Is Internet Addiction a Real Thing?
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Concepts are mental activities that identify disparate concretes by ignoring some aspects of their differences. As such, we can unify pretty much anything under a concept. The question is never "is this abstract thing really real for reals?" It is: "Does this way of grouping things give us any useful way of dealing with the underlying reality?"
Debates about whether the constellation of phenomena that get united under a named concept constitute a "real thing" are almost always undertaken in more-or-less willful ignorance of this fact. The very way of posing the question--"Is this real?"--obscures the actually interesting and important question: "Is this useful?"
Addiction is a fairly well-defined and useful category of pathology. People who are addicted to something have similar symptoms and issues, and treatment of addiction can be usefully studied across groups of addicts, so what is learned about people with alcohol addictions may be useful to people with heroin addictions and so on (or not: simply because two things are grouped under the same concept for a given purpose does not mean they are usefully identical for all purposes, as anyone who has handled a sail boat and a row boat--both members of the abstract category "boat"--knows.)
No concept has perfectly crisp edges, and on the borders there are plenty of cases that one person would count as "in" while another would count as "out". If enough such cases start accumulating and impede communication and thought, we create new interstitial concepts. In the case of "Internet addiction" the interesting question is, "Is this enough like other addictions to group it usefully under the came concept, or do we need something intermediate or possibly orthogonal to usefully categorize it?"
This is a good intuition for a certain set of topological notions:
I know a lot of people who could be classified under the "information addict" category.
Two decades ago they would've most likely been regulars at a library, part of book clubs, have all the encyclopedia's they could get their hands on etc.
Two decades ago they would've also have been classified as well read, informed and all similar good things.
If anything the internet has made it easier for them to understand different perspectives and participate in discussions.
Would I call they "information addicts"?
Definitely not.
But there are some types of addictions that the internet as a , medium has made easier to achieve "social snooping addiction" and "WebMD addiction" would definitely be the big ones.
But as OP said, the internet is merely a medium, not the addiction.
You did not lump us in the same category with the average Facebook stalker, did you?
This is a ridiculous dismissal of a serious issue, and frankly it reads like you and the parent commenters didn't bother to RTFA.
>through a combination of excessive time spent online and that time interfering with necessary social and professional activities, Internet use would result in either mental distress or clinical impairment, akin to the type of inability to function associated with pathological gambling
Does that read like your typical book club member?
I am reading the word "right" as you agreeing with their post.
Did you mean for the "right" to read as a dismissal of their post, and their silly use of "addict" to describe the book club member/library goer?
Also, I never said a casual book club member of library goer fits the definition of an information addict.
I said, and I quote:
Two decades ago they would've most likely been regulars at a library, part of book clubs, have all the encyclopedia's they could get their hands on etc.
- being regulars at a library
- part of book clubs
- getting their hands on as many informative/factoid sources such as encyclopedias
I go on to say:
Two decades ago they would've also have been classified as well read, informed and all similar good things.
After which I stated:
Would I call they(sic) "information addicts"? - Definitely not.
Now to address your comment:
through a combination of excessive time spent online and that time interfering with necessary social and professional activities, Internet use would result in either mental distress or clinical impairment, akin to the type of inability to function associated with pathological gambling
It points to excessive time spent online and that time interfering with necessary social and professional activities as the cause for mental distress or clinical impairment.
Unfortunately in reality things are usually the other way around (there may be exceptions, albeit few).
That is, people who suffer from mental distress, clinical impairment or extreme cases of dissonant discomfort in today's day and age use the internet to get easier access to their fix.
People suffering from these alleged symptoms would most likely always sacrifice social and professional activities, regardless of the medium that delivers their fix.
By focusing on the internet and other effects of the real disorders, it perpetuates a disregard for the serious issues that people are actually suffering from.
ex:
A serious hypochondriac would not get fixed by reducing time spent on the internet.
The same goes for disorders dealing with paranoia, obsessions, social stalking etc.
Perhaps you are using a very loose definition of the word "addict" while the author and I are using a narrow, clinical, definition.
When I, and the author, say "internet addiction" we don't mean that the person just has a thirst for knowledge. We mean that if a person has a behavioral addiction then that person has "an inability to control how often or how intensely you engage in an activity, even when you feel the negative consequences."
This is probably just a semantic disagreement.
The people that can browse the web all day, hold down jobs, care for themselves, these aren't the people the author is talking about. They are talking about the ones that drop out of school, quit their jobs, etc.
>Since you mentioned it; In my opinion that statement unfortunately seems to get the causality and effects mixed.
Do you hold the same stance if we swap out internet addiction for another addiction, such as gambling or heroin?
> Trying to establish, that just because a person seeks out and consumes a lot of data does not make them an internet addict or an information addict.
This wasn't implied in the article. Maybe the grandparent comment implied it, but I don't think so.
As to your comments about "real disorders" and "serious issues" well, we take the bottle away from the drunkard, but that's really another discussion on its own.
Example of loose use of the "addict" label: http://qz.com/304179/brazil-has-the-worlds-biggest-internet-...
I use the Internet a lot, but that is because the Internet has grown to encompass some amount of nearly every aspect of my life, not (in my non-professional opinion) because I have an addictive tendency toward it.
I'm a software developer, so clearly Internet use for research/testing/etc is very common; I'm a movie/tv watcher and all of my at-home movie/tv watching has migrated to the Internet; I'm a reader and most of my reading has migrated to the Internet (at the very least for delivery to my Kindle); I'm a gamer and most of the games I play have at least some Internet-based multiplayer component; I'm a hobbyist at various things like photography, quadcopter building/flying, and 3D printing and the Internet is a spectacular way to communicate with like-minded hobbyists, so I do; I'm someone who lives across the country from most of my extended family, and we keep in contact via the Internet (in addition to occasional phone calls and visits, but the contact via the Internet is much more consistent due to the easy time-shifting of leaving messages).
I spend hours and hours and hours a day on the Internet, but OTOH I can easily go camping for a week or two and live completely without it with no ill effects. I have IRL friends I spend time with on a weekly basis, I "get out" and do plenty of things not related to the Internet, etc. So while I use it very often on a regular basis, that in and of itself does not signify an addiction, as far as I understand it (again, in my non-professional opinion).
> Summary
>
> People commonly debate whether social and mental
> conditions are real diseases. This masquerades as a
> medical question, but its implications are mainly social
> and ethical. We use the concept of disease to decide who
> gets sympathy, who gets blame, and who gets treatment.
>
> Instead of continuing the fruitless "disease" argument,
> we should address these questions directly. Taking a
> determinist consequentialist position allows us to do so
> more effectively. We should blame and stigmatize people
> for conditions where blame and stigma are the most useful
> methods for curing or preventing the condition, and we
> should allow patients to seek treatment whenever it is
> available and effective.However, psychological dependence may be more accurate for many behaviors.
Check out the DSM4 criteria for substance dependence[1], but note that it has been phased out in the DSM5. They merged it with substance abuse to form "Substance Use Disorder."
> Addiction is a state defined by compulsive engagement in...What is 'addiction'? What is 'disease'? What is 'real'?
It recalls Bill Clinton asking for a more precise definition of the word 'is'.