Continuously connected to social networks can increase stress and deteriorating personal relationships. After banning the use of Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging and other media for a week, the u. of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, said that the technology had been hiding some traps.The students realized that social media, especially Facebook and instant messaging, if not used properly, can be appropriating their lives, said Eric Darr, Dean of the faculty. University, 800 students, decided to impose the ban to observe how technology affected the lives of students and teachers.The majority of the students met the one-week experiment this month and some discovered that the technology could control their lives. Darr quoted a student who felt the need to enter Facebook 21 hours a day and blocked the entry of new publications between two and five in the morning to sleep a little. A.

me sounds like addiction, said Darr, driving technological blackout applied by blocking access to social media to the IP address of the University. Darr acknowledged that students and professors who felt the need to feed his addiction to social media could have continued doing so via their mobile phones advanced, but said most had obeyed and that some were pleasantly surprised with what they had discovered. Most of the students behaved as smokers who escape after class for smoking, he said. They wanted to sneak to look at things on their smartphones, he added.But some of them discovered that they felt less stressed by not having the possibility to constantly read the States of your friends on Facebook and see that they had more time to do other things. Other students saw themselves more willing to meet in person with other students or teachers with those who normally they only communicated through social media.The student Amanda Zuck said that it did not use Facebook much, but that at first I was a little annoyed by not being able to use the web page. Zuck wrote in an e-mail that did not see great advantages in the project for her, but added that she had probably helped a friend she considered addicted to Facebook.El project allowed all members of the University to reflect on the way in which social media affected their lives. Only stopping us and paying attention we can understand it, said Darr. We can even be unaware of the important role that play social media in what we do and how do it, he added.

Harrisburg is the first University who runs an experiment like this, which probably wouldn’t be possible in larger academic institutions and a more complex infrastructure, according to Darr. The project originated the protests of some who sent e-mails arguing that was infringing their freedom of expression, added the Dean.Although the results of the survey are still being analyzed, they seem to conclude that social media should be used as the old model of interpersonal communication.