24 Hours: Unplugged

The study, conducted by the International Center for Media and the Public Agenda at the University of Maryland, suggests that college students are addicted to social media. Students who abstained from social media reported that in addition to missing the entertainment value of music, movies and television programs, they experienced an all-encompassing sense of loss and disconnection.

The 200 students who participated in the study were asked to give up all media devices, including laptops, phones and the Internet, for 24 hours. After the period of abstinence, the students blogged on private class websites to record their experiences. Cumulatively, the students wrote more than 110,000 words detailing their strong aversion to the 24 hours of media abstinence, including terms like “in withdrawal, frantically craving, very anxious, miserable, jittery and crazy.”

According to the study, students get their news and information in a disaggregated way. Instead of receiving information from one particular media outlet, they receive news through friends texting via cell phone, or Facebook, or e-mailing and IM-ing via laptops.

The findings sugest that 18- to 21-year-olds are not just unwilling to be without their media connections to the world, but that they’re functionally unable to do so.

Read the study.