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Posted on 05/19/2006 10:05:24 PM PDT by LouAvul
For some, the Internet it has become an addiction, adversely affecting their lives and their family's lives.
While not yet defined as a true addiction, many people are suffering the consequences of obsession with the online world, warns Dr. Diane M. Wieland, who treats patients with computer addiction in her practice in Lansdale, Pennsylvania.
For some people, the Internet may promote addictive behaviors and pseudo-intimate interpersonal relationships, reports Wieland in the journal, Perspectives in Psychiatric Care. "Such cyberspace contacts may result in cyber disorders such as virtual relationships that evolve into online marital infidelity (cybersex) or online sexually compulsive behaviors," she writes.
"Obsession with and craving time on the computer results in neglect of real-life personal relationships to the point of divorce," Wieland says.
The prevalence of Internet addiction is hard to gauge at the moment, Wieland notes. Extrapolating from prevalence rates of other addictions, she thinks that 5 percent to 10 percent of Internet users will most likely experience addiction.
Signs and symptoms of Internet addiction include a general disregard for health and appearance; sleep deprivation due to spending so much time online; and decreased physical activity and social interaction with others. Dry eyes, carpal tunnel syndrome, and repetitive motion injuries of the hands and fingers are common.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Sounds like more psychobabble. She talks about building unhealthy pseudo-relationships online. Can we count the number of unhealthy relationships NOT online.
naw...email.
Our courtship was done on IM, though...
It becomes no different than going to a library or shopping or whatever. At age 62, I've probably learned more from doing Web searches in the last five years (including coming to FR) than I've learned from reading the newspaper or books over my lifetime.
TV is just as addictive, NOT an information center and biased. The web gives you the ability to separate the garbage we are fed by a very biased Media. My favorite writer/media person...Charlie Krauthammer.
Except if she's got a headache....
Hi Bill!
Haha.. the honeymoon is over
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True...crack addiction can be treated.
Don't tell me Ireland's run out of sheep.
Who ever said anything about sheep?
Ummm...never mind.
("Baaaaaaa!" "Shutupshutupshutup.")
It's a nanny-goat, actually... hehe
I received a 42. I believe the tipping point was the question about converstations with people on internet and of course I was thinking FREEPERS and all the great people I converse with so I guess that shot my score way up. No worries. I don't care what this on line test says anyway.
"Your answering machine/voice mail sounds a little like this...."BRB. Leave your S/N and I'll TTYL ASAP". "
And just think: the last to you looked up from your screen and out the window - the sun was setting.
I solve this problem by just keeping the blinds closed all the time and removing all references to time.
My longest win streak is 184. (Not in one sitting ...:)) I've given up on the game. It's too tedious to run another string out to the high water mark.
The flaw in this observation is the fallacious one that Internet use comes at the expense of doing essential tasks (personal hygiene, exercise, childcare, etc.) and relating superficially with reality and others -- rather than that it supplants more unproductive (leisure) activities like mindlessly watching television, reading fiction and propaganda, hanging out at bars for social interaction and communications, etc.
The activities now possible were not possible before -- allowing everyone to do things productively and purposely rather than randomly, purposelessly as before -- because one has information interaction and feedback, instead of acting in a vacuum because the information only flowed one-way -- from the mainstream media, and other self-designated information sources. So the cultural context is unprecedentedly richer and so although it seems like very little has changed -- the relationships of everything to everything else has changed, and is changing, in the interactions. Previously, there was no interaction; the cultural context was static -- and controlled by the powers-that-be, and wished to remain so.
Those are the people now producing all these polls, studies, experts warning us of the dangers of believing and listening to anybody but themselves. How the world has passed them by and every manipulation that might have worked in the last century, is so obvious to the citizens of the 21st century. They want us back reading the Dead Tree Scrolls -- and no other!
Ping (as to name)
McVey
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