09 July 2012 Internet Addiction Disorder The Web Driving Us Mad The new research into the Net’s negative effects By Tony Dokoupi SUMMARY Obsessive usage of the Internet may be making us not just dumber or lonelier but more depressed and anxious, prone to obsessive-compulsive and attention-deficit disorders, even outright psychotic. Many young Americans have merged with their machines, staring at a screen for at least eight hours a day, more time than we spend on any other activity including sleeping; teens fit some 7 to 11 hours of screen time into the average school day. Texting has become like blinking; average American sends or receives about 400 texts a month; an average teen processes an astounding 3,700 texts a month. The Internet is no more just another delivery system; it is creating a whole new mental environment, a digital state of nature where the human mind becomes a spinning instrument panel, and few people can survive unscathed. Digital culture is rewiring us — and not for the better! The computer is like electronic cocaine, fueling cycles of mania followed by depressive stretches. The Internet leads people to behavior that they know is not in their best interest therefore leaves them anxious. It not only makes them act compulsively, but done in excess, it also even promotes insanity. When the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is released next year, Internet Addiction Disorder will be included for the first time. China, Taiwan, and Korea recently began treating problematic Web use as a grave national health crisis. While we may appear to be choosing to use the technology, in fact we are being dragged to it by the potential of short-term rewards. Every ping could be social, sexual, or professional opportunity, and we get a mini-reward, a squirt of dopamine, for “answering the bell”. The brain scans of Internet addicts look like the brains of drug and alcohol addicts with structural abnormalities in gray matter, namely, shrinkage of 10 to 20 percent in the area of the brain responsible for processing of speech, memory, motor control, emotion, sensory, and other information. And worse, the shrinkage does not stop: the more time online, the more the brain showed signs of atrophy! One of the early flags for addiction is spending more than 38 hours a week online. Recent studies have conclusively shown that the more a person hangs out in the “global village”, the worse they are likely to feel. Web use often displaces sleep, exercise, and face-to-face exchanges, all of which can upset even the chirpiest soul. The digital impact may last not only for a day or a week, but for years down the line. A recent American study based on data from adolescent Web use in the 1990s found a connection between time online and mood disorders in young adulthood. Chinese researchers have similarly found “a direct effect” between heavy Net use and the development of full-blown depression; heavy texting and social-media use is correlated with stress, depression, and suicidal thinking. For the addicts, their phones and laptops are the “place for hope” in their lives, the place where sweetness comes from. A baby being breastfed or bottle-fed would experience the mother's tenseness as she simultaneously texts messages and interpret that tension as originating within the mother-child bond. Technology can make us forget important things we know about life. This evaporation of the “genuine self” also occurs among the high-school- and college-age kids who struggle with digital identities at an age when actual identity is in flux as many of them end up having to reply to 100 new text messages - most of them inane - on their phone every day. The latest Net-and-depression study reveals that depressed kids were the most intense Web users, chewing up more hours of email, chat, video-games and file sharing — with their real life reduced to being “just another window”, and usually not their best one! The Internet is ours to shape; its usage for us to decide, not the other way around. Our minds are in the balance.
