The
Internet addiction: reasons, definition
Introduction of
Internet
In February 14, 1946,
the first modern computer was born in Pennsylvania University; in 1969, the
first Internet system was established in America, this system was named
“Arpanet”. All of these things I mentioned above are required by military, the
computer is in purpose for calculate the trajectory
of the shell, and the Internet is for quick send information during the “cold
war” between America and The Soviet Union. After almost 70 years development
until today, computer and internet already became a very important part in
people daily life. In the last century in the 1990s, the electronic office has
been popularized, computer freed people from heavy paper files and records, mechanical
arms replaced workers in factory and artificial intelligence became more and
more humanized. Based
on computers as the carrier of the internet, with the development of computer,
the internet also has slowly been increasingly important in our lives. In Computer Dealer News magazine (Aug 22, 1996) listed 10
advantages of the Internet, it included many aspects which are Multimedia,
Information transfer, general research, chatting, getting advice and receiving
latest news. The internet also brought a lot of other things to
this world. People in different areas can share knowledge and discuss it in
same time; some people find a big opportunity to buy and sell merchandise
online; people can even find all kinds of help on internet; the internet
companies provide tens of thousands of jobs to support many families. We also
enjoy entertainment from internet like society networking and online gaming.
Introduction of internet addiction
Behind all this glowing talk, however, because of people are too
dependent on the internet so that those
people became a new clinical phenomenon which is called Internet Addiction, and
these people called Internet addict. All over the world, Internet Addict is
increasing in every country; especially in adolescent society, they contact and
use internet when as long
as they can remember, so internet is indispensable in their life. In
America, a college student use internet 3 or more hours per day, which means 60-70% college
students are potential internet addict. (expand)
What is Internet addiction?
Some investigators have linked Internet addiction to addictive disorders,
grouping it alongside alcohol and drug use disorders. Others have linked
Internet addiction to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) or to the impulse
control disorders (ICDs).The disadvantages of Internet addiction ( ). in some medical
magazine said an individual use Internet over 6 hours a day could diagnosing
as Internet addiction, however, that it is non-validated. We do not have a criterion to identify
that whether people become addicted. In hospital, a doctor largely depend on
patient’s psychiatric history, but many individuals with Internet addiction will meet the criteria for
co-morbid psychiatric disorders, such as major depression, an anxiety disorder
or another disorder of impulse control (e.g. compulsive shopping). So doctor
may ask patient the following questions to help diagnosing:
Do you feel overly preoccupied with using your computer or
accessing the Internet?
Do you ever feel that your computer (or Internet) use is
excessive, inappropriate or poorly controlled?
Have your urges to use your computer (or the Internet), or
the usage itself, ever been overly time consuming, caused you to feel upset or
guilty, or led to serious problems in your life (e.g. financial or legal
problems, relationship loss)? ( )
Also
there are five subtypes of Internet addiction are as follows:
1. Cybersexual addiction: This occurs in individuals who
are typically engaged in viewing, downloading and trading online pornography or
are involved in adult fantasy role-play chat rooms.
2. Cyber-relational addiction: This occurs in people who
become overly involved in online relationships or may engage in virtual
adultery. Online relationships become more important than real life ones, and
marital discord and family instability may result.
3. Net compulsions: This subtype includes a broad category
of behaviours, including online gambling, shopping or stock trading.
Significant financial losses may result, as well as relational and job
disruptions.
4. Information overload: The World Wide Web has created a
new kind of compulsive behaviour that involves excessive web surfing and
database searches. These individuals spend a disproportionate amount of time
searching for, collecting and organizing information.
5. Computer addiction: Most computers come equipped with
pre-programmed games and people become addicted to playing them at the cost of
work performance or family obligations.
These
things only help doctor more exact to diagnosing, but it is not confirmed
diagnosis. There is no solid standard for diagnosing Internet addiction, it not
even a clinical symptoms in DSM-IV-TR
( American Psychiatric
Association. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. 4th ed.) . So in Internet addiction field we still have long way
to go.
1. 3 types of Lazy, intellectually lazy
Internet addiction is making people lazy. There are three types of lazy
which are: intellectually lazy, physically lazy and socially lazy.
These problems cause many debates in society. The first one is intellectually
lazy. With the advent of internet, it already has brought great progress. We
almost can find all kinds information. When we did not have the internet,
people have to go to the library or interview someone for search information.
Now we just need go to Google, enter our question and we will get many answers
and opinions about this question. People just need to click every website they
feel is interesting and read it. When people want to know some news, they do
not need to order the newspaper anymore. They just need to go to web portals
and read any news they want. The problem is that people give up the traditional
way of reading. There is a phenomenon that is the people almost lost the ability
to read longish articles on the web or in print;
because people are just seeking convenience, people got used to quickly
scan short passages of text from many sources online. It means that people if prefer to read titles and short paragraphs rather than read the whole long paper, then more people will lose the chance to read classic
texts because these texts are extremely long.
2. physically lazy, confused real world and virtual world
The other problem is that some people are forgetting
to enjoy nature as a form of entertainment and instead are
choosing to entertainment themselves with technology. Peoples’ original entertainment once included: hiking, fishing or playing chess
with friends, but now our entertainment has changed to “I shared a video
in my Facebook, you should watch it, it is so funny” or “shall we play ‘call of
duty’ together tonight? I found a
powerful weapon” things like this. There are some problems caused by internet
addiction. (1) Loss of real life and lack of social skills. Everyone wants to
be a hero and video games can satisfy
them. So many people spend a lot of time gaming without having communication
with others or learning something about this world. Finally people may be a hero in video games, but are the weak in real life. (2) Disorientation. Most people socializing on the
internet are not behaving normally. Like in some video games, you can kill anyone who you dislike, but you can’t do this in real life. We saw some news about a person
imitated some activities just like in games and caused tragedy. (3) Poor judgment. We can find a lot of information on internet. This information
include eroticism, violence or some worse information. People should recognize
what are good things
worth learning and stay away from what is bad, but it is hard, especially
for teenagers. Teenagers are a group whose self-protective consciousness and
self-control abilities are weak.
Teenagers are thirsty for knowledge and a strong
world view has not been formed yet. They are curious and thirsty for the
external world and new things. But they are going through a period of change. The psychology and behavior is immature, so it is hard to resist the temptation
from the virtual world. So it is important to guide
teenagers through internet use.
3. socially lazy
The third is socially lazy. Many people dive
into in the internet and indulge in society
networking. They opposite to the computer day after day, believing the internet can
do everything. Actually, a computer can almost do anything, but it lacks of
something that only exists between people. Society networking provides us a
convenient way to reach each other, but it also makes us socially lazy.
I will add
treatment of Internet addiction section, misunderstanding of Internet addiction
section, explain the differences between intelligent
using of internet and internet addiction and conclusion.
