LET'S FACE IT

MEDICAL NEWS TODAY

'Facebook Generation' Faces Identity Crisis

Dr Himanshu Tyagi, a psychiatrist at West London Mental Health Trust, said that people born after 1990, who were just five-years-old or younger when the use of Internet became mainstream in 1995, have grown up in a world dominated by online social networks such as Facebook and MySpace.

"This is the age group involved with the Bridgend suicides and what many of these young people had in common was their use of Internet to communicate. It's a world where everything moves fast and changes all the time, where relationships are quickly disposed at the click of a mouse, where you can delete your profile if you don't like it and swap an unacceptable identity in the blink of an eye for one that is more acceptable," said Dr Tyagi. "People used to the quick pace of online social networking may soon find the real world boring and unstimulating, potentially leading to more extreme behaviour to get that sense.

Thanks to Mark Vernon (read his comments here) and TA for alerting me to this article