Are You Addicted to Commenting?
Students used to go to college to learn something useful, but lately it seems we’re learning useful things from them.
Take, for example, psychology students who subject themselves to endless experiments, surveys, and scans, all in the name of improving science for the rest of us. I feel sorry for all the students who have participated in a slew of recent studies in order to learn that commenting online can be addictive.
The issue was brought to our attention recently by Olivia Erickson, a broadcaster for Baylor University’s Lariat TV News (LTVN), who wrote an opinion piece on “opinion addiction” for the Baylor Lariat. Erickson consulted the American Psychiatric Association for guidance on why we find commenting so compelling.
The need to be seen, acknowledged, and heard stems from “social anxiety,” including “excessive worry about negative evaluation by others.” So we go about merrily reviewing, rating, and commenting on everything from restroom cleanliness to our “parking experience” to the checkout at the grocery store, all the time scared to death of getting a bad review ourselves.
Some of Erickson’s college peers have had serious problems with internet addiction and with the need to comment. Researchers in China subjected 32 undergraduates to a study asking them to comment online and measuring how it impacted their mental health. Of the 32 test subjects, 18 suffered from “pathological internet use” (PIU) and 14 did not.
The students were asked to comment on a rapid sequence of both positive and negative news stories, and their emotional state was assessed afterward. While not exactly answering the main question about how commenting impacts emotional state, the study did have two interesting conclusions:
- There was no difference between the PIU group and the control group in the emotional impact of commenting on positive stories.
- However, the PIU group was significantly more emotionally impacted by commenting on negative stories, expressing both more happiness or greater distress.
The researchers concluded that people with internet use disorder are both more excited by and depressed by online commenting than average users. I’m not sure you needed a study to figure that out.
Another study from Bangladesh found similarly unsurprising results when they recruited 82 volunteers with borderline personality disorder from a psychiatric ward at a hospital and assessed their internet usage patterns:
- 18.29% demonstrated severe internet addiction
- 37.80% demonstrated moderate internet addiction
- 29.27% demonstrated mild internet addiction
The somewhat obvious conclusion of the study was that greater internet usage was correlated with a greater chance of internet addiction.
A different approach to the subject comes from a delightfully-named publication, The Journal of Intelligent Decision Making and Information Science. The journal recently published the results of a systematic review of scientific papers on the subject of balancing online engagement with academic success.
Three researchers looked at 162 peer-reviewed studies and found that the strategies for maintaining academic success in the face of digital participation broke down into four major categories:
- self-regulation (61%)
- planned tech-free periods (37%)
- detox applications (24%)
- institutional policies (20%)
From this analysis, the researchers built two analytical models: A Higher Education Digital Wellness Programme as a framework guiding intervention, and a Digital Engagement Detox Transition Model guiding student digital detox through several consecutive steps. The steps are somewhat ingenious and worthy of a more detailed post. They include:
- Assessment (quantitative tracking and trigger assessment)
- Friction (gray scaling, adding distance from phone, etc.)
- Tapering (time limits, time-of-day limits)
- Substitution (other tactile hobbies)
- Maintenance (digital fasting and use reassessment)
It’s so interesting that they incorporate habit substitution in their recipe for recovery from internet addiction. We’ve written a lot about substitution here at AddictionNews. The researchers also write about the need to identify triggers and to taper usage rather than going cold turkey, subjects that come up frequently on this site.
Please don’t feel any pressure to comment on this post or to review or rate your experience with AddictionNews. We’re glad you’re reading, and we hope you come back!
Written by Steve O’Keefe. First published October 9, 2026.
Sources:
“Let go of your opinion addiction,” Baylor Lariat, October 2, 2026.
“Internet Use Patterns and Their Relationship with Internet Addiction in Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder,” The Planet, October 3, 2026.
“The Effect of Online News Commenting on Internal Emotional State Among Pathological Internet Users,” International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, August 6, 2021.
“Balancing Digital Engagement and Academic Success: A Systematic Review of Detox Strategies for Higher Education Students,” The Journal of Intelligent Decision Making and Information Science, 2026.
Image Copyright: antonioguillem.
