If you look at articles about internet addiction from the early 2000s, you will find skeptical discussions about whether or not it qualifies as a valid psychological disorder. But in our decade, experimentation has conclusively shown that internet addiction is a very real problem of growing concern.
Before I move on, this is a little test to self-diagnose your own susceptibility to become addicted to the internet.
Getting off the internet presents some people with as much of a problem as quitting smoking or drinking. Here's a discussion from the Toronto Sun about the inadequacy of our concern about the increasing rate of addiction. For our generation of digital natives, life without the internet is actually outside the realm of our experience. When internet use becomes excessive to the point where it affects offline relationships and everyday routines, it behaves just as an addiction to substances. As David Foster Wallace might say, an addiction matures when one continues to use despite the fact that using is decreasing one's quality of life. And as the writer of the Toronto Sun article says, addiction is a slippery slope that ends in isolation.
And the signs are less extreme than we might think. You don't have to stay up all night gaming or stress about what's happening on Farmville while you're offline. If you have push notifications from Facebook sent to your smartphone or check your email before doing anything else, even when you actually have work, you might be on your way to an internet addiction. And how many of us in the younger generation don't do those things?
But on the other hand, there's also the danger of over-diagnosis. Especially in America, we have a tradition of looking to medication, in many cases unnecessary, to save us from every little problem. In order to avoid mislabeling people with mental illness, over 5000 psychologists have signed a petition to prevent internet addiction from being added to the list of diagnoses in the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, to be published in 2013.
As the Sun points out, some psychologists tremble at the thought of the tidal wave that might engulf us as internet addiction rates escalate while we haven't fully recognized the problem. Others worry that we might overcompensate because of this fear, leading to other, equal problems. Either way, we all need to examine our own purposes of using the internet and question whether they do justice to the amount of time we spend online. And it's essential to tune out every now and then, exploring the domains of our own thoughts without the static whine of digital noise in the background.
Before I move on, this is a little test to self-diagnose your own susceptibility to become addicted to the internet.
Getting off the internet presents some people with as much of a problem as quitting smoking or drinking. Here's a discussion from the Toronto Sun about the inadequacy of our concern about the increasing rate of addiction. For our generation of digital natives, life without the internet is actually outside the realm of our experience. When internet use becomes excessive to the point where it affects offline relationships and everyday routines, it behaves just as an addiction to substances. As David Foster Wallace might say, an addiction matures when one continues to use despite the fact that using is decreasing one's quality of life. And as the writer of the Toronto Sun article says, addiction is a slippery slope that ends in isolation.
And the signs are less extreme than we might think. You don't have to stay up all night gaming or stress about what's happening on Farmville while you're offline. If you have push notifications from Facebook sent to your smartphone or check your email before doing anything else, even when you actually have work, you might be on your way to an internet addiction. And how many of us in the younger generation don't do those things?
But on the other hand, there's also the danger of over-diagnosis. Especially in America, we have a tradition of looking to medication, in many cases unnecessary, to save us from every little problem. In order to avoid mislabeling people with mental illness, over 5000 psychologists have signed a petition to prevent internet addiction from being added to the list of diagnoses in the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, to be published in 2013.
As the Sun points out, some psychologists tremble at the thought of the tidal wave that might engulf us as internet addiction rates escalate while we haven't fully recognized the problem. Others worry that we might overcompensate because of this fear, leading to other, equal problems. Either way, we all need to examine our own purposes of using the internet and question whether they do justice to the amount of time we spend online. And it's essential to tune out every now and then, exploring the domains of our own thoughts without the static whine of digital noise in the background.
