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Armchair Pyschologist
A Take On: Internet Addiction Disorder "I am logged in, therefore I am."
Introduction
My PC has been hooked up to the net for three years now. Have I changed since that fateful day I picked an ISP? Yes, I was literally transformed. Since December 1998 I have been unable to leave my chair. I have vines on my hair, mildew on my butt, moss on my feet. I have fossilized. But my fingers are very healthy and well-excercised. I am in trouble.
So I searched the internet for some check-up and help, and found a checklist to diagnose how bad it was for me. The list didn't cover all my symptoms, so I had to expand it with many of my own original diagnoses.
I knew I was addicted to the internet because...
My bookmark takes 15 minutes to scroll from top to bottom. My eyeglasses have a website (mine) burned in on them. I find myself brainstorming for new subjects to search. I refuse to go to a vacation spot with no electricity and no phone lines. All my daydreaming is preoccupied with getting a faster connection to the net: 56k...ISDN...ADSL...LAN...T1...T3. And even my night dreams are in HTML. A typical nightmare is a page of Javascript with 2 million error messages. I only trim my fingernails when they grow so long that they get in the way of typing code. I find myself typing "com" after every period when using a word processor.com I turn off my modem and get this awfuly empty feeling, like I just pulled the plug on a loved one. I refer to grocery shopping as downloading. I start to introduce myself as "Claire at www dot claireworks dot com slash index dot html". I step out of my room and realize that my new neighbor has moved in and I don't even have a clue when the old one left. All my friends have an @ in their names. When looking at a pageful of someone else's links, I notice all of them are already highlighted in purple. My dog has its own homepage, which is really alarming, because I don't even have a dog. I've already visited all the links at Yahoo and am halfway through Lycos. I name my rainbow-colored goldfish "Google". I can't call my grandmother...she doesn't have a modem. I believe that nothing is sexier than a sumo dude in kesho-mawashi (ceremonial apron) illuminated only by a 19" ViewSonic G790 monitor. I check my mail. It says "no new messages." So I check it again. I've forgotten what a real stamp looks like. The last time I sealed a real envelope by hand was the week before I connected to my ISP, and that was over two year ago. I refer to my age as 2.x. I ask potential boyfriends whether they are the latest version. If the answer is negative, I ask them to get an upgrade before giving me a Net2Phone call. My phone bills comes to my doorstep in a box. I code my homework in HTML and give my instructor the URL. I get a lousy grade and I blame it on the teacher's low-tech browser and lack of plugins, which couldn't run the fancy JavaScripts and Macromedia Flash animations embedded on the pages. I don't know what gender three of my closest friends are, because they have neutral nicknames and I never bothered to ask. I laugh at people with 28.8k modems and Cyrix processors. I miss more than five meals a week downloading the latest free graphics software. I wake up at 3 a.m. to go to the bathroom and stop and check my e-mail on my way back to bed. I tell the taxi driver I live at http://world.asia.japan/nagoya/apartment.html I actually try that world.asia.japan address. My virtual boyfriend finds a new net sweetheart with a larger bandwidth. I hit back by finding a new cyber beau with better specs. I tell my friends they can't use my PC because "I got work to do" and I don't even have a job. I plan on buying a Captain Kirk chair with a built-in keyboard and mouse. I am so familiar with the WWW that I find search engines useless. As a form of public service, I put a large poster on my door that says "Your Browser is Obsolete! Download and Upgrade to Internet Explorer v. 5.5 NOW!" I wince at the thought of upgrading my "This body best viewed with Internet Explorer 4.0" tattoo, but I call and make an appointment with the tattoo shop anyway. I never have to deal with busy signals when calling my ISP...because I never log off. The last guy I picked up was only a jpeg. I ask a plumber how much it would cost to replace the chair in front of my computer with a toilet. I forget what year it is. I start tilting my head sideways to smile. I ask my doctor to implant the new Pentium 4 processor in my brain. As my bicycle crashes through a ramen shop, my first instinct is to search for the "back" button. The remote to the TV is missing...and I don't even care. The last time I looked at the clock it was 11:00 PM, and in what seems like only a few seconds later, everybody in the apartment run to their bikes to catch their 8:45 first period class. I quit the current college I am attending and enroll myself in a Virtual University. I create a webpage with the impression to cure the afflicted...but my hidden agenda is to get 2 million hits in my invisible tracker. My hard drive crashes. I haven't logged in for two hours. I start to twitch. I pick up the phone and manually dial my ISP's access number. I try to hum to communicate with it. I succeed.
How Real, and How Bad, is Internet Addiction?
It is now an established fact that hundreds of internet users around the world spend so much time surfing the internet that it adversely affects their lives. But is Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) for real? If being addicted to the internet is a disorder, why isn't there such a thing as Television Addiction Disorder? The debate among mental health professionals is basically divided into two camps: those who, on the one hand, insist that IAD is a real and separate disorder category (I'll call them the "believers"), and those who, on the other hand, claim that IAD is merely a symptom of other established psychological disorders such as anxiety or depression (I'll call these guys the "skeptics"). Check out the links below and take sides.
Related Links: Help from the Experts Internet Addiction Guide - Psychcentral.com's guide. Very readable. Doc here says that what those "addicted" to the internet are probably suffering from is "the desire to not want to deal with other problems in their lives". Hmm, this description fits me like a glove! On Internet Addiction Disorder - A medical doctor's notes on IAD, including a diagnostic criteria. Internet Addiction Disorder - Diseaseworld.com's page on IAD. A great source for further links. Internet Addiction Disorder: Causes, Symptoms, Consequences - Academic paper by a psychology prof at Virginia Tech. Acknowledgement: Typing computer graphic courtesy of animatedgif.net. Blowing computer graphic courtesy of gifs.net.
My bookmark takes 15 minutes to scroll from top to bottom.
56k...ISDN...ADSL...LAN...T1...T3.
