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I am sure many of you have heard of instagram? For those of you who get lost beyond the social networking sites Facebook and/or Myspace (for those of you still stuck on sconex, there is not place for you in society), instagram is a site that allows you to upload and modify photos that you can then post on any of your networking accounts. People often use this opportunity to paint, as it were, a picture of themselves that is real. You can make your skin clearer, your body thinner, your hair more shampoo commercial ready, or essentially change yourself completely all with a click of the button.

And lets face it: if you can make yourself look better that easily why sped time on making your carefully altered dreams a reality? A new study suggests that social networking sites may be compromising healthier life-style choices-including physical activity.

Presented at the annual conference of the British Psychological Society's Division of Health Psychology in Liverpool, researchers conducted a survey of 350 students attending the University of Ulster that asked questions about their social networking activity and levels of physical activity.

When the results were analyzed, researchers found that the amount of time spent on social network websites was negatively correlated with the respondents' level of physical activity in the previous week. Facebook fans were also less likely to take part in team sports, but this effect was less pronounced.

"Time is a finite resource, so time spent in social networking must come at the expense of other activities. Our study suggests that physical activity may be one of those activities."

Researchers announce that a global study consisting of triple the amount of students belonging to various campuses will be given the same questionnaire, slightly modified to account for cultural differences, to gauge whether or not there is significant proof behind this idea. For now, experts logistically hypothesize that social networking compromises other activities, though details about what students would do if they could not use these sites is still unclear.

We can only assume that texting would become more prevalent than it already is, if such a thing is even possible.