Social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace encourage teenagers to build “transient relationships” that can leave them traumatised and even suicidal when they collapse, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has warned.
Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols also expressed concern about the rise of individualism in society.
He described footballers who break their contracts to move to other clubs for bigger salaries as “mercenaries” and said moves to loosen laws on assisted suicide were particularly worrying.
His comments in The Sunday Telegraph follow the inquest into the death of 15-year-old Megan Gillan, a student at Macclesfield High School in Cheshire who took a fatal overdose of painkillers after being bullied on social networking site Bebo.
Archbishop Nichols said the sites encouraged young people to put too much emphasis on the number of friends they have rather than on the quality of their relationships.
“Among young people often a key factor in them committing suicide is the trauma of transient relationships,” he said. “They throw themselves into a friendship or network of friendships, then it collapses and they’re desolate.”
He continued: “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.”
Archbishop Nichols said the internet and mobile phones were “dehumanising” community life and that relationships had been weakened by the decline in face-to-face meetings.
“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.
“We’re losing social skills, the human interaction skills, how to read a person’s mood, to read their body language, how to be patient until the moment is right to make or press a point. Too much exclusive use of electronic information dehumanises what is a very, very important part of community life and living together.”
Press Association
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