What is the "Green Economy"?

How is a green economy defined?

A green economy as one that results in improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities. In its simplest expression, a green economy can be thought of as one which is low carbon, resource efficient and socially inclusive.

Practically speaking, a green economy is one whose growth in income and employment is driven by public and private investments that reduce carbon emissions and pollution, enhance energy and resource efficiency, and prevent the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. These investments need to be catalyzed and supported by targeted public expenditure, policy reforms and regulation changes. This development path should maintain, enhance and, where necessary, rebuild natural capital as a critical economic asset and source of public benefits, especially for poor people whose livelihoods and security depend strongly on nature.The UNEP-led Green Economy Initiative, launched in late 2008, consists of several components whose collective overall objective is to provide the analysis and policy support for investing in green sectors and in greening environmental unfriendly sectors.

2.How is a green economy measured?

 A wide range of indicators can help measure the transition towards a green economy. UNEP is working with partners such as the OECD and the World Bank to develop a suite of indicators – primarily building on existing frameworks - which governments will be able to choose from depending on their national circumstances, such as the structure of their economy and their natural resource endowment. The indicators being developed can be roughly divided into the following three groups:

          Economic indicators: for example, share of investments or the share of output and employment in sectors that meet a sustainability standard, such as green GDP.

• Environmental indicators: for example, resource use efficiency or pollution intensity at either the sectoral or economy-wide level, for example, energy use/GDP, or water use/GDP
• Aggregate indicators of progress and well-being: for example, macroeconomic aggregates to reflect natural capital depreciation, including integrated environmental and economic accounting, or broader interpretations of well-being beyond narrow definitions of per capita GDP.

2. How does a green economy contribute to sustainable development?
   Sustainable development has been defined as “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” It gained international attention in the late 1980s following the Brundtland Commission’s landmark report, “Our Common Future”, and further prominence at the 1992 Earth Summit where it served as a guiding principle for international cooperation on development. Achieving sustainable development requires the advancement and strengthening of its three interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars: environmental protection, social development, and economic development.
   Moving towards a green economy can be an important driver in this effort. Rather than being seen as a passive receptor of wastes generated by economic activity or as one of many substitutable factors of production, the environment in a green economy is seen as a determining factor of economic production, value, stability, and long term prosperity – indeed, as a source of growth and a spur to innovation. In a green economy, the environment is an “enabler” of economic growth and human well-being. Additionally, since the poor are most dependent on the natural resource base for their livelihoods and least able to shield themselves from a degraded environment, movement towards a green economy also promotes equitable growth.
   As such, the shift to a green economy can be seen as a pathway to sustainable development, a journey rather than a destination. The nature of a ‘green economy’ sought after by a developed or developing nation can vary greatly, depending on its geographical confines, its natural resource base, its human and social capital, and its stage of economic development. What does not change however are its key tenets – of targeting improved human well-being and social equity, whilst reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities.
3. How does a green economy help eradicate poverty?
   Today’s economic wealth, as traditionally defined and measured through GDP, is often created through the overexploitation and pollution of our “common” natural resources, from clean freshwater to forests to air essential to our very survival. This type of economic growth, as traditionally defined, has resulted in high economic and social costs, especially for the poor who depend on these resources for their livelihoods and are especially vulnerable to environmental contamination and degradation. The current unprecedented loss of biodiversity and ecosystem degradation is affecting sectors such as agriculture, animal husbandry, fishing and forestry – the very sectors which many of the world’s poor depend on for their livelihoods.
   Equally important, the move towards a green economy aims to increase access to basic services and infrastructure as a means of alleviating poverty and improving overall quality of life. This includes, for example, providing energy access to the 1.4 billion people who currently lack electricity, and another 700 million who are deprived of modern energy services. Renewable energy technologies, such as solar and wind power, and supportive energy policies promise to make a significant contribution to improving living standards and health in low income areas, particularly to those that currently lack access to energy.
   Finally, significant opportunities exist to discontinue and redirect environmentally harmful subsidies. For instance, governments around the world are currently spending an estimated US $700 billion annually to subsidize fossil fuels. This represents five times the amount of money countries worldwide spend on development assistance. The largest part of these subsidies is being allocated by governments of developing countries, in an effort to cushion the shock of price increases on the poor. Yet, many studies have shown that fossil fuel subsidies are inefficient in targeting the poor, and are often benefit disproportionately higher income groups. Removing or dismantling environmentally harmful subsidies and replacing them with more targeted support, such as cash transfers, can increase social protection goals while easing fiscal constraints and improvement environmental outcomes.
4. How are the concepts of sustainable consumption and production and green economy related?
   Green economy and sustainable consumption and production represent two sides of the same coin. They both share the same objective of fostering sustainable development, covering macro to micro-economic dimensions of public policy and regulation, business operations and social behaviour. Sustainable consumption and production is primarily focused on increasing resource efficiency in production processes and consumption patterns. Complementing this, green economy activities consider macro-economic trends and regulatory instruments governments can pursue through economic and other policies to promote economic growth and job creation that meets the criteria of being green and decent.
   In practice, work towards achieving a green economy and sustainable consumption and production are mutually supportive, covering macro and micro interventions that require change in policy and regulatory instruments, investment and business operations, as well as behavioural change in society.
   Both are currently high on the international agenda. The 10-Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production (the 10 YFP) is one of the key themes of the Commission on Sustainable Development’s (CSD) agenda, developed as a consequence of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (2002). Constructing a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication is one of the two central themes of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) that will take place in 2012. It was recognized at CSD 18 that the 10 YFP could be an important input to the UNCSD, serving as a key building block for the transition to a green economy.
5. How does a green economy support employment?
   A green economy creates jobs in a wide range of sectors of the economy as new markets emerge and grow, such as in organic agriculture, renewable energy, building retrofits for energy efficiency, public transportation, reclamation of brown-field sites, and recycling, among others.
   Decent jobs, with high labour productivity as well as high eco-efficiency and low emissions, hold the promise to provide rising incomes, spur growth and help to protect the climate and the environment. Such green jobs already exist and some have seen high growth, for example, as a result of investment in energy efficiency.
   Nonetheless, to ensure a smooth transition to a green economy, a concerted effort in job creation is necessary. Social policies will need to be developed along with environmental and economic policies. Key issues like investing in new skills needed for a low-carbon global economy and policies to handle the employment adjustments in key sectors like energy and transport will be needed to ensure a smooth transition.
6. How does a green economy protect and preserve biodiversity?
   The loss of biodiversity has caused some people to experience declining well-being, with poverty in some social groups being exacerbated. If that loss continues it may also compromise the long term ability of ecosystems to regulate the climate and could lead to additional, unforeseen, and potentially irreversible shifts in the earth system and changes in ecosystem services. Furthermore, the ecosystem is the prime provider of a number of raw materials that serve as an engine for economic development. For these reasons, the preservation and protection of ecosystems is at the heart of the green economy agenda and green investments also aim at reducing the negative externalities caused by the exploitation of natural capital.
   For instance, investments in the preservation of forests which sustain a wide range of sectors and livelihoods and at the same time preserve 80% of terrestrial species. By boosting investment in green forestry, a green economy agenda would preserve the economic livelihoods of over 1 billion people who live from timber, paper and fiber products which in their turn currently yield 1% of global GDP (this is far outweighed by the non-market public goods derived from forest ecosystem services)
7. What does the green economy offer for developing countries?
   Green economy policies can help developing countries attain economic and social gains on several fronts, such as through the deployment of cleaner energy technologies and improved access to energy services; improved resource efficiency through investments in cleaner production approaches; increased food security through the use of more sustainable agricultural methods; and access to emerging new markets for their green goods and services. Improvements in resource efficiency and in diversifying the energy matrix can reduce import bills and protect a country from price volatility in energy markets, while reducing the environmental footprint and associated health costs of economic activity. Of course, each country must assess and evaluate its own resource endowment to determine how to best optimize its opportunities for sustainable economic growth.
   As highlighted in UNEP’s recent report, “Developing Countries Success Stories”, there are a number of ongoing developing country initiatives that are demonstrating a positive benefit stream from specific green investments and policies, and if scaled up and integrated into a comprehensive strategy, could offer an alternative sustainable development pathway, one that is pro-growth, pro-jobs and pro-poor.
8. Does a green economy lead to protectionism?
   Concerns have been raised that the implementation of a green economy could lead to trade protectionism and conditionalities on development aid. Trade measures encouraging environmentally sustainable practices, including standards, subsidies, public procurement, and market access related measures, are often mentioned as potentially leading to green protectionism. For instance, there is concern that environmental standards, although effective in stimulating markets in sustainable goods and services, can also serve as a barrier to developing country exporters, particularly small and medium sized enterprises, which may lack the necessary resources to meet the standards.
   Given this risk, it is essential to find the right balance between safeguarding market access on the one hand, and protecting health and the environment on the other. At the international level, one important means of mitigating this risk is to ensure the substantive participation of developing country actors in relevant standard setting negotiations and processes to ensure the concerns are addressed. At the national level, the formulation of green economy policies needs to consider the potential effects on the trading positions of other countries, especially low income countries.
9. What can governments do to enable a green economy?
   There are a number of policies that national governments might consider adopting or strengthening in order to stimulate green investment and enable a green economic transition, ranging from regulatory and economic instruments to public-private partnerships and voluntary initiatives. The relevance and efficacy of a particular policy is often highly dependent on the unique endowments and capacities of the country considering the policy.
   One of the most direct ways for governments to promote a green economy is through public finance and fiscal measures. For instance, public expenditure on research and development can be an effective means of stimulating the innovation necessary to transition to a green economy. In many developing countries where access to capital is limited, public investments in a green economy are particularly important. Governments can also lead by example through the use sustainable public procurement efforts that stimulate demand for green products and services.
   Additionally, governments can correct for negative externalities by ensuring that prices reflect the actual costs of goods and services, including the environmental costs which are often not captured by the market. The reform of harmful subsidies, such as many of the fishery and fossil fuel subsidies, and the use of taxation instruments, such as levies on pollution, are key policy interventions available to many governments.
   A legal framework that facilitates green economic activity and regulates harmful forms of production and consumption is also necessary. Building the capacity of governments and other stakeholders, as well as promoting actions that increase public support for change, may also be required in the transition to a green economy.

Marksheets available now for BBA,BCA & ASPSM D-III Examination -2011

  Marks-sheets of  BBA, BCA & ASPSM D-III Examination 2011 are available in Department's Office for distribution from tomorrow 8A.M. onwards ,Students are hereby directed to bring D-III examination admit card and College I-Card to receive their marks-sheet.

Urgent Notice for BBA/BCA D-I ,.B.Lib&Inf.Sc. Sem-I & Sem-II Examination -2012

SIDO KANHU MURMU UNIVERSITY, DUMKA

                             
           EXAMINATION    DEPARTMENT                   

  

NOTIFICATION NO.-31/2012  DATE-13/07/2012   

Following are the schedule of Examination forms & fees in the College / University office for B.B.A. / B.C.A. / Add On / ASPSM Course D-I Examination ‘2012 .

                                                                                                                           
IMPORTANT DATES:--

 

1.	Last date for submission of Examination forms & fees without fine at College Office	16-07-2012 to 21-07-2012
2.	Last date for submission of Examination forms & fees without fine at University Office	24-07-2012
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7.	Last date for submission of Examination forms & fees with late fine Rs.1000 at University Office	One week before Examination Starts
8.	Probable date of Examination	AUGUST 2012

 

 
 

NOTIFICATION NO.-33/2012      DATE-14/07/2012    

Following are the schedule of Examination forms & fees in the College / University office for B.Lib.Inf. Sc. Semester-II Examination-2011

IMPORTANT DATES:-                              

1.	Last date for submission of Examination forms & fees without fine at College Office	16-07-2012 to 20-07-2012
2.	Last date for submission of Examination forms & fees without fine at University Office	23-07-2012
3.	Last date for submission of Examination forms & fees with late fine Rs. 150 at College Office	21-07-2012 to 23-07-2012
4.	Last date for submission of Examination forms & fees with late fine Rs. 150 at University Office	24-07-2012
5.	Date of  Commencement of Examination	1st AUGUST 2012

 
 

NOTIFICATION NO.-34/2012      DATE-14/07/2012

Following are the schedule of Examination forms & fees in the College / University office for B.Lib.Inf. Sc. Semester-I Examination-2012

IMPORTANT DATES:-

1.	Last date for submission of Examination forms & fees without fine at College Office	16-07-2012 to 20-07-2012
2.	Last date for submission of Examination forms & fees without fine at University Office	23-07-2012
3.	Last date for submission of Examination forms & fees with late fine Rs. 150 at College Office	21-07-2012 to 23-07-2012
4.	Last date for submission of Examination forms & fees with late fine Rs. 150 at University Office	24-07-2012
5.	Last date for submission of Examination forms & fees with late fine Rs.500 at College Office	24-07-2012 to 28-07-2012
6.	Last date for submission of Examination forms & fees with late fine Rs.500 at University Office	31-07-2012
7.	Date of  Commencement of Examination	25th AUGUST 2012

                                
                            URGENT NOTICE   

  1. Students of BBA/BCA D-I /B.Lib.Inf.Sc. Sem –II must clear their Course fee (Rs. 15700 for BBA/BCA D-I Course & Rs. 24000 For B.Lib.Inf.Sc. Course) & obtain no dues certificate for the same.

2. Students must submit LIBRARY BOOKS issued to them if any and obtain no dues certificate for the same.

3. Students must submit EXAMINATION FORM, COURSE FEE, and UNIVERSITY EXAMINATION FEE  in Department’s office from 7am to 11am.

B.B.A. / B.C.A. D-I Examination -2012 Notification

Is the Web Driving Us Mad?

Tweets, texts, emails, posts. New research says the Internet can make us lonely and depressed—and may even create more extreme forms of mental illness, 

Questions about the Internet’s deleterious effects on the mind are at least as old as hyperlinks. But even among Web skeptics, the idea that a new technology might influence how we think and feel—let alone contribute to a great American crack-up—was considered silly and naive, like waving a cane at electric light or blaming the television for kids these days. Instead, the Internet was seen as just another medium, a delivery system, not a diabolical machine. It made people happier and more productive. And where was the proof otherwise?

Now, however, the proof is starting to pile up. The first good, peer-reviewed research is emerging, and the picture is much gloomier than the trumpet blasts of Web utopians have allowed. The current incarnation of the Internet—portable, social, accelerated, and all-pervasive—may be making us not just dumber or lonelier but more depressed and anxious, prone to obsessive-compulsive and attention-deficit disorders, even outright psychotic. Our digitized minds can scan like those of drug addicts, and normal people are breaking down in sad and seemingly new ways.

In the summer of 1996, seven young researchers at MIT blurred the lines between man and computer, living simultaneously in the physical and virtual worlds. They carried keyboards in their pockets, radio-transmitters in their backpacks, and a clip-on screen in front of their eyes. They called themselves “cyborgs”—and they were freaks. But as Sherry Turkle, a psychologist at MIT, points out, “we are all cyborgs now.” This life of continuous connection has come to seem normal, but that’s not the same as saying that it’s healthy or sustainable, as technology—to paraphrase the old line about alcohol—becomes the cause of and solution to of all life’s problems.

In less than the span of a single childhood, Americans have merged with their machines, staring at a screen for at least eight hours a day, more time than we spend on any other activity including sleeping. Teens fit some seven hours of screen time into the average school day; 11, if you count time spent multitasking on several devices. When President Obama last ran for office, the iPhone had yet to be launched. Now smartphones outnumber the old models in America, and more than a third of users get online before getting out of bed.

Meanwhile, texting has become like blinking: the average person, regardless of age, sends or receives about 400 texts a month, four times the 2007 number. The average teen processes an astounding 3,700 texts a month, double the 2007 figure. And more than two thirds of these normal, everyday cyborgs, myself included, report feeling their phone vibrate when in fact nothing is happening. Researchers call it “phantom-vibration syndrome.”

Altogether the digital shifts of the last five years call to mind a horse that has sprinted out from underneath its rider, dragging the person who once held the reins. No one is arguing for some kind of Amish future. But the research is now making it clear that the Internet is not “just” another delivery system. It is creating a whole new mental environment, a digital state of nature where the human mind becomes a spinning instrument panel, and few people will survive unscathed.

“This is an issue as important and unprecedented as climate change,” says Susan Greenfield, a pharmacology professor at Oxford University who is working on a book about how digital culture is rewiring us—and not for the better. “We could create the most wonderful world for our kids but that’s not going to happen if we’re in denial and people sleepwalk into these technologies and end up glassy-eyed zombies.”

Does the Internet make us crazy? Not the technology itself or the content, no. But a Newsweek review of findings from more than a dozen countries finds the answers pointing in a similar direction. Peter Whybrow, the director of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, argues that “the computer is like electronic cocaine,” fueling cycles of mania followed by depressive stretches. The Internet “leads to behavior that people are conscious is not in their best interest and does leave them anxious and does make them act compulsively,” says Nicholas Carr, whose book The Shallows, about the Web’s effect on cognition, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. It “fosters our obsessions, dependence, and stress reactions,” adds Larry Rosen, a California psychologist who has researched the Net’s effect for decades. It “encourages—and even promotes—insanity.”

Fear that the Internet and mobile technology contributes to addiction—not to mention the often related ADHD and OCD disorders—has persisted for decades, but for most of that time the naysayers prevailed, often puckishly. “What’s next? Microwave abuse and Chapstick addiction?” wrote a peer reviewer for one of the leading psychiatric journals, rejecting a national study of problematic Internet use in 2006. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has never included a category of machine-human interactions.

But that view is suddenly on the outs. When the new DSM is released next year, Internet Addiction Disorder will be included for the first time, albeit in an appendix tagged for “further study.” China, Taiwan, and Korea recently accepted the diagnosis, and began treating problematic Web use as a grave national health crisis. In those countries, where tens of millions of people (and as much as 30 percent of teens) are considered Internet-addicted, mostly to gaming, virtual reality, and social media, the story is sensational front-page news. One young couple neglected its infant to death while nourishing a virtual baby online. A young man fatally bludgeoned his mother for suggesting he log off (and then used her credit card to rack up more hours). At least 10 ultra-Web users, serviced by one-click noodle delivery, have died of blood clots from sitting too long.

Now the Korean government is funding treatment centers, and coordinating a late-night Web shutdown for young people. China, meanwhile, has launched a mothers’ crusade for safe Web habits, turning to that approach after it emerged that some doctors were using electro-shock and severe beatings to treat Internet-addicted teens.

“There’s just something about the medium that’s addictive,” says Elias Aboujaoude, a psychiatrist at Stanford University School of Medicine, where he directs the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Clinic and Impulse Control Disorders Clinic. “I’ve seen plenty of patients who have no history of addictive behavior—or substance abuse of any kind—become addicted via the Internet and these other technologies.”

A 2006 study of problematic Web habits (the one that was puckishly rejected) was later published, forming the basis for his recent book Virtually You, about the fallout expected from the Web’s irresistible allure. Even among a demographic of middle-aged landline users—the average respondent was in his 40s, white, and making more than $50,000 a year—Aboujaoude found that more than one in eight showed at least one sign of an unhealthy attachment to the Net. More recent surveys that recruit people already online have found American numbers on a par with those in Asia.

The brains of Internet addicts scan a lot like the brains of drug and alcohol addicts. (Mariette Carstens / Hollandse Hoogte-Redux)

Then there was the University of Maryland’s 2010 “Unplugged” experiment that asked 200 undergrads to forgo all Web and mobile technologies for a day and to keep a diary of their feelings. “I clearly am addicted and the dependency is sickening,” reported one student in the study. “Media is my drug,” wrote another. At least two other schools haven’t even been able to get such an experiment off the ground for lack of participants. “Most college students are not just unwilling, but functionally unable, to be without their media links to the world,” the University of Maryland concluded.

That same year two psychiatrists in Taiwan made headlines with the idea of iPhone addiction disorder. They documented two cases from their own practices: one involved a high-school boy who ended up in an asylum after his iPhone usage reached 24 hours a day. The other featured a 31-year-old saleswoman who used her phone while driving. Both cases might have been laughed off if not for a 200-person Stanford study of iPhone habits released at the same time. It found that one in 10 users feels “fully addicted” to his or her phone. All but 6 percent of the sample admitted some level of compulsion, while 3 percent won’t let anyone else touch their phones.

In the two years since, concern over the Web’s pathological stickiness has only intensified. In April, doctors told The Times of India about an anecdotal uptick in “Facebook addiction.” The latest details of America’s Web obsession are found in Larry Rosen’s new book, iDisorder, which, despite the hucksterish title, comes with the imprimatur of the world’s largest academic publisher. His team surveyed 750 people, a spread of teens and adults who represented the Southern California census, detailing their tech habits, their feelings about those habits, and their scores on a series of standard tests of psychiatric disorders. He found that most respondents, with the exception of those over the age of 50, check text messages, email or their social network “all the time” or “every 15 minutes.” More worryingly, he also found that those who spent more time online had more “compulsive personality traits.”

Perhaps not that surprising: those who want the most time online feel compelled to get it. But in fact these users don’t exactly want to be so connected. It’s not quite free choice that drives most young corporate employees (45 and under) to keep their BlackBerrys in the bedroom within arms’ reach, per a 2011 study; or free choice, per another 2011 study, that makes 80 percent of vacationers bring along laptops or smartphones so they can check in with work while away; or free choice that leads smartphone users to check their phones before bed, in the middle of the night, if they stir, and within minutes of waking up.

We may appear to be choosing to use this technology, but in fact we are being dragged to it by the potential of short-term rewards. Every ping could be social, sexual, or professional opportunity, and we get a mini-reward, a squirt of dopamine, for answering the bell. “These rewards serve as jolts of energy that recharge the compulsion engine, much like the frisson a gambler receives as a new card hits the table,” MIT media scholar Judith Donath recently told Scientific American. “Cumulatively, the effect is potent and hard to resist.”

Recently it became possible to watch this kind of Web use rewire the brain. In 2008 Gary Small, the head of UCLA’s Memory and Aging Research Center, was the first to document changes in the brain as a result of even moderate Internet use. He rounded up 24 people, half of them experienced Web users, half of them newbies, and he passed them each through a brain scanner. The difference was striking, with the Web users displaying fundamentally altered prefrontal cortexes. But the real surprise was what happened next. The novices went away for a week, and were asked to spend a total of five hours online and then return for another scan. “The naive subjects had already rewired their brains,” he later wrote, musing darkly about what might happen when we spend more time online.

The brains of Internet addicts, it turns out, look like the brains of drug and alcohol addicts. In a study published in January, Chinese researchers found “abnormal white matter”—essentially extra nerve cells built for speed—in the areas charged with attention, control, and executive function. A parallel study found similar changes in the brains of videogame addicts. And both studies come on the heels of other Chinese results that link Internet addiction to “structural abnormalities in gray matter,” namely shrinkage of 10 to 20 percent in the area of the brain responsible for processing of speech, memory, motor control, emotion, sensory, and other information. And worse, the shrinkage never stopped: the more time online, the more the brain showed signs of “atrophy.”

While brain scans don’t reveal which came first, the abuse or the brain changes, many clinicians feel their own observations confirmed. “There’s little doubt we’re becoming more impulsive,” says Stanford’s Aboujaoude, and one reason for this is technology use. He points to the rise in OCD and ADHD diagnosis, the latter of which has risen 66 percent in the last decade. “There is a cause and effect.”

And don’t kid yourself: the gap between an “Internet addict” and John Q. Public is thin to nonexistent. One of the early flags for addiction was spending more than 38 hours a week online. By that definition, we are all addicts now, many of us by Wednesday afternoon, Tuesday if it’s a busy week. Current tests for Internet addiction are qualitative, casting an uncomfortably wide net, including people who admit that yes, they are restless, secretive, or preoccupied with the Web and that they have repeatedly made unsuccessful efforts to cut back. But if this is unhealthy, it’s clear many Americans don’t want to be well.

Like addiction, the digital connection to depression and anxiety was also once a near laughable assertion. A 1998 Carnegie Mellon study found that Web use over a two-year period was linked to blue moods, loneliness, and the loss of real-world friends. But the subjects all lived in Pittsburgh, critics sneered. Besides, the Net might not bring you chicken soup, but it means the end of solitude, a global village of friends, and friends you haven’t met yet. Sure enough, when Carnegie Mellon checked back in with the denizens of Steel City a few years later, they were happier than ever.

But the black crow is back on the wire. In the past five years, numerous studies have duplicated the original Carnegie Mellon findings and extended them, showing that the more a person hangs out in the global village, the worse they are likely to feel. Web use often displaces sleep, exercise, and face-to-face exchanges, all of which can upset even the chirpiest soul. But the digital impact may last not only for a day or a week, but for years down the line. A recent American study based on data from adolescent Web use in the 1990s found a connection between time online and mood disorders in young adulthood. Chinese researchers have similarly found “a direct effect” between heavy Net use and the development of full-blown depression, while scholars at Case Western Reserve University correlated heavy texting and social-media use with stress, depression, and suicidal thinking.

In response to this work, an article in the journal Pediatrics noted the rise of “a new phenomenon called ‘Facebook depression,’?” and explained that “the intensity of the online world may trigger depression.” Doctors, according to the report published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, should work digital usage questions into every annual checkup.

Rosen, the author of iDisorder, points to a preponderance of research showing “a link between Internet use, instant messaging, emailing, chatting, and depression among adolescents,” as well as to the “strong relationships between video gaming and depression.” But the problem seems to be quality as well as quantity: bad interpersonal experiences—so common online—can lead to these potential spirals of despair. For her book Alone Together, MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle interviewed more than 450 people, most of them in their teens and 20s, about their lives online. And while she’s the author of two prior tech-positive books, and once graced the cover of Wired magazine, she now reveals a sad, stressed-out world of people coated in Dorito dust and locked in a dystopian relationship with their machines.

People tell her that their phones and laptops are the “place for hope” in their lives, the “place where sweetness comes from.” Children describe mothers and fathers unavailable in profound ways, present and yet not there at all. “Mothers are now breastfeeding and bottle-feeding their babies as they text,” she told the American Psychological Association last summer. “A mother made tense by text messages is going to be experienced as tense by the child. And that child is vulnerable to interpreting that tension as coming from within the relationship with the mother. This is something that needs to be watched very closely.” She added, “Technology can make us forget important things we know about life.”

This evaporation of the genuine self also occurred among the high-school- and college-age kids she interviewed. They were struggling with digital identities at an age when actual identity is in flux. “What I learned in high school,” a kid named Stan told Turkle, “was profiles, profiles, profiles; how to make a me.” It’s a nerve-racking learning curve, a life lived entirely in public with the webcam on, every mistake recorded and shared, mocked until something more mockable comes along. “How long do I have to do this?” another teen sighed, as he prepared to reply to 100 new messages on his phone.

Last year, when MTV polled its 13- to 30-year-old viewers on their Web habits, most felt “defined” by what they put online, “exhausted” by always having to be putting it out there, and utterly unable to look away for fear of missing out. “FOMO,” the network called it. “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,” begins Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl, a beatnik rant that opens with people “dragging themselves” at dawn, searching for an “angry fix” of heroin. It’s not hard to imagine the alternative imagery today.

The latest Net-and-depression study may be the saddest one of all. With consent of the subjects, Missouri State University tracked the real-time Web habits of 216 kids, 30 percent of whom showed signs of depression. The results, published last month, found that the depressed kids were the most intense Web users, chewing up more hours of email, chat, videogames, and file sharing. They also opened, closed, and switched browser windows more frequently, searching, one imagines, and not finding what they hoped to find.

They each sound like Doug, a Midwestern college student who maintained four avatars, keeping each virtual world open on his computer, along with his school work, email, and favorite videogames. He told Turkle that his real life is “just another window”—and “usually not my best one.” Where is this headed? she wonders. That’s the scariest line of inquiry of all.

Recently, scholars have begun to suggest that our digitized world may support even more extreme forms of mental illness. At Stanford, Dr. Aboujaoude is studying whether some digital selves should be counted as a legitimate, pathological “alter of sorts,” like the alter egos documented in cases of multiple personality disorder (now called dissociative identity disorder in the DSM). To test his idea, he gave one of his patients, Richard, a mild-mannered human-resources executive with a ruthless Web poker habit, the official test for multiple personality disorder. The result was startling. He scored as high as patient zero. “I might as well have been ... administering the questionnaire to Sybil Dorsett!” Aboujaoude writes.

The Gold brothers—Joel, a psychiatrist at New York University, and Ian, a philosopher and psychiatrist at McGill University—are investigating technology’s potential to sever people’s ties with reality, fueling hallucinations, delusions, and genuine psychosis, much as it seemed to do in the case of Jason Russell, the filmmaker behind “Kony 2012.” The idea is that online life is akin to life in the biggest city, stitched and sutured together by cables and modems, but no less mentally real—and taxing—than New York or Hong Kong. “The data clearly support the view that someone who lives in a big city is at higher risk of psychosis than someone in a small town,” Ian Gold writes via email. “If the Internet is a kind of imaginary city,” he continues. “It might have some of the same psychological impact.”

A team of researchers at Tel Aviv University is following a similar path. Late last year, they published what they believe are the first documented cases of “Internet-related psychosis.” The qualities of online communication are capable of generating “true psychotic phenomena,” the authors conclude, before putting the medical community on warning. “The spiraling use of the Internet and its potential involvement in psychopathology are new consequences of our times.”

So what do we do about it? Some would say nothing, since even the best research is tangled in the timeless conundrum of what comes first. Does the medium break normal people with its unrelenting presence, endless distractions, and threat of public ridicule for missteps? Or does it attract broken souls?

But in a way, it doesn’t matter whether our digital intensity is causing mental illness, or simply encouraging it along, as long as people are suffering. Overwhelmed by the velocity of their lives, we turn to prescription drugs, which helps explain why America runs on Xanax (and why rehab admissions for benzodiazepines, the ingredient in Xanax and other anti-anxiety drugs, have tripled since the late 1990s). We also spring for the false rescue of multitasking, which saps attention even when the computer is off. And all of us, since the relationship with the Internet began, have tended to accept it as is, without much conscious thought about how we want it to be or what we want to avoid. Those days of complacency should end. The Internet is still ours to shape. Our minds are in the balance.

 WITH THANKS TO  PRABHAT KHABAR AND NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL  providing guidance to younger generation ....