Broadband Life and Internet Anxiety Disorder

ChipGuy writes "Broadband brings the world right to your laptop or your handheld. With it comes information, and along with it comes desire to stay connected, and on top of everything. Om Malik calls it Internet Anxiety Disorder. 'The rush to catch-up and living a six megabits per second lifestyle, is what I think is going to be first major malaise of the 21st century - Internet anxiety disorder,' he says. Firefox developer, Blake Ross thinks that 'Internet hardwires developing brains with a click-happy sense of urgency that will not defer to reality. We are addicted to information and seek it even when we know it's not available.' Others have described this info-addiction as Nerd Attention Deficiency Disorder."

Internet related dependence

Part of this is that you have to consider that for many of us, the Internet has become a daily part of our workflow and without it we could not perform in our jobs. I absolutely need the Internet to collaborate with colleagues, and because I am paid to know things and to think, the ability to be able to search for information and access online scientific journals is critical. I cannot believe how much time I spent as a beginning undergraduate in the library looking through actual card catalogues! Now one can survey tremendous amounts of data in very little time, but the tradeoff is that we have become dependent upon the Internet for our data gathering. I will admit however, to also becoming dependent upon the Internet for daily news as well and do feel a sense of loss when disconnected. For instance, when taking hikes or going biking in the mountains for longer than a day, I feel the need for an information fix. Even when traveling nationally or internationally, I ensure that I am connected via broadband, can communicate through iChatAV with colleagues, can post to my blog [utah.edu], can get the latest news as it happens and of course, keep up with Slashdot. :-)

Of course the referenced links do contain valid points, particularly Rand's blog [randsinrepose.com]. What Rand alludes to however and needs to be learned is the ability to focus and extract the absolutely relevant information related to the task at hand. I've noticed in the undergraduates in particular that have come through the lab that they tend to try and multitask everything, talking on the phone, performing Internet related searches, writing their reports and listening to music while also running an experiment in the background. Almost always, mistakes ensue, the quality of the work suffers, wrong conclusions are drawn and it takes them a couple of months to learn to focus while eliminating some of the competing tasks to ensure quality work for the essential task at hand. Once they learn to focus, not only does the quality of their work improve, but also their ability to extract information from all sorts of tasks including Internet related work. Confusion goes away and is replaced by efficiency of thought and action.

Dependant since 1994...

The few months after I got my cable modem (all 500K of it), I was totally addicted. Having come from a POTS 1200 baud background on the old Atari 800, this was quite a huge difference.

Soon after, I had a shitload of useless things running in the taskbar (

True.

My line went down yesterday. Longest 10 seconds of my life.

Old standards ...

Even though the online page says "come back on day X", students still checked the page frequently. This is what I mean when I say it's impossible to evaluate my generation's behavior according to old standards or even according to common sense; I really believe the Internet hardwires developing brains with a click-happy sense of urgency that will not defer to reality. We are addicted to information and seek it even when we know it's not available. (Blake Ross)

Already about thirty years ago I observed people who ran obviously faulty pieces of code a second time hoping for a different outcome; my guess is that humans love voodo but that it ususally does not work. So I do not believe that there is another "Generation X" (whatever).

CC.

Re:Old standards ...

Don't forget channel surfing, which has been around for decades. Many people sit in front of the tv for hours, flipping through the channels over and over looking for something good to watch, even though they just cycled through all the same channels a minute ago and know that the same shows are still on.

"News addiction" has been around forever

There have always been people who are addicted to "news". If they don't know "what's happening in the world", or are prevented from accessing their favourite news medium, they actually suffer a sort of panic attack. Some are quite unreasonable about it, such as making everyone else in the house stop talking for the duration of the evening TV news.

I've observed this disorder not only with the internet, but in previous eras when the primary news media were television, radio, and newspapers. I've read about people in the 1800s who got quite upset if they didn't have access to the latest broadsheet. In one form or another, it probably goes back to the era of town criers.

I have a suspicion that it derives from an abnormal compulsion to "take control" over one's environment, and knowing "what's happening" helps provide an enabling comfort zone.

Re:Old standards ...

Its just operant conditioning in action.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinner_box [wikipedia.org]

You check the link and it has updated off schedule once, and it encourages you to check it repeatedly just in case.

For m

Re:Old standards ...

Yeah, I have a Schroedinger's refrigerator also, but mainly because I am so tall and my fridge has alot of low shelves. There are things I'll miss until I really get hungry, squat down, and take a good close look. Excuses aside, I keep hoping for that extr

Brings out other disorders too

Obsessive compulsive disorder for one. And masturbation! And anti-social disorder. And nerdiness!

Women Rejoice

While nerds are kept busy with the internet and counseling sessions, gorgeous women everywhere are free to live their lives without fear of nerds asking them out.

Strange

The rush to catch-up and living a six megabits per second lifestyle

and yet the first site they jump on is Slashdot, which usually has the effect of slowing the servers it mentions down to a crawl...

One problem with the Internet

Thanks to the Internet, the majority are alienated from the mainstream.

This is so old news...

I've already read about this on Fark, Boing Boing, and Wired. Blogging on it's so last month and I've already IM'ed on it with my FOAF pals. If you want to know more-- oops gotta go-- my Treo's got an SMS!

Re:This is so old news...

You forgot to post it on your wiki. I took care of it already.

Nice acronym

Yeah, like I'm going to tell people that I have NADD.

Anxiety disorder not new- Internet nothing special

I'm sure hunter-gatherers had the same desire to stay on top of everything in the forest. The brain can be overloaded at much less than six megabits per second. You can become paranoid without this so-called click-happy sense of urgency. If you really think about all the smells entering your nose, the wind through the leaves, the snapping of twigs in the distance, you can fully wig yourself out. It's not about technology, it's about devoting too much of your consciousness to any of your senses for too long. I suggest meditation, jogging, or any exercise that turns off that over-active cortex and sends you to another place. The internet is just a new form of stimulus that you can dwell on too much. Nothing special. Nothing new.

Re:Anxiety disorder not new- Internet nothing spec

This is why people have a large portion of their brain dedicated to ignoring stuff.

It's True!

The thalamus filters information heading towards the cortex, and the reticular activating system (in the brain stem) filters out extraneous information, i.e. constantly present odors, background hums, etc. You'd go crazy if this was broken.

N.A.D.D?

I, for one, am against the usage of any acronym that is so close to nad. In fact, the pronounciation would be exactly the same.

That would like the Society for Trendy Undeserving People Instigating Debate

Gimme a break....

The rush to catch-up and living a six megabits per second lifestyle...

I'm sorry but this line kills me... some computer dork trying to sound cool was like a car guy quoting Vin Diesel in Fast and Furious...

I live my life a quarter mile at a time, nothing else matters, for those ten seconds or less, I'm free.

For a prime example of this

Shutdown slashdot for a few days, see whether all the geeks become anxious.

We are information processing machines

It's what we do. Information is always available, unless you're in a sensory deprivation tank or something, in which case you may well start hallucinating, because you aren't "addicted" to information; you require it for proper functioning.

I think some people are addicted to labling everything as an addiction.

Maybe it has something to do with our rather bizzare cultural perception that if you're enjoying yourself you must be mentally ill.

Actually, now that I think about it, given the state of our culture, they might have a point.

KFG

Not New

This is just info-porn addiction in a new medium. 15 years ago we were discussing the same topic with regards to people who obsessively watch cable news channels. Sure, the internet version will have it's own unique twists, but let's have some sense of history, please.

F5....F5.....F5.....

F5....
F5....
F5....

Come on! Post a new article already!

F5....
F5....
F5....
F5....

Log off

I can log off anytime I want. This is not an addiction, I just choose to be online. I don't have to be connected, it's just, you know, like chocolate, it's good, satisfying, it's where it's at.

But I could stop anytime I want. Really.

Re:Dying gasps of an older generation

I'm the same way.

With regards to health, I think my original argument made allowances for that; if you are worried about your kids' health, you won't let them sti around on their asses all day. Brianrot and attention span have little to do with parental