The Realities of Internet Addiction

From my own personal experience, Internet addicts usually don’t know that they have a problem. They keep strange hours, eat tons of junk food and their eyes are sensitive to light. My roommate was a World of Warcraft gamer and she kept talking on her headset well past 4 am, leading her team on “raids” in the computer game. I myself have been know to spend hours online, watching reruns of my favorite tv shows and streaming movies online.

This made me decide to help classify this problem by presenting the Cliff notes verion of what I’ve researched on Internet addiction:

What is it?

According to the American Psychological Association, there’s still a lot of debate over whether Internet addiction should even be classified as a disease. In one major study they conducted, however, individuals reported “loss of control”, “time distortion” and “decreased inhibitions” when using the internet ( view the APA article here).

Most agree that Internet addiction could cover anything from blogging, obsessively watching your favorite tv shows, gaming, and generally surfing for hours on end. Internet addicts usually experience increased euphoria while online, insomnia, and will lie to others about their activities in order to keep up their online habit.

How Do You Know…?

Internet addiction is generally defined as any excessive use of online resources that causes an individual to retreat from daily life, or withdraw from pleasurable activities. A WebMD article even points to the “adverse effect on mental health” (WebMD article) that frequent internet users experience if they over indulge on the Web. There are also surveys offered on recovery websites like this one that can help you determine whether you’re addicted, or just innocently into computers.

Where to Go…?

If you’ve seen the show Intervention, then you’re probably wondering just where do Internet Addicts go for rehab? There are actually in-patient treatment centers dedicated to helping online addicts. The ReSTART center, with corporate offices based out of Washington state, has a 45 day in-patient program for online addicts, but you have to pay $14,000 plus enrollment. (Yikes). I would suggest just taking the free online survey.

Overall, Internet addiction is not technically classified as a disease or disorder by the American Psycological Association, but I believe that it’s a phenomenon that people should  guard against in their daily lives. If you’ve ever been up at 3 am, surfing the web, and get depressed when your WiFi connection cuts out, then you could be experiencing a minor form of Internet addiction.