Computer Addiction or Just Modern Life? 261
Ant writes to tell us that ABC News has an interesting look at computer addiction and what it might take to be considered addicted in today's society. From the article: "Video games and the Internet have been subject to suspicion since the computer became a household fixture. One complaint: People get sucked into spending enormous amounts of time on the computer, to the detriment of other parts of their life. But are they addicted? The answer depends on what you mean by 'addicted.' Most experts say computers are not addictive in the same sense that drugs are, but they could be on the same level as gambling."
My participation in this thread is redundant (Score:2, Funny)
problem? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:problem? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:problem? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:problem? (Score:5, Funny)
Even on Slashdot, ignorance like this is ridiculous. Valentine's Day, of course, celebrates ones of the most famous massacres. You're supposed to give gifts of appeasement to avoid another one.
Re:problem? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:problem? (Score:2)
Re:problem? (Score:2)
Also, I'd quibble with his original comment, in that the sense isn't "time," but "memory."
Ummm.... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ummm.... (Score:5, Informative)
Ahha! (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, you need to find a 12 step program - along with me. (I promised on another topic that I'd quit to go to bed. But I can quit anytime I want to...It's just that...I dont' wnt to...I wan't to stay up for more hours... here on /....really...I can quit at anytime...no REALLY....don't touch that RJ-45 connector..GET AWAY!.......(Intervention)
Re:Ummm.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ummm.... (Score:5, Funny)
Cute. (Score:5, Informative)
This three page ABC News story [go.com] asks millions of people worldwide spend enormous amounts of time online, but are they addicted? Video games and the Internet have been subject to suspicion since the computer became a household fixture. One complaint: People get sucked into spending enormous amounts of time on the computer, to the detriment of other parts of their life.
But are they addicted? The answer depends on what you mean by "addicted." Most experts say computers are not addictive in the same sense that drugs are, but they could be on the same level as gambling...
Seen on Blue's News [bluesnews.com].
Re:Cute. (Score:4, Interesting)
Or watching tv.
Now a lot of people spend a lot of time in front of their computer it sounds like a bad thing, when they were couch potatoes watching tv, no-one complained about it ???
This post is a case study. (Score:5, Funny)
Am I addicted? Not in the traditional sense of the word, of course.
Re:This post is a case study. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This post is a case study. (Score:5, Funny)
... and by girlfriend you mean an actual human female and not a cardboard cut out of Mavis Beacon Typing Tutor? Cause trust me dude I've been down that road.
Re:This post is a case study. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This post is a case study. (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
mmm (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:mmm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:mmm (Score:5, Funny)
You're going to learn to type with your tongue?
Re:mmm (Score:2, Funny)
That is precisely what an addict would say.
Re:mmm (Score:2, Interesting)
Habits, addiction, conditioning - is it all the same?
Re:mmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmm... while looking up addiction on Wikipedia I came across an interesting experiment [wikipedia.org] which basically shows that the animal based research on drug addiction we have is flawed. Basically, the animals used in most drug addiction studies are not in a natural environment; they are pu
It's an artificial need. (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it necessary for survival? Only if the environment forces you to it. The current environment is technologically-driven, so you need to stay connected to have a social life, student life, work life, etc.
The real problem is about people whose life is so miserable that to escape from the world, they use the internet. THEN it becomes an addiction, but I'd say that's the least of their problems.
Re:It's an artificial need. (Score:2, Interesting)
At least, that's how I feel sometimes.
Re:It's an artificial need. (Score:2, Interesting)
Depends on how you define needs (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, computers and the Internet sure can do that. Computer games are wonderfully entertaining, at least for some. I find them much more satasfying than TV most of the time. The Internet is an excellent place to get at all sorts of information for no other reason than because you want to.
So I wouldn't say it's an artifical need, it's very real, it's just one that there are many ways to fill, and computers are not a requisite to doing that, just a way of doing it if you like. I don't think they are any less valid than any other method. I don't understand the conception that a family that comes home and watches TV all evening while eating, chatting, etc is "normal" but one that goes and logs on to Warcraft is "addicted".
I'd say computers are just one of the many things we choose to spend time on meeting our highest needs, since our more basic ones are generally quite easily met in rich countries.
Re:Depends on how you define needs (Score:4, Insightful)
>self actualization
Well said! As Maslow put it in A Theory of Human Motivation [yorku.ca]:
Technology facilitates these needs in two ways.
Technology lowers the transaction costs. It's easier for me to write with a keyboard (and, ahem, spellcheck) than with a quill pen. Also to the degree that communicating with other people helps in the creative process (e.g. /. encourages me to think and to write about subjects like this, which might otherwise pass me by.)
Technology makes it easier to more broadly disseminate the products of creativity, both in space and time. The near-annihilation of geographical limits is obvious, but what may be of greater interest to persons seeking self-actualization is the knowledge that once something goes into the Internet Archive [archive.org] and its various commercial analogues, e.g. Google's database, the creation may last longer than humanity itself. That's not immortality, but perhaps as close as we can get with current technology!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's an artificial need. (Score:2)
Are these people "addicted", or just spending time doing what they enjoy.
Personally, this seems to be yet another case of the media attempting to make a mountain out of a molehill...
Re:It's an artificial need. (Score:3, Interesting)
Well yes. Without technology I'd be hard pressed to earn a living at my current tech support job and I'd doubt I could make it very far hunting animals with my bare hands.
I for one do not wish to live in a world where I only live to 25 and have no teeth and live in the woods covered in lice fearing the dar
ABC News ? (Score:5, Funny)
Addicted to Slashdot on Valentine's Day (Score:3, Insightful)
Computers, games, Internet, chat, whatever can be addicting. You can tell because people will do something unproductive to the point of harming themselves. What's unproductivity you ask? Doing something that doesn't endear you to other human beings, and produces no tangible result that you can talk proudly about later with your grandchildren.
Grandchildren are what you have after you find a mate, have children, and raise them well enough that they too have children. I tell you this, because you're a Slashdotter like me, and quite possibly haven't considered the possibility that you can spend enough time away from the keyboard to actually find a mate. It's possible, since married Slashdotters post all the time, and even our great leader (1) Taco is married and proposed on Slashdot. Being Valentine's Day, it's the perfect time to wallow in your single-ness, and motivate yourself to do something tomorrow that will introduce yourself to new people and potentially a mate.
Re:Addicted to Slashdot on Valentine's Day (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Addicted to Slashdot on Valentine's Day (Score:3, Funny)
No truer words have ever been spoken. Fooling around is nowhere near as fun as blowing your wad on the latest graphics card.
No, I'm not kidding.
Re:Addicted to Slashdot on Valentine's Day (Score:2, Interesting)
I simply don't care enough to put forth the effort required to establish and maintain a relationship. The rewards do not out-weigh the cost in my mind. I'm indifferent.
I describe it as the path of least resistance. If my drive towards something is neutral, I'll make no effort to avoid it and no effort to obtain it. I'm not going to try and find a mate because I simply don't care one way or another.
I'm not wallowing in anything, and the fact that I am not only comfortable with my situation but happy w
Re:Addicted to Slashdot on Valentine's Day (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Addicted to Slashdot on Valentine's Day (Score:3)
I feel no more incomplete than any unmarried guy.
==
My "have children" remark was including "adopt" which is another way to "have" kids. I should have said "raise children", to avoid the backlash from anti-reproducers. My genes are as good or maybe better than the next guy's, but I'm not so egotistical that I consider only my genes to be suitible for passing on to the next generation.
Having/Raising children is an essential part of surviving old age.
Link to article (Score:2, Informative)
It all depends on how you use your computer. (Score:2, Interesting)
addiction? (Score:2)
You make the call.
Re:addiction? (Score:2)
Non issue - it's currently 1:20 AM.
To be fair, that's generally within a half-hour when I get home from work. Now, I feel sleepy.
How about cars? (Score:5, Insightful)
Automobile addiction, or just modern life?
Telephone addiction, or just modern life?
Newspaper addiction, or just modern life?
Machine addiction, or just modern life?
Agriculture addiction, or just modern life?
Clothes addiction, or just modern life?
Fire addiction, or just modern life?
Pointy stick addiction, or just modern life?
Hmmmm...
Re:How about cars? (Score:5, Funny)
I can quit pointy sticks anytime I want. I just don't want to..
Re:How about cars? (Score:2)
Re:How about cars? (Score:2)
Re:How about cars? (Score:5, Funny)
Think of the children.
Re:How about cars? (Score:2)
Whether some recurring action/situation is considered an addiction or not is a personal moral judgement.
For example, if I for some reason started to think that employer/employee relationship is psycholgocially, socially wrong, and bad for my health to boot, I may consider employment an addiction that takes up the bulk of my life.
Usually things are considered addictive if they cause you
I'm addicted to shoes, wheels, and toothpaste. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm also psychologically addicted to toothpaste. Even though my body doesn't require it to survive, I don't think I could ever convince myself to stop using it without great pressure.
Computers are a tool, folks. They're used so much because they're a tool for a very wide variety of things. Imagine how much you'd use a car that did fifty other things for you.
It's an addiction (Score:5, Insightful)
I absolutely recognize that it is detrimental to the rest of my life -- I do neglect things that are arguably more important. And I get frustrated sometimes, and seriously consider yanking the cord right out of the wall and throwing the computer in the closet for a few weeks.
It may not be a classic addiction in the physical sense, but I could see it being similar to something like a gambling addiction, as mentioned. I know that I'll sit down at the computer frequently, even when I know there is nothing new to see, because I just looked a few minutes earlier ;). And yet I will do a little surfing anyway.
And that is why I am typing this on Valentine's Day, instead of being out with my non-existent girlfriend.
Not an addiction (Score:3, Funny)
You might get a few jitters if you quit your internet habit cold-turkey, but you'll be okay. "Addiction Medicine" specialists deal with people who've developed chemical dependancies. Good hypnotists help deal with the psychological aspects of an addiction, but they need to work with a doctor-typ
As opposed to, you know, television. (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone spends hours and hours and hours a day watching television, they're just normal Americans.
Does ABC NEWS (you know, the television channel) make note of this odd double standard? Hard to tell, since Slashdot didn't bother to actually provide us the story to read. I guess this is actually a pretty smart move on Slashdot's part. Nobody reads the stories anyway, so now to save on bandwidth they're just omitting the links.
Re:As opposed to, you know, television. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like going to the American Meat Institute and asking what they think of vegetarianism.
Re:As opposed to, you know, television. (Score:2)
back in the day (Score:5, Interesting)
You've got all the traditional fixes online - gambling, power, people, and so on. You can use the internet to get to your fix, it is not a fix on its own.
Re:back in the day (Score:2)
Sonny, you've got an acronym addiction.
A computer is multiple tools (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that all the tools to perform those tasks, and more, happen to be in the same box is incidental.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Addiction Addiction, I can't STOP!!!! (Score:2)
I started out huffing it like everyone else, but it nearly killed me when I started shooting it like smack. Oxygen, a danergous drug, indeed....
Well, what? (Score:3, Interesting)
OK, Unca Hosie'll help you out. First, general refutation: if the sole criteria for deeming something an "addiction" is that you spend a lot of time doing it so much as to neglect other activities, then why not say *sleep* is addicting? We spend one third of our lives doing it, we're unable to stop (we may try to curtail our sleeping but the "withdrawal symptoms" set in), and we could be doing a lot of more valuable things with our time if we didn't have to spend so much of it sleeping.
Second, if we must categorize computer use as addicting, then it is a relatively benign addiction. Beyond the case of the occasional socially-handicapped geek (rarely reported these days), few detrimental effects are known to stem from excessive computer use. Carpal tunnel syndrome and repetitive stress disorder may affect certain individuals in extreme cases (and may partly be blamed on poor interface design). Beyond that, it neither affects your physical health like drugs nor your financial health like gambling (which I don't classify as an addiction, but rather as a mental disease - based on the denial of the laws of mathematics in the face of an irrational faith in luck). Some psychological damage can be noted in the case of system administrators (read scary-devil-monastery lately?), but as these people encounter their hardships as a result of using computers in a professional capacity, even this evidence is negligible.
Re:Well, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because that is a silly definition of addiction. William S. Burroughs covered this somewhere in Naked Lunch. Something is addictive if that thing creates the feeling of need for more of the thing. Certain drugs are addictive, because users cannot stand being without them, while I, who never tried them, do not miss them.
Oxygen is not addictive because my body inherently needs oxygen. The need was not created by exposure to oxygen. Same for sleep.
Computer use addictive? Perhaps for some people surfing or hacking could become a psychological need. This is different from just wasting a lot of time on computers.
Re:Well, what? (Score:2)
"Man Accuses Slashdotters in a Post of Being Too Nerdy to Reply to a Post On Slashdot on Valentines Day Night"
Some good points (Score:5, Interesting)
The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle ground between the two extremes.
As a college student, instant messaging has become a vital form of communication amongst myself and my peers. To lose access to instant messaging would severely restrict my social access. It's a less attention consuming form of contact than a phone conversation and it allows me to converse with multiple friends at the same time rather than being tied down to one at a time. Often my buddies plan to head out somewhere over the ventrilo chat channel. If I'm not at a computer I'd miss out.
We play games together as a group, it's a social activity that has introduced me to the bulk of my hometown friends. It supplants gathering 'round for a football game since only a few of us are even interested in spots.
I didn't grow up immersed in sports, undiagnosed athsma kept me from excelling in sports for a long time and instead video games took its place as a recreational activity.
There was a time when video games seemed to be the sole niche of an underground geek culture. However, as time progressed, the video game industry has blossomed and television advertisements for games have become commonplace. Many geeks would come to wonder when jocks started playing games too. They had probably been playing all along, but since video games have become more prevalent, society has become more accepting of this hobby and more are admitting to the activity.
Humanity has experienced a diverse set of lifestyles. We've tilled fields to scratch out subsistence lives in the countryside and washed ourselves with buckets of water, we've moved into cities and have become accustomed to commuting to work over distances that would have taken a full day of travel, and we are now touching upon an age where computers will become a natural extension of our lives.
How much is too much? This is clearly a question of values. Notably physical health is questioned. Also, mental health may come into question when some choose to completely divorce themselves from reality in order to live out another life they find more comforting. Society will also come to consider how much "real" social contact can be replaced with virtual contact.
(Btw, at some point, we're going to have to figure out a system to properly convey a range of emotions through text if we are going to make virtual contact more like real contact. We might need to upgrade keyboards with emotion keys akin to Caps Lock and make the necessary software changes. The earlier slashdot article on misconstrued posts raises this question already)
Addiction is Measureable (Score:5, Interesting)
Addictive substances are addictive because they've evolved that way -- they exert some type of control over other creatures (like humans) by stimulating the pleasure centers of the host's brain. It's really a symbiotic (or in some cases, parasitic) relationship between two species. Computers don't fit into this picture.
Are people who read a lot of books addicted to books? What about people who play sports? Or pursue any other hobby for that matter? Just because some people choose to spend a lot of time at the keyboard doesn't mean their brains have been altered to *need* the experience.
Re:Addiction is Measureable (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny you should ask.
When novels started becoming widely popular in Europe, there was a lot of concern about people spending too much time reading them and neglecting more important and vital aspects of life. Madame Bovary is, ironically enough, a novel that is in part about the detrimental effects of an addiction to the reading of novels; the same in a sense could be said of Don Quixote.
People always have decried whatever the "addiction" of the moment is, and they probably always will.
But it's not their fault, really. They're addicted to doing so
More Victimology... (Score:2)
How about some of us make good choices, and some of us make not so good choices, and we have to live with the consequences. Unless we're screwing up our neighbor's peace in the process, we can a
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How I solved the problem (Score:2)
Oh, yeah?! (Score:3, Funny)
I'll bet you a $100 they're not... right after I reach level 45 on WoW...
Addicted? (Score:2)
I think.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Well... (Score:2, Funny)
So what? (Score:2)
Hasn't this subject been beaten to death already? Stories about the Internet and gaming being addictive have been written ad nauseum ever since those things became popular. What makes an Internet 'addiction' so different from say, an 'addiction' to Dungeons & Dragons or collecting model cars or modding your car or... Well, you get the point. To me, this is just the media wanting to find something to write about other than hard news.
As long as people continue to exist, they will find and invent new thi
My usage desire depends on the circumstances (Score:3, Interesting)
It's just life at this point... I think that the breadth of what one can be into with computers negates the addiction factor. If I was doing just one thing on my computer all the time, like play Evercrack or sit and refresh the front page of Slashdot for hours, every day, that would be an addiction, like sitting in front of the same slot machine all day. An addiction to Evercrack is only involving one particular aspect of the usage of a very versatile tool. I don't think that makes the tool an addiction at all.
GF!! (Score:3, Funny)
media cycles (Score:2, Interesting)
Without getting sidetracked on the sheer coolness of being around for the creation of 2 distinct forms of media in my lifetime (which I can go on about for say 20 pages), the fact remains that my cable bill is for internet on
Or both. (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I think online games have a higher risk of abuse than most other typical activities, and I think the biggest factor is that they never end, MORPGs in particular, since most people are naturally driven to finish what they start. It's sort of like gambling, in that most people don't have specified rules as to when they'll stop, therefore they simply continue to play indefinately. In a sense, MORPGs are even more conducive to continued play because the only resource the player can run out of is time.
Internet addiction also shares common ground with eating addictions, in that some use is a de facto requirement of life in the modern world. Most people control their eating acceptably well (although recent health trends arguably demonstrate otherwise), but a few take it to excess. With food, especially unhealthy food, becoming increasingly cheap, the only limit is self control. While everyone likes to think of themselves as having great self control, nature has conditioned us to do the opposite due to scarcity. Part of addictive behavior may well be attributed to that instinct.
The question is are we addicted or obsessed? (Score:2)
Why settle for just one? (Score:4, Funny)
Addiction (Score:2)
No. It doesn't interfere with my having a daily life. I
Re:Addiction (Score:2)
The functional definition of an addiction is an activity that interferes with you conducting your daily life.
By that definition, a lot of Heroin users aren't addicted. Sure, they'd go into withdrawal if they stopped, but they could hold down a job if the stuff was priced near what it cost to produce, they'd just have a couple of long weekends.
Re:Addiction (Score:2)
2 more cents,
Queen B
Re:Addiction (Score:2)
Of course the stuff most addicts take is far from pure... contains all sorts of crap that then gets injected straight into the bloodstream causing massive health problems and (ulimately) early death.
Some explaining to do.. (Score:2)
its the person, not the thing (Score:3, Interesting)
the things don't make you addicted to them.
one will crave what others passes by.
the addiction comes out of the person,
not the thing.
j
Re:its the person, not the thing (Score:2)
Let a thousand slashdots bloom (Score:2)
They were never this concerned about TV habits (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I'd rather have people on Computers than TV, computing is far more social, and (hopefully!) intellectually stimulating than the drivel that constitutes as network programming these days!!
Re:They were never this concerned about TV habits (Score:3, Funny)
ISP Exec: Oh yeah?
TV Exec: YEAH!
ISP Exec: What youse gonna do about it?
TV Exec: You'll see...
( TV Exec heads off to make up story about computer addiction )
TV Exec: That will show them for trying to muscle in and take OUR addicts!
I've been addicted (Score:4, Interesting)
When I started playing, I was working in a Net Café so I played while I worked, interrupted only by customers (who needed only logging on and charging for usage) and customorons (who would swear on anything that a password was not needed to access their AOL Mail...EVER)
When I finished work, I'd go home and play some more
Eventually, I'd need sleep so I'd go to bed, thinking of the game while waiting for unconsciousness.
Once asleep, I would, no kidding, have dreams which took place in or were heavily influenced by the game.
In one obsessively driven period I stayed awake for 8 days (192 hours), sleeping a grand total of 14 hours (mostly at/on my keyboard)
I quit the game a couple of years ago (which included a very difficult period of withdrawal) and have avoided such intensive game addiction since....
Nowadays, I work late at night (start at 1900, finish at 0530) and even though I don't often play RPG's anymore, I still sit up, frittering away many an hour browsing and peregrinating around the Net, long after I should be sleeping (e.g. yesterday (Tuesday), I went to sleep around 1430).
Computer addiction and Gaming addiction, both grossly underestimated, have been a problem for years. The growth of easily-accesible, high-speed, affordable Net Access amplifies this problem.
If you don't believe me, just try and imagine how you would feel if Internet access was, involuntarily, unavailable for a week...or a month....
Or how about this....It's December 23rd and your computer is Fubarred...
Painful? Agonising? Torturous?
Internet Addiction is too often ignored or discredited. Surely, by now, it should be included in the DSM???
If no-one else, I reckon this guy [bbc.co.uk] would agree
this goes waaay back (Score:3, Interesting)
I got involved in a popular mud of the day, and soon found I was spending hours a day playing the game. I'd made quite a few friends in the game and was well known among the major players. Muds penalized you for logging out because any inventory or money you had on your character when you logged out, you lost. This included equipment. (armor, weapons, etc) You'd spend the next hour when you logged back in getting decent equipment to continue your gaming. So it was to your advantage to play for the longest possible continuous sessions. There were people that appeared to spend their entire day, most every day, playing the mud, because you could login at almost any time of day and find certain people always there in game.
I didn't have the greatest motivation at the time to go to certain classes, and found myself skipping some class to play the muds when I didn't feel like going to class. One day I arrived in the lab at 8am and left the lab at 4pm, having skipped all my classes that day. Then it just hit me like a lightning strike.... this was not good for me. So I signed back on, said my good-byes, and logged out. I have not played a mud since that day. (I guess you could say I quit cold turkey?)
Many things have changed since then, but many things are still the same. The muti user online games can be very addictive and provide a tempting escape from reality for a few hours a day. Those that lack the willpower to self-regulate their activities will probably find themselves in the same situation I put myself in so many years ago.
It's all in the definition, and the definer (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean someone has given up their 8-hour-a-day TV watching in favor of a 8-hour-a-day internet experience? They MUST be addicted.
Not addicition, just passive entertainment (Score:3, Interesting)
But for vast majority of people the internet is just like TV, another form of passive entertainment. TV gives us many dumb sitcoms but it also gives us sports, news talk shows, educational shows. They're all entertainment for various audiences. And people will get more back out of some than others.
My complaint about computers, which happen to be my job by the way, is that they're still pretty much a passive form of entertainment just like TV. So I get more out of reading a book than watching a movie, building a table than watching Norm Abrams show me how to build one, or going out birdwatching rather than watching a PBS show on it. In my experience active entertainment is always more rewarding than passive entertainment.
Though there are times when I don't really have the energy for active entertainment and passive entertainment is just what I need. But the problem with passive entertainment, whether it's computers or tv, is that it's very easy to choose more of it rather than get up and get involved with active entertaiment. Sort of like "you can't eat just one of them" in an old snack commercial. That gets a bit close to "addiction."
Re:the internet isn't addictive.. (Score:2)
Re:Addiction (Score:2)
Compulsions are often labelled addiction, when it's simply the wrong word. What you are arguing over are compulsions. What Szasz implicitly suggests is that all addictions are actually compulsions.
Addiction, as a biochemical feedback loop, is NOT a function of the individual, it's a function of the chemistry! Heroin is addictive. Crystal meth is frighteningly addictive (with the highest rate of recidivism of all known drugs). Acid is not addictive. THC is not addictive. Sex, gambl