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.'"

Comments

Re:Irony

[Anonymous Coward]

Irony is when a situation is the opposite of what you might expect. It's expected that an internet-addicted person might blog about their addiction.

Boredom

[AnonymousClown]

Boredom is probably another reason why kids are getting fat: when they're bored or blue, they get the munchies.

Where's School House Rock these days!

Re:Exactly.

[beakerMeep]

Yet here you are -- here we all are. And interestingly enough you are completely missing the point (or trolling). And perpetuating a stigmatized, misinformed stereotype.

Addiction does not just relate to substance abuse and chemical reactions from illicit drugs. Addiction is a state described by a set of behaviors and reactions (physical and mental) when faced with the loss of the stimulus. It has nothing to do with how much something will take to addict a particular person. That's fallacy logic.

ala wikipedia:

The medical community now makes a careful theoretical distinction between physical dependence (characterized by symptoms of withdrawal) and psychological dependence (or simply addiction). The DSM definition of addiction can be boiled down to compulsive use of a substance (or engagement in an activity) despite ongoing negative consequences—this is also a summary of what used to be called "psychological dependency."

TFA basically states that they are seeing symptoms characteristic of CHEMICAL dependence too -- which is why this is unusual. If they actually were seeing symptoms of OCD, they would say they saw symptoms of OCD. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a completely different disease that only has partial symptom overlap with addiction. You should maybe consider reading up on it sometime as it probably afflicts someone you know (1 in 200 adults).