Growing concern over Internet addiction

cnn ^ | 5/20/06

[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.

[CJ Wolf]

Since al gore invented it, can we blame him for all these internet drugys?

[mcvey]

RP:

This is going to get complicated. Check #51 on this thread.

[FrankR]

Dear CNN:

Addiction has nothing to do with our use of the internet; it has to do with no having to listen to liberal idiots espouse their opinions nightly under the guise of "news".

It has to do with finally having a "voice" - such as Free Republic - to state our views of the world, and to exchange views with our peers who aren't soiled with the pollution of liberalism.

It has to do with finding entertainment that suits the normal person, and not some perverted sitcom, laced with sexual, homosexual, and racial inuendoes.

CNN is not even on my TV menu, I made sure of that during the "clinton years", when you showed yourself and your liberal, socialist - even leaning toward communist - leanings.

No, the internet is not an addiction - it's the cure for an addiction - addiction to the drive-by media and it's openly obvious agenda. The MSM can kiss my a**, I have no use for them at all. They're wallowing in a love fest for everything that is bad, and I won't know part of it.

TV was a wonderful tool until it fell into the wrong hands, now it's "Tokyo Rose" in reverse, polluting the minds of our young people and systematically dismantling all the values that Americans have always held sacred.

[Smartass]

Thanks for the comment...
I'm personally happy with what the Internet has to offer, and can't imagine ever doing without my computer. For sure, computers and the net have opened knowledge, and world we never had before. The connectivity is growing, and can only get better. Moderation in personal home use is probably the key that should be emphasized. But, should a person be controlled in their own homes? I say no way. Unless there is child abuse, stay out of my business and house.

However, evidently there are some concerns, and as always, will sometime go to the extreme side to get their points across. If we were to listen to every story written, warning, and hazard issued to the letter, we'd all be Prozac driven maniacs.

 

[MikeHu]

The kind of isolation and alienation that produces mental illness and antisocial behaviors is the product of the mass media that interactive communications is actually the cure. That is why people were so angry and frustrated -- that the mass media wanted total control and denied what was obvious to those who thought for themselves.

The mass media demagogues wanted to do everybody's thinking for us -- which is why they're so threatened and infuriated by the Internet.

[Smartass]

I agree. As it should be, we're Master's of own destiny.

:o)

[potlatch]

Good article that was in our newspaper today;

"It's All About Me: Why e-mails are so easily misunderstood"

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0515/p13s01-stct.html

[Smartass]

Good article by the CS Monitor.


Keeps us thinking

 

[MikeHu]

The presumption here is that email(electronic communications) are necessarily a debased form of writing -- rather than today's state of the art. Academics, on the other hand, are notoriously poor communicators -- thinking that the purpose of all communications (as with everything else they do), is to impress, intimidate and control -- and so they are overly concerned that their reader get their manipulations right.

With real communications, there is an understanding that both the speaker and the listener co-create the communication -- rather than that one control the other, and thus have to use techniques like emoticons to tell the reader when to laugh, or that their hostility was not intended, etc.

But in emails (electronic communications) that are the state of the art, the writer has the ability to communicate well and the recipient has enhanced abilities to interpret the intent. So the presumption of their understanding that emails are less effective rather than supremely effective beyond their imagination, is only a projection of their own inabilities to effectively communicate, instead of being an inherent limitation of the medium (genre).

Those are the presumptions of the old mass media mind -- rather than that the "other" may actually have a superior capacity to understand.

[potlatch]

I have always thought that we might communicate more in email than face to face. It's sometimes easier to put things into words when the person is not 'there'.

[MikeHu]

What matters is that you're fully there. Many face to face communications is an evasion and distraction from being "fully there."

[Sacajaweau]

My granddaughter is still trying to figure out how I got through my youth without television.

Told her it was easy: We sat in front of the radio and listened to Hi Ho Silver and Sky King AND went to the movies evry week for 10 cents. My dad also knew the owner of the famed RKO Palace in Rochester NY. Always had free passes! Life was grand!!

[MoochPooch]

The internet isn't my problem - FreeCell is.

Same with me -- until recently. No Sudoku took over.

[MoochPooch]

Correction: NOW Sudoku took over.

[freedumb2003]

I lost a $70k job because of FR.

I'm the better man for it.

Funny, I didn't exactly lose my job due to FR. But when when I went back the next day someone else was doing it!

[Hardastarboard]

a huge variety of quality animal porn?

Damn, man. Where are you finding this stuff? All I can find is the low grade crap.

[Jaysun]

Damn, man. Where are you finding this stuff? All I can find is the low grade crap.

I should have given more detail. It's easy for me because I'm an animal porn superstar. Some of my most recent hits include:

The Old Gray Mare, She Ain't What She Used to Be
Kangaroo I Knew From Kalamazoo
On the Prowl for Fowl
Table for Two at the Birmingham Zoo
Trip to the Vet then a Cigarette

[jslade]

We're not internet addicts, we're information addicts...

I prefer "infoholic".

[LK44-40]

This is ridiculous!

It's only 5:13 a.m. here. I still have time for a couple of hours of sleep.

Besides, I COULD STOP. I could stop ANYtime.

The internet is helping me break my lame sleep habits (as well as a lot of other sick, dependencies like spending time yakking with other real-time lame-Os, etc.)