"The use of Facebook has increased fast and this has led us to encounter a series of dependencies linked to "social media" that can be compared to drugs." They are the words of psychologist Cecilie Schou Andreassen of the University of Bergen, Norway, author of the study Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale. This research allows establishing the type of relationship that individuals establish with the social network, assessing a possible risk of cyber-dependence. The "Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale" was published in the April 2012 edition of Psychological Reports (see below link) and the results show that given the social nature of Facebook, which avoids "face-to-face", you can be an addict, especially in four vulnerable groups:1) young users, 2) anxious users, 3) unsafe users and 4) women.

The study also shows that organized and/or ambitious people do not usually fall into this cyber-depend.
The questions in the test to measure the degree of personal dependence, according to the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale, are as follows:

1. Do I spend a lot of time thinking about Facebook and connecting to use it?

2. Do I feel the need to use Facebook and, also, for a long time?

3. Do you use Facebook trying to forget about your problems?

4. Have you tried to reduce the use of Facebook without achieving it?

5. Have you tried to reduce your use of Facebook without achieving it?

6. Has Facebook used harmed your studies or work?

The rating scale for each question is:
1. Very rarely

2. Rarely

3. Sometimes

4. A lot

5. Very much

​If 4 of the 6 questions have a "lot" or a "lot" you can start talking about addiction. The Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale was carried out in 2011 with 423 students (227 women and 196 men).

Although cyber-dependency has not yet been classified as a disease, according to Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at Stanford University, "What we can say with certainty is that for a significant part of the population there are some red flags that indicate a real problem". These problems imply family, marital, labor and health consequences.