Facebook’s business model, it should come as no surprise, involves getting users as hooked as possible on the web’s premier walled garden. The more time users spend clicking, sharing, liking, and posting status updates, the more profitable Facebook becomes.

So if you feel that you spend more time on Facebook than you want, this is hardly a coincidence. It’s the preferred result of sophisticated corporate research and development, the goal of which is what industry insiders call “stickiness”.

Is it possible you’re dependent on the online blue and white to an unhealthy degree?

To test this question objectively, Norwegian psychologist Cecilie Andreassen at the University of Bergen has developed the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale. Her research, published last month in the journal Psychological Reports, using this new scale has found some interesting results, including that people who are anxious and socially insecure use Facebook more than those who score low on these traits.