Archbishop: social networks increase suicide risk

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 3 Aug 2009 at 08:39

The head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales is concerned that excessive use of emails and text messaging is creating shallow friendships and undermining community life.

Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, also claims that popular social-networking sites lead young people to form "transient relationships" which put them at risk of suicide when they collapsed.

"Friendship is not a commodity, friendship is something that is hard work and enduring when it's right," he told the Sunday Telegraph.

"I think there's a worry that an excessive use, or an almost exclusive use of text and emails means that as a society we're losing some of the ability to build interpersonal communication that's necessary for living together and building a community."

The Archbishop, 63, says too much use of electronic information is "dehumanising," leading to a loss in social skills and the ability to read a person's mood through their body language.

Furthermore social-networking sites encourage children to place an excessive importance on the number of friends they had instead of the quality of their relationships, he says.

"Among young people often a key factor in their committing suicide is the trauma of transient relationships. They throw themselves into a friendship or network of friendships, then it collapses and they're desolate," Nichols claims.