Slashdot Mirror
US Students Suffering From Internet Addiction
goG sends in a piece from IBTimes on the latest study to confirm what is becoming pretty obvious. The article mentions the Internet addiction rehab center we discussed last year. "American college students are hooked on cellphones, social media and the Internet and showing symptoms similar to drug and alcohol addictions, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of Maryland who asked 200 students to give up all media for one full day found that after 24 hours many showed signs of withdrawal, craving and anxiety along with an inability to function well without their media and social links. ... 'Texting and IM-ing my friends gives me a constant feeling of comfort,' wrote one of the students, who blogged about their reactions. 'When I did not have those two luxuries, I felt quite alone and secluded from my life.'"
'Texting and IM-ing my friends gives me a constant feeling of comfort,' wrote one of the students, who blogged about their reactions. 'When I did not have those two luxuries, I felt quite alone and secluded from my life.' I just thought it was a bit ironic to blog about one's Internet addiction
People today are broken and oversocialized, and more importantly, too careful. The anonymity of the internet coupled with its ability to let people "construct" their image of self that others perceive; take that away, and people are afraid of communicating with others.
Of course, not with close friends, but you can look at how people in a bus or a subway will stare at the floor and try their best not to make eye contact.
I'm here all the time!
No, the Internet is not addictive. Nor is texting.
Certain people are obsessive/compulsive.
Inability to function without social links? You take anyone's friends away and they'll get lonely and anxious. For a lot of students, the internet is the only link to old friends and family that they have. Of course they're going to react badly to being isolated.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
I thought for a while that I was "addicted" to the internet. I post to blogs a lot, check my twitter like crazy, check the websites I run like crazy etc. etc.
Then I moved to a new house. Rarely if ever do I even power my computer on while I'm at home now. I'd rather be reading or playing with the dog or riding my bicycle.
It turns out I was just bored.
I think kids have set their standards too high. The internet allows the entire world to compete for their attention. Give them something more interesting to obsess over and they will.
In other words, kids are no more "addicted" to the internet than they were at one point addicted to fishing, or basketball, or any other hobbie that kids have ever had.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
People become sad, annoyed, when not allowed to communicate with their friends. The only thing that has changed here is the mechanism of the communication.
How much will it take to addict me?
How many posts until I have to come back every single day?
When will I start turning down other activities because I have to get back on /.?
Right now, dinner with friends seems a LOT more interesting.
Merchants, immersed in the bustling commerce of Rome, who suddenly found themselves shipwrecked along with a handful of other sailors on some island in the Mediterranean would likely have, "showed signs of withdrawal, craving and anxiety along with an inability to function well without their " ...familiar environment around which their lives had come to revolve.
I would say that it's only an addiction if it's actively interfering with your normal life. That is, your job, your education, your family, and your interpersonal relationships.
I don't use IM'ing and texting as much as I used to (in college) but I still use it. I don't think you can really call these addictions. These are just different forms of communication. I just think they might be overreacting a bit. For example, the comment from one of the students about being secluded... one would feel the same way if they were told not to talk to anyone.
Now if they were whining that they couldn't chat when they were hanging out with their friends... that might be a problem. I think chatting and texting augments social interaction. The problem is when it turns into a substitute. So I'm not saying that internet/text/chatting addiction doesn't exist -- we just have to be careful about defining what internet addiction really is.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
I think people are generally social. If you took away some other thing you were used to (like your bus ride to work, car, tv set, news paper, friends etc) would it be normal to feel alone and secluded?
Thanks to technology, we are linked together. We are able to communicate with each others wherever we are. We have access to an incredible amount of knowledge through the Internet and this can now be done through cellphones, blackberries, etc.
Now, imagine a generation continuously linked to this hive-mind. Imagine disconnecting them one by one. Imagine how powerless and lost they would become.
I've been using the internet for years and I ain't hooked yet. *clicks refresh repeatedly*
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
the internet is far to broad to simply state someone is addicted to it. im not stating that is impossible to become an addicted to a certain aspects of the web but to say that your addicted to the net in general tells me the researches lacked a certain understanding of it. the internet itself is a form of communication, so saying your addicted to the internet is like saying your addicted to talking.
... use of their time.
If you're "addicted" to PLAYING basketball (as opposed to just watching it) then you're probably in pretty good shape.
If you're "addicted" to fishing, at least it's a useful skill. As long as you like fish a lot.
If you're addicted to "the Internet" ... what do you have to show for it?
Apparently these researchers never interviewed your average /. user.
But on a serious note, this is about self-control. The internet does not promote it. The internet makes it easy to access data instantly, and people get used to this 'instant-gratification' that the online world provides. Then when they hop out of their second-life into their first-life, they find themselves bored, for they can't keep that continual flow of information coupled with interaction going.
It is physiological really. Along the same lines as Television addiction. Our brain is evolved to focus on moving stimuli as a defense mechanism, and that at is core is the basis of why television can seem so addicting. Your mind is drawn to moving images, dynamic content, new information.
Now we can constantly flood these receptors with changing stimuli, and the 'fuzzy feelings' of social interactions intertwined with these basic reactions create and addicting experience. It could be classified as a psychological addiction, but then what. Prescribe drugs? Send to rehab? Treating the symptoms, not the problem.
American's are terrible when it comes to passing down traits like self-control, and if the parents are preaching it, in partial to their understanding of the digital beast, or lack of care, and the kids are consuming consuming consuming, we are going to end of a with a generation of kids with the internet feeding their addiction. And they psycs will just prescribe more pills, the pharmas will make more money, the legislators will try to pass more laws, vendors will produce more parental-control software to remedy the content producers making more content, the ISP making it arrive faster, and the OS and UI designers making it present better. The industry the content and internetworked connections will make more money as the industry that fights the side-effects of this digital age makes more money, while the industry that litigates against all of this will make more money.
This is the beast of capitalism, society, and techno-social evolution at its finest. And it will continue to flourish as long as younger generations are not instilled with base values like self-control, instead of blame displacement and causal avoidance.
/end pointless rant.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
WTF is "addiction"? That's a rhetorical question - I can easily give you dozens of definitions. That's the problem - there's a definition to suit every situation. If you want to impugn a particular behavior, prejudice the discussion with derogatory labels. I'm not saying that people don't compulsively and repeatedly do truly harmful things, to themselves and others, in pursuit of self-gratification. But the word "addiction" loses power and meaning when it's applied so ubiquitously and senselessly.
An amazing discovery! Most people like to interact socially with other people, are comforted by being able to talk to people they know and trust, and feel alone and secluded when they do not! I can't believe research hasn't figured that out yet, who would've ever guessed?
Social interaction with one's friends is still interaction. Technology may make it easier, but that's always been true. Before we had the Internet, people would use telephones to talk, or to plan face to face meetings (and probably use their cars to get to said meetings). The presence of technology in a social interaction doesn't make it any less of one, nor does that mean it's "addictive"-well, any more than any other form anyway, by and large, we're pretty social creatures.
That's even before you get to the fact that removing just about anything familiar from someone's environment will, to some degree, make them anxious. For some people, even getting a new home can be very stressful-you have to learn new ways around, find the places near you that you'll be going frequently and remember the way there, get used to the new layout for going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and all those other little things we take for granted. This isn't exactly groundbreaking research, and it sure in the hell doesn't demonstrate an "addiction".
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
I haven't heard of anybody pawning off there car, wedding ring, guitar, xbox for an internet connection, facebook message, or blog post. I used to be AIM 24/7 in high school. I'm 24 now and rarely log on.
Nope. If a person is obsessive/compulsive, that person WILL become "addicted" to SOMETHING.
That does not mean that that thing is addictive.
In order to demonstrate that something is addictive, you'd have to be able to get an otherwise non-addicted person to become addicted to it.
People addicted to telephone's are showing increasing signs of not coping well without them. A receptionist said, "My whole day revolves around the telephone, I don't know what I'd do without one."
This addiction isn't just limited to the classic call center stereotype. Formally normal people like businessmen have gone to extraordinary lengths to satisfy their cravings, "I have a phone I carry everywhere with me, I just find it so hard to be out of touch with the office. I even have the car wired so that I can talk while driving between meetings."
A guy who provides alarmist quotes for a living told me, "This telephone craze is destroying the very fabric of society, it's a completely abnormal form of communication. People have no idea of your facial expression is or how your gesticulating with your hands. Eventually we will all evolve to just talking with our hands in our pockets, then how will you know who the Italians are!"
It's vital that we develop treatement plans to assist people in transitioning to a phone free lifestyle, fortunately some profiteering fearmongers have stepped up to the plate. Initial treatement involves lying in a hospital bed with the comfort of the occasional ringing phone in the nurses station, eventually patients progress to walks in a phone free park. The problem is so bad and phones so addicting however that family and friends are smuggling specially designed "mobile" phones into patients, despite clear signs preventing phone use in the area.
It's Internet Porn addiction.....
I feel much the same way when deprived of my Audi for a couple days.
What they're pointing out, and what I have noticed personally, is that once you discontinue use after a long period of time, you experience physical and mental symptoms of discomfort/boredom/trouble concentrating/anxiety, etc. So while you're using the Internet and technology, you undergo a physiological change similar to what an addict might experience while using, ie extreme pleasure/release of dompamine/wathever... and your body has a similar withdrawal reaction when it goes without.
I just don't choose to do so, and haven't for past 64+ days. http://slashdot.org/~vrmlguy/achievements
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
I can honestly say that I don't think the internet produces the same kind of compulsion, at least for me. I've been sober for a while now, and really can "feel" when that compulsion is trying to kick in. Obsession sucks. I can gamble a bit without feeling any obsession either, so it's definitely a person to person deal.
The kind of addiction I deal with on a daily basis (when new people come around) is generally the kind that has you stealing from your family, writing bad checks and walking the streets... Do these "internet addicts" really do this kind of stuff to subsidize their habit ? Not that it's necessary to be an addict, but do they really have the hallmarks of addiction ? There's a difference between doing something a bit too much and REALLY being an addict.
Kids don't have a choice. The sports video games are a symptom of our sprawl in this country.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
This whole internet thing is just a fad. It'll all blow over soon.
Take a toddler's "binky" (their security blanket) away from a toddler and they're the same way. They teenagers need their instant communication, their updates, twitters, facebook entries etc etc etc. No different than my 2yr old sleeping with her stuffed animals.
Sure some kids survive fine when you tell them they are too old to have "a binky" but eventually, after a few tantrums, they survive. However, expect quite a bit of crying.
Where's School House Rock these days!
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Suffer from internet addiction? No! I *enjoy* it, and you'll take my shiny inter-tubes away from me only when you pry them from my cold, dead, cheeto-dust covered fingers!
SSC
... more like "experiencing".
I explicitly release the above into the public domain.
Study shows breaking from routine and habits to be psychologically challenging.
More news at 11.
Students are suffering from lack of entry-level jobs. As a result, after dumping as many resumes as they can into blacks holes, they are left to blog about inane nonsense.
Did it occur to you that some of us don't enjoy small talk because we're sick of the shallow bite-size noise-ridden internet methods of communication?
Ironically, given what you wrote, you have a Slashdot account and post here.
Anything that makes you feel good can be addictive.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
I can go cold turkey fine.
Just give me a six-pack or two and I can drink my way through any Internet withdrawal.
I am anarch of all I survey.
The conclusion isn't that people are addicted to the internet.
The conclusion is that technologically-aided communication has replaced more traditional forms of communication for many young people, and if you remove their preferred method of communication, they are not able to fall back on other methods of communication, at least not in the short term.
Other things that might make me sad and annoyed:
- Having to watch TV without a DVR
- Having to walk to places I would normally drive to
- Having to answer the phone before knowing whether it's my mother calling or not.
This doesn't make me addicted to DVRs, cars, or caller ID.
paintball
Posting from one of my grad classes right now and I think this study is a load of crap!
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
When I can, I turn my cell phone off and enjoy the peace and solitude. Maybe it's because I was raised without internet (80s and 90s rural Alabama.)
The type of connection is virtually irrelevant. We are social creatures. We need each other or at least a sense of belonging. (In reality, all connections between people are imaginary... if we lived in a world like "Pandora" from "Avatar" there might be true connections between beings, but all we really have are emotions and similarities.)
Being connected to something bigger makes us all feel bigger. This is why gangs exist. This is why clubs, churches and nations exist. This is why we have racism in our very DNA.
Before the internet, there was the telephone. As a teen, I was all about the phone and BBSes. Same thing? Just about... not as quick or convenient, but I made those connections and I found my home within them.
Eventually, I realized what was really happening. I realized a lot about myself and humanity. Religion, politics, racism -- they are all just mechanisms we use to find differences and similarities among us so that we can cling to someone while fighting common enemies. We might feel that we need these connections with one another, but when you see that these connections are all imaginary, you begin to see the truth of existence. We are all, individually, solitarily, alone. To survive, we need each other and to work together. But the connections we feel are imaginary... perhaps they are an evolutionary device that keeps us bound to one another without the need for rational thought -- just an instinct for survival that we follow without question and without reason.
So is the internet "addictive"? In some ways, yes... in the same ways that food can be addictive. You can eat right and healthy and be happy, or you can pig out on sugars, salts and fats and end up pretty miserable. But at the same time, we need food and we need our [imaginary] connections. You can use the internet right and be informed, connected and available... or you can do nothing except chat and blog and IM, forgetting about other factors that are important to building and maintaining life.
You can stick with your imaginary connections as the mechanism that keeps you going in life and you will be fine. You'll be blinded to lots of reality in favor of, for lack of a better expression, the comfort offered to you by "the matrix." Or you can see what is really going on and seek comfort in knowing how things work to the best of our abilities as evolving human beings. Once choice represents growth and change. The other does not.
It's just as bad as some medications and smoking now. I must go blog about this.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
spending time on the internet make me feel isolated and lonely ... although spending time around other people also makes me feel isolated and lonely so maybe I shouldn't read too much into that.
If you put middle aged women who constantly attend social functions in a padded cell, I bet they'd have 'withdrawl' too.
People crave interaction and attention. The internet can merely serve as a bridge to that for some people.
Some people of course take it rather far (constantly checking faceyspacey even when nothing happens), but the 'media' always links using any computer with 'internet addition' nowadays.
"A Goddess rarely smiles for she is forced by others to be an island unto herself." - Zephiris
...researchers found that the vast majority of people are addicted to talking! When asked not to communicate with anyone else for a full day, many subjects across a wide spectrum of demographics showed signs of withdrawal, discomfort, and an intense feeling that, quote, "this is friggin' stupid."
hell these days you cant do anything without the internet in some form. that includes finding work.
with the "researchers" asking student to abstain from using a paper pad and pencil/plume they would also note that the subjects were showing signs of withdrawal, craving and anxiety along with an inability to function well without their tools.
'Texting and IM-ing my friends gives me a constant feeling of comfort,' wrote one of the students, who blogged about their reactions. 'When I did not have those two luxuries, I felt quite alone and secluded from my life.'"
GO TO A BAR, BITCH! Then you can actually BE with your friends and having a better time than being separated by a couple of fucking electronic devices!
Seriously, people should be required to obtain a license to operate anything more complex than a calculator.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I first went to college in '93, before wide-spread cell phone usage and internet for the most part (my dad wouldn't spring for Compuserve or AOL). My room had a phone that we paid for with a university card, unless you were canny enough to figure out how to use someone else's card to get free calls (perhaps someone who had dropped out and not canx'd it...) I had my dad's old 8088 with a 5" monochrome CRT and a 9-pin dot-matrix for banging out papers in my dorm room, and iir the best systems were pc towers that could play apache sims and of course, the college's computer lab full of apples. I spent countless hours there playing Civ off a 3.5" floppy...
Anyhow, I'm now attending college again in the age of cell phones and ubiquitous internets. On one hand I am horrified at the sheer number of kids walking around like zombies, barely aware of their environment, but on the other, I can understand that it's how they grew up, always connected, so it's not entirely their fault. And yes, I do vaguely remember how "zombified" kids back in my day seemed with their walkmans and diskmans, but at least then it was only your hearing that was impaired.
Heck, even these days I feel a little guilty if I leave my cell at home when I drive out to the quickie mart for only 10 minutes--in the back of my mind, I'm thinking "holy crap, what if something happens! Nobody will know!" At the same time I often think WTF. We got along JUST FINE without all this connectivity for many, many years and no one thought anything of it unless you were super-uber late to something. My wife reads me the riot act if I don't answer my cell or a text: "you NEVER answer your cell!" And have to remind her that a) maybe I was driving or b) maybe I was taking a nap or c) maybe I was in the freaking SHOWER (and not ever d: maybe I just didn't want to talk to you).
It's sad, really. Our time isn't ours' anymore. Used to be that I'd wear a pager during working hours and I felt so relieved when I could take it off at the end of the day and not have to worry about being bothered by work, Used to be I could go for an hour long drive and not worry about whatever catastrophe what might be brewing in my absence. I sincerely miss being able to unplug, because now when I want to, it's cause for scrutiny and not the status quo. And that's the part that really sucks going back to college nearly 20 years later-- I'm only 34, fer chrissakes, but I must seem like some sort of dinosaur to these kids today when in reality it was my generation that saw the whole evolution of todays "always connected" culture unfold before our eyes.
Come to think of it, this is nothing new. Kids and young adults have been entranced by new tech or "stuff" that is often seen as a mystery or even a menace by their predecessors for decades (if not centuries); think rock'n'roll, the previously mentioned walkmans, hell, even the first cars, or the first whatever. IMHO, the only thing that is new about this is our ability to communicate this shared awareness of what is going on in new and previously unheard of ways.
Sorry for the novel, I've been thinking a lot on this as of late. Here's the TL;DR:
TL;DR: Oh noes! It's the end of civilization as we know it! No, wait. It's the same thing that has happened before and will happen again when each new generation comes of age. It's mystifying and slightly alarming to watch it happen from the sidelines but perfectly normal for those who have known nothing else. While I miss what once was, what has replaced it is not necessarily bad. Just different. Cheers~
There is simply too much glass..
This isn't addiction, any more than watching too much TV is addiction. I've been using the Internet daily for decades but can (and do) walk away from it, completely, for vacations etc., without any difficulty. It's actually nice to get away. Calling something an "addiction" takes away personal responsibility. That's appropriate for truly addictive substances (when you're chemically dependent) but not for sitting on your ass in front of a computer.
Porn is the reason why anonymous channels are so effective.
Porn is the reason Peer2Peer technology is so rampant.
Porn is the reason why beepers never caught-on like a hooker on a cellphone.
Porn is the reason VHS cameras and recorders evolved the industry into more effective imaging.
Porn is the reason we need nuclear power-plants to fuel the hours of relaxing viewing
Porn is the reason we need clean water for dooshing.
Porn is the alternative of a tele-prostate examination tool to become a tele-dildonics lesson.
Porn is the reason tissue paper works so well to clean up all messes.
Porn is the reason to make the world more efficient; rounder tires, quicker fast-food, and sterile yogurts.
Porn, you can't phail anyone. Break down barriers, hedges, ceilings, and everyone hymen with a whaling trombone.
That girls comment just made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. What is so scary about this is how superficial these facebook relationships are. So losing them being so traumatic to these people is truly a WTF moment for me. Sad. The only thing that makes me happy about all of this is knowing how totally nonfunctional all of these people will be in real life.
The "study" (by a journalism professor?) is so fatally flawed that I'm keeping this for as test question for my methodology students.
The discomfort is cognitive dissonance, and it happens whenever someone's expectations are violated, in this case a change in accustom routine. That makes this 'new' study firmly in with the other work that have supported Festinger's theory since he wrote it in 1958.
The same people who brought you video game addiction, pinball addiction And such are behind this bogus definition. They're the same ones who stand to make money treating the 'problem'.
WTF is IBTimes and why is someone dragging bad science out of it to post here? Only to skewer it, I hope, because that's about all that's going to happen.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
do you have a car or phone addiction?
new technology integrates and becomes integral to your everyday living experience, OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I found out I had a Internet addiction 10 Years ago as a results I stopped browsing the web completely, I never looked back ever since.
In other news, Homo sapiens is discovered to be a social animal which suffers from adverse psychological effects when their primary method of communicating with their peers is removed. News at 11.
but seriously, i waste A LOT of time that should be spent writing papers surfing the web. and most of the time, it's checking my email or reading /. problem is when i get focused enough to write, then i hit a snag and need to look up something, like a reference, and i'm back at staring at /. (sure, cue the porn jokes)
"To stop the terrorists."
because of that sentence.
They are missing the communication with fellow humans, and the feeling of connectedness, knowing what's going on. You could do a study in which older folks try to avoid talking to anyone at all for a day, and try to also avoid any kind of information intake (newspapers, magazines, TV, etc.) and probably get similar results.
Reminds me of the hue and cry when I was a kid about how grocery stores got so dependent on barcode scanners and cash registers that they couldn't sell stuff at all if the power went out. Apparently in my parents' day they would have gotten by with a pad of paper and a pencil in that kind of situation.
Of course doing without the net once in a while might be good as a survival exercise, kindof like power outage preparedness...
How is this different from normally talking to people?. Ill bet that 90% of people at my school would have a nervous breakdown if they couldn't talk to people. This is simply a different way of talking and expressing yourself.
GENERATION 9882463: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig & add a random number to the generation.
Saying "addicted to the internet" is careless. "The internet" is not ONE thing, like smoking tobacco or sniffing cocaine.
Of course people are going to present symptoms of withdrawal when taken away from the internet. I would present symptoms as well if I was taken away from my entire lifestyle for a day!
The Internet is no longer One thing alone; it's a set of things that make a huge part of many people's lives, not because they're addicted, but because there's a lot of activities bundled together ignorantly with one word: internet.
Take away ONE thing (say, blogging) at a time and then talk about addiction if your findings are the same.
Humour me for a moment.
The classic hunter/gatherer model, which humans used as our evolutionary jumping-off point from God knows how far back, is very strictly social.
Think about it. The tribe sleeps communally, generally around a safe point that keeps everyone close together in case of attack by wild animals or roving brigands. During the day the hunters may rove (but often as a pack, if they intend hunt large game) and the gatherers raise the young and tend to whatever non-violent productivity is needed (collecting food or firewood, what-have-you). Of course, without the hunters present, it's probably best to stay in groups and gather together, for safety in numbers.
A proto-human might be born into a tribe of 30 or 40 people, live his entire (40 year) lifespan in the company of those 40 and see every one of them every day, talking to his closest few almost every moment he is awake for much of that time. Sure, there will always be introverts who retreat for solace and quiet, but the lifestyle itself would have necessitated some close connection. Outside of those that he sees daily, he might only see members of other tribes rarely if at all during the year.
Fast forward to the period of cities of a million plus, and a brain that was designed to establish long term relationships with a maximum of perhaps 50 people and interact with them constantly is now regularly exposed to 10,000 people a day, and often only sees a member of that 50 for five minutes out of the day. Perhaps 10 of those people are actual friends, another 40 are passing acquaintances like the bus driver or the corner hotdog stand guy, but the other 9,950 are complete and total strangers. Interacting with them is absurd, as you're likely to see each for only five seconds out of the rest of your life.
Then along comes the internet connected phone, and now, through this magical little window we hold in our hands, we can re-establish the tribal links for which our brains are wired. We can actually keep in constant touch with that handful of 50 or so humans that, five thousand years ago, would have been our 'tribe'.
Then, once you've gotten that relationship nice and established, you take that magical window away for a day. Of course they feel isolated.
Anyway, just a thought.
People today are broken and oversocialized, and more importantly, too careful...people "construct" their image of self that others perceive
Too careful? They 'construct' the image others see? Do you read the kind of crap people plaster all over Facebook? The ridiculous, copious honesty of those people is exactly why I don't use social media at all. Between the disgusting, the bizarre, and (this is most of it) the completely boring, there's no frickin end to the completely true, unedited drivel oozing all over these social networking venues. There's a difference between open, honest dialogue and telling everything about everything, and these people by and large passed that line five years ago.
Too careful couldn't be more wrong; social networkers have become so completely unfiltered the entirety of cyberspace overflows with their useless raw data.
When one considers the alternatives, this is a good thing.
It's a damned shame that our schools and teachers haven't been teaching them how to use the new medium as much as they could.
Before anyone gets a head on about what I say, I'm one of the increasingly small number of people who predate the internet, but still think it's the best thing that can happen to humanity.
Unfortunately (Shadowbearer dons his reading glasses and enables his spellchecker) there are entirely too many people who think that too much knowledge is a bad thing for children.
(Shadowbearer dons his flameproof suit) (hey, it was custom built!)
It's a damned shame that all these religious control freaks are so caught up in their superstitious nonsense that they can't see that the human race might benefit from being liberated (oh, that WORD! MY EYES!) from their preconceived notions of reality and figure out that yes, maybe, we can all get along and we have bigger problems than the ages old debate about whose deity has a bigger ego.
If the mass of irrational superstitious nuts want to have a real, REAL, implacable, undeafeatable, omnipotent enemy, perhaps they should consider confronting Reality. You know, that particular bit of scientific reality that says that not only does the universe not care, but it can't care, because it's not their God? Because their "God"(s) do not, and cannot, exist? Because we are just an insignificant bunch of modified apes on an insignificant planet in an insignificant galaxy in the middle of nowhere? That all their arrogance in thinking they are the end all, be all of the universe does is create more angst and harm more people? That was excusable, perhaps, back when we didn't know better; but we do now.
I weep for our species. I weep when I hear shit like this " [ some odd percentage ] believes in a supreme being, why don't you?"]
Fools. Show me your "supreme being". When you can't - and you can't - then Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Us rational people are sick of dealing with your superstitious fantasies.
(Angry, me? Hell, yes I am. Not in the "I'll kill you because you're a heretic" angry, tho. Figure that out on your own, and get some rationality already, will you?)
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Just kidding. I need it or I'll die.
Beer will get you through times of no internet better than internet will get you through times with no beer.
You want to show us we're suffering from internet addiction? Let's see a study showing that rats constantly post on slashdot even when doing so causes an electric shock.
Okay, first, a bit of background.
Back in 2002 I wrote a book titled The EverQuest Companion, in which I did a chapter on online game addiction. Part of the research was looking at the psychology of game addiction, while also interviewing some of the psychologists who studied it. At the time work on this was still at its childhood, so there may be some new information out there that I haven't seen. Either way, this is going to be a bit of a technical post.
So, yes, it is possible to have a psychological addiction to the internet. It is in the same general category as a gambling addiction. While there isn't an actual substance being abused, in an online addict the brain becomes dependent on the dopamine "hit" caused by being online (or in the case of the article, plugged in), and the absence of that stimulus causes difficulties functioning (withdrawal symptoms).
How does this get started? Well, in a lot of cases it is a coping mechanism gone wrong. Somebody uses the 'net to procrastinate something they have to do, and they lose track of time. When they come offline, the task still needs to be done, but rather than do it, they retreat into the internet again. This becomes a vicious cycle.
As at least one person here has pointed out, there is a very large difference between a habit and an addiction. It is all about balance. If your life is balanced, and you're fulfilling all of your real world obligations, then you probably don't have a problem. If you are setting aside the real world in favour of the online one, then you do have a problem.
This can be a tricky thing to diagnose, though. To take myself as an example, back in April to May 2006 I spent around 16-18 hours per day in online chat rooms, stopping only for food and sleep. Was I an internet addict? Well, actually, no. In fact, I had been left homebound by a Crohn's flare, and chat rooms were the only way I could interact in any extensive way with the outside world. As I recovered, the time I spent in chat rooms got lower and lower, and finally all but disappeared.
When it comes down to what's mentioned in the article, though, the withdrawal isn't coming from wanting to talk to friends and being suddenly unable to. It's coming from an actual psychological dependency on using those devices. It's needing to text, use email, read blogs, etc., just to feel normal - the devices are no longer just tools, but appendages.
Let me put it this way - if you're using your smart phone, chat program, etc., because you want to, your work requires it, you're bored and you need to kill some time, etc., then odds are you don't have a problem. If you are doing it because you feel a deep need to - if you just HAVE to have that chat program on while you're in class, for example, and can't feel right without it being on - then you have a problem, and you should seek treatment.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Remember the good old days when it took internet + porn to = addiction? The times they is a changing!
I realized reading "Dark Ages America" that businesses understood that the best way to make a steady income was to push addictive products. In the past, until the fifties more or less, you would buy an expensive thing (suit, house..) once in a while, or even in a lifetime (such as a bicycle or a gold watch) and that was it. Addictive pleasures (sex, sugar, alcohol, even strong emotions...) were reserved for Saturday night or Sunday (say, a small bottle of Coca-Cola at the drugstore), everybody would smoke ONE cigarette at the end of a work day, would go to the movies once in a while, because it was so expensive, etc. But there is no brand loyalty in all this, and, more importantly, no addiction. Advertisement and TV encouraged us to become drugged and addicted to quick pleasure inducing hits requiring exponential use : sugar, alcohol, pornography, gambling, tobacco, soap operas 6 hours a day on TV, cars and gasoline, credit to finance all this, and now that some of those pleasures have been found bad for the health (what a surprise), we are switching to mobile phones, pay TV, and internet, which all require subscription plans which end up costing a fortune over years. And we are all addicted to it, instead of critical thinking, reading, self-improvement, and even work and family commitments. This is especially obvious in third world countries, in Africa for instance, even if our way of life is also spreading there with satellite TV : there, everybody smokes (but not much), but students are actually interested in science, see computers as tools, not toys, work and take care seriously of their friends or families, and pays cash ; actual wealth is created in farms and factories, not in web (N+1).0 startups.
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
What is 'secluded from my life' supposed to mean?
I can sympathise with these poor addicts, though. At their age I was addicted to looking out of the window, daydreaming, eating crisps, talking about things, watching tv, listening to the radio etc.
Now, as an adult, I am addicted to paying tax, putting petrol in my car, shouting at the tv, paying utility bills, buying groceries and protecting my lawn from kids.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
"Texting and IM-ing my friends gives me a constant feeling of comfort," wrote one of the students, who blogged about their reactions. "When I did not have those two luxuries, I felt quite alone and secluded from my life."
How and why did we develop this obsessive need to be communicating, interacting, "in touch" with others constantly? Have we become so shallow and insecure that it is intolerable to simply be alone with one's thoughts and reflections for even a short period of time? This is not healthy. While man is a social animal and requires some degree of contact and interaction with others, "alone time" is just as important and beneficial. If you monitored and analyzed all the cell, texting, and IM "conversations" that take place constantly around you, you'd probably find that much of it is "blather" -- little meaningful content; much prattling on for the sake of just "saying" something, anything; a multitude of shallow, time-wasting exchanges that could easily be eliminated without any lost benefit. And in the process, the avoidance of actually communicating with oneself -- thinking, reflecting, meditating, ruminating, working out of feelings and problems -- the kind of thing we used to do while driving or shopping or walking down the street or just lazing about the house on a rainy Sunday afternoon. We don't know how to be "alone" anymore, and our sense of self is being subsumed by a constant integration into the "hive."
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
When it is stated that internet addiction has similar symptoms to serious addictions to powerful drugs, what comes most quickly to mind are drug addiction symptoms such as potentially lethal tremors, loss of normal bodily functions, irreversible organ damage, sharply increased cancer risks, heart disease, serious criminality, violence, and toxic overdoses. These are real and not unusual symptoms of addictions to drugs like alcohol, nicotine, amphetamines, heroine, cocaine, and prescription meds. I think it is a big overstatement to observe symptoms of forming a habit, which could be found alongside anything people do with regularity, and conflate it with the enormous health risks of drugs that account for a significant portion of human mortality. Aside from fairly isolated incidents of internet related deaths and cellphone car accidents, media is nearly the safest method people have invented to aimlessly fixate on something. I would even go so far as to be suspicious of what seems like a recent trend in concern over "internet addiction". It seems like a budding seed of justification planted to undermine the broad channels of communication and information many old media empires and governments would like to restrict, if only there were a good reason. This ridiculous reasoning certainly capitalizes off of the anxieties of an older generation that is confused and frightened by the immense change in media and the perspective from which such media functions.
And is other news, 'scientists' found that people who socialise a lot are addicted to party's, etc. People who display the symptoms of this disorder are commonly referred to as extroverts, so scientist have named this 'Extrovert Social Addictive Disorder'.
Seriously the need to feel connected to people is part of human nature, the fact that people have found a new way to be connected which with our busy and anti social lives, allows them to at least partially fulfil this need easier should neither be surprising or bad.
Or do you want to sending people to 'rehab' for being to social?
null
It's not people developing Internet and gadget addiction, but sociophobes finally reaching out. They've been here all along, but lacked both the skills and the means to socialize. Now they have the means. The skills will hopefully develop. It's only surprising to see how many of them there are.
I'm also addicted to air.
I must admit, I am an information junkie and am connected in various ways most of the day.
However, I love going away on holiday where I am totally disconnected from everything. At no point do I feel withdrawal from facebook, /. or the Internet in general.
What I'm trying to say is that if you would remove the students from the normal environment where the Internet is a big part of their life and how they achieve their goals, maybe they wouldn't show such "addiction".
They like to communicate via the internet when they otherwise have no other means to communicate.
They feel alone without it.
Not surprising.
Replace "internet" with "hanging out with friends" and you get the same thing. It's just a different form of communication
Ya but the endgame sucks and the ending is a bit tragic.
When people lived the tribal lifestyle, e.g. Plains Indians, everybody knew what everyone was doing 24/7- sleeping, hooking up, bodily functions and so one. I experience enough of this in geological field work or camping. That is why this probably seems natural to people. When average people starting living in "luxurious" multi-room houses, after 1800, then privacy conventions evolved. The Big Difference for social networking is these messages are recorded in the internet archive forever.
Last that I checked here most folks here thought those Chinese have center to 'treat' Internet addiction are nut case. May be they did their research already?
//obligatory
///If you take away my crackberry I'll burn down the building.
It's called not knowing what else to do? And it makes it hard for them to find things to do when they can't use the internet to look up things. Just like with addictions, if you can keep yourself busy and keep your mind of the addiction the better you will handle it. If all you do is sit around and focus on the fact you can't/shouldn't do it, the more you will miss it and crave it.
http://tinyurl.com/2846x75/
http://tinyurl.com/6apekx/
http://tinyurl.com/5q3w36/
Yeah, so I like Slashdot.
I'm even going to stick my head up Rob Malda's ass and say that it's the best and most convenient place to get an information fix, where every post counts and at least a few people know what they're talking about. Even this little petty argument is more fun than the "LOL JAJA" bullshit of MyBook and Twitter.
Not everybody gets to live near MIT or Santa Rosa. Why don't you try living in a desolate Christian-dominated shit-town full of paranoid war vets and DHS goons? Try it and come back and tell us how refreshing Slashdot discussions are. Especially if all your friends are all married with kids and work long hours while you are too young to settle down, but too old to have any real fun. Such is the quarter-life crisis.
Yeah, so I troll Slashdot occasionally. So what, does that hurt your feelings?
Relax. My comment was a joke and had more to do with the misuse of the word "irony" farther up the page and a jab at Slashdot than publicly humiliating you.
Taking every comment in life so seriously is not good for your health or your spousal prospects. I speak from experience.
I can understand your pain about where you live. So move.
I, too, have no time for twitter or facebook or any other "here today, gone tomorrow" time-sponges, but coming here is also a side-trip to a vacuous wasteland. It's just a geeky one.
Make sure you don't define yourself by Slashdot. It's an electronic illusion and it will one day be gone.
Define yourself in meatspace, where it matters. And if you do that well and bravely, you might actually one day fulfill your greatest ambition and actually get laid for the first time.
and this is some sort of news because...?? - Christine Malczanek
Small talk : having a facebook account or not.
Why is it that people around always states "turn of that machine, and live you REAL life". Internet is a part of life, like driving a car, or writing a paper mail, how about the phone? No one would even think of taking away those things from my life, why Internet? So what if someone spends most part of their life online? It's a choice, it gives something back, else they wouldn't be there. And I wouldn't be here reading slashdot, It gives something back to me.
Care to produce a doctorate in psychology or psychiatry to your name, before you go and play "online shrink" and give people shitty advice coming from a no mind wanna be like yourself? You know, the doctorate you do not have in the discipline of either psychiatry or psychology??
What's wrong, apk? Does the phrase "obsessive / compulsive" touch a nerve?