My provider mercilessly glitched and deprived me of internet for a whole four days. During this period, you understand that the network is like water; you never appreciate it as much as when it’s absent. :)
This inadvertently leads to thoughts about dependency on the internet. For myself, I’ve long acknowledged that I am dependent on the internet. But here there are “buts” – there are different types of “dependencies,” right?
Unfortunately, technological progress gives humanity not only pluses but also minuses. In recent years, a new type of dangerous addiction has appeared – internet addiction.
If a person spends 18 hours a day in the World Wide Web and forgets about work and personal life. If outside the internet, they feel anxiety and discomfort. If they’re on the subway or on a walk and can only think about their computer, and they immediately turn it on when they get home, then you’re dealing with an internet addict.
Internet addiction has not yet been included in the list of mental illnesses, but specialists are already seriously concerned about this problem. With the increasing popularity of the internet, the number of people who “live” in it and completely fall out of real life is increasing. Unlike other dependencies, there is no physical or narcotic dependence here; it’s all on the psychological level.
At first glance, internet addiction doesn’t seem like a serious problem, but in reality, it exists and seriously damages a person’s psychological health and social adaptation. According to researchers, about 5-10% of internet users are addicted.
Psychologists distinguish five main types of addiction:
- Virtual communication – simply communicating online, which can last for hours. Typically, such individuals do not limit themselves to just one communication service. They use multiple forums, chats, and special programs. These people usually have no friends in real life, or they are few and communicate with them via the internet.
- Gaming addiction – here, of course, online games (MMOs) are in the first place. They are usually endless, and players are lured by various virtual bonuses (items, artifacts).
- Web-surfing – aimless wandering from site to site in search of information. Such people think they find a lot of interesting and useful things on the internet, but in reality, this is not the case.
- Cybersexual addiction – the need for virtual sex, visiting various porn sites.
- Financial need – the need to buy something online. People participate in online auctions, constantly search for goods in online stores.
I understand that the second and third points affect me quite strongly. It’s enough to play a couple of hours in some MMO and I’m immediately “sucked in,” although I wouldn’t limit this to just MMOs; in all good games, I get “stuck.” But if gaming addiction is quite easy to “jump off” by not playing for a few days, the desire to surf doesn’t just disappear. I constantly want to read all sorts of nonsense.
For the treatment of internet addiction, first of all, there’s no need to panic. Try to gradually limit the time spent online.
It’s best to redirect a person’s interests in the right direction, for example, let them learn to write programs, make websites, or short animations. If a person has a goal, they will gradually begin to appreciate their time and won’t waste it on meaningless things. After all, specialists note that internet-addicted people are those who use it not for work but for meaningless things.
They write interestingly. And indeed, can’t we classify all these “junkies” somehow? After all, it’s very difficult to compare someone addicted to “Vkontakte” with a frequent visitor to a news portal, right? In my humble opinion, in the first case, it’s a clinic, and all this is really so scary, they paint it over a bottle of moonshine.
In general, I think all this is nonsense. And as long as my life motto is:
When you can download dumplings from the internet, then we’ll talk about internet addiction. Until then, it’s nonsense and a myth.
If this addiction still exists, then it’s the most useful one.
The only thing is, if internet addiction arises in children, then attention should be paid to the child’s mental state and behavior. This is more serious than in adulthood. Perhaps they simply have difficulties in communicating with peers, and they try to drown out their problems using the internet.