There’s no real reason to doubt the report as the research was conducted over a sample size of 1,319 subjects with the average respondent being no older than 21 years. Most of them were net junkies, and so a conclusion based on this size is probably reflective of the larger malaise that plagues this tech-happy generation.

Yes, it is true that that people are spending a disproportionate amount of time in front of their computers, they could be playing video games, chatting on social networking sites, paying their bills online, or even taking e-courses. At the same time, employees in million of offices spread across the planet are foraging through countless sites in search of solutions to issues that are both professional and personal.

Why just a few days ago, Facebook, the website that revolutionised social networking, said that it had accumulated 400 million users, of which nearly 200 million were added in just one year. Twitter, had close to 18 million users by 2009 and growing. Besides this there are others — MySpace, Bebo, Orkut, Xanga, Friendster and Flixter, etc. — that have their own dedicated band of users. So there it is, the big, dark void that they call the Internet and an increasing number of people that are inhabiting this world, some very real, others donning garbs that they 
called avatars.

But it is not just these identities that people have acquired online, most of them have also taken their emotional baggage across. They find more connectivity with strangers than they sometimes do with friends or even family and relationships in real life. The ties that are forged there dominate every aspect of their personalities that are sometimes not acceptable in the real world.  In doing this, they get so comfortable with their virtual environs that every time they step out into the reality, everything jars, 
everything stinks.

It’s this disconnect that probably leads them to feel the blues — or depression as the hard practicalities of life bring them crashing down to earth. It’s not that they are depressed because they are on the Internet. It’s just that their minds cannot bridge the disconnect. It’s a little like the Avatar-blues some people experienced after they had watched James Cameron’s film. They would have loved to stay in Pandora, a world not tainted by human foibles, and for as long as they were in it they were happy. The moment they stepped out of the theatre, everything staled.