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Facebook leads to suicide, warns top Catholic bishop

Teens on route to disaster with Facebook friend frenzy

By
ANTOINETTE KELLY,
IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

Published Sunday, August 2, 2009, 5:15 PM
Updated Sunday, August 2, 2009, 10:13 PM

 

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The Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nicholls
The Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nicholls

FATHER TIM: IS FACEBOOK THE SATAN OF THE INTERNET? CLICK HERE

Facebook is leading teenagers to commit suicide.

That's according to the head of the Catholic Church in England.

The Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, says that Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace are pushing teenagers over the edge

The Archbishop said that teenagers now value their friendships according to how many friends they have on Facebook rather than the true value of those friendships.

He said that such relationships were too transient to benefit teenagers and that they contributed to teen suicide.

"Among young people often a key factor in them 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,” he said.

“It’s an all-or-nothing syndrome that you have to have in an attempt to shore up an identity; a collection of friends about whom you can talk and even boast. But friendship is not a commodity, friendship is something that is hard work and enduring when it’s right.”

He says the sites create commodities out of friendships and leaves children with few social skills.

"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," he said.

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