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Internet Addiction Spawns US Treatment Programs (reuters.com)
SpzToid shares a report from Reuters: When Danny Reagan was 13, he began exhibiting signs of what doctors usually associate with drug addiction. He became agitated, secretive and withdrew from friends. He had quit baseball and Boy Scouts, and he stopped doing homework and showering. But he was not using drugs. He was hooked on YouTube and video games, to the point where he could do nothing else. As doctors would confirm, he was addicted to his electronics. "After I got my console, I kind of fell in love with it," Danny, now 16 and a junior in a Cincinnati high school, said. "I liked being able to kind of shut everything out and just relax." Danny was different from typical plugged-in American teenagers. Psychiatrists say internet addiction, characterized by a loss of control over internet use and disregard for the consequences of it, affects up to 8 percent of Americans and is becoming more common around the world.
"We're all mildly addicted. I think that's obvious to see in our behavior," said psychiatrist Kimberly Young, who has led the field of research since founding the Center for Internet Addiction in 1995. "It becomes a public health concern obviously as health is influenced by the behavior." At first, Danny's parents took him to doctors and made him sign contracts pledging to limit his internet use. The "Reboot" program at the Lindner Center for Hope offers inpatient treatment for 11 to 17-year-olds who, like Danny, have addictions including online gaming, gambling, social media, pornography and sexting, often to escape from symptoms of mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety. âoeRebootâ patients spend 28 days at a suburban facility equipped with 16 bedrooms, classrooms, a gym and a dining hall. They undergo diagnostic tests, psychotherapy, and learn to moderate their internet use.
"We're all mildly addicted. I think that's obvious to see in our behavior," said psychiatrist Kimberly Young, who has led the field of research since founding the Center for Internet Addiction in 1995. "It becomes a public health concern obviously as health is influenced by the behavior." At first, Danny's parents took him to doctors and made him sign contracts pledging to limit his internet use. The "Reboot" program at the Lindner Center for Hope offers inpatient treatment for 11 to 17-year-olds who, like Danny, have addictions including online gaming, gambling, social media, pornography and sexting, often to escape from symptoms of mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety. âoeRebootâ patients spend 28 days at a suburban facility equipped with 16 bedrooms, classrooms, a gym and a dining hall. They undergo diagnostic tests, psychotherapy, and learn to moderate their internet use.
What you are seeing is a symptom, not a disease. Many people withdraw from the world at varying times to varying degrees. When it becomes obsessive, we suspect a problem.
In another time and place this problem could exhibit symptoms of 'TV addiction', 'romance novel addiction' or 'ham radio addiction'. Don't confuse symptoms with causes. Don't insist on easy answers to incredibly complex problems.
...omphaloskepsis often...
You only have the right to say this if you have consciously mever ever picked up a phone or a tablet or used a computer to watch some mindless but rather entertaining fail videos on YouTube for the fifth time, or to binge watch a 12 part series on Netflix with a bottle of prosecco or whatever other legal drug you chose... Kids copy their parents, or siblings, or friends or whoever really. Fact is we all spend a lot of time with our face in the screen. On demand entertainment and the huge variety that ensures everyone will find something to stare at constantly have evolved to match our desire to be able to switch out from reality. Instead of inciting this constant hatred for people we never met, never known, lets for once look into ourselves and realize that by showing compassion and understanding will we only be able to change this world for the better, so our kids wont have the need to want to switch off from the life the previous generations left for us here.
Why is the parent letting the kid get away with this kind of behaviour?