harm patients emotionally or permit patients to cause emotional harm to others. Some psychotic patients use the Internet to disturb people, abusing their ability to interact anonymously, he says.