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Internet addiction: The emergence of a new clinical disorder (1996) [pdf]

netaddiction.com

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Re: Internet addiction: The emergence of a new clinical disorder (1996) [pdf]

#51

Post by bumby »

h2odragon wrote: post #40

There was a time when the impact of Novels (fiction books) on young women's health was a topic of hot debate. When this "Internet addiction" label got pasted onto the same old "be scared of the new fad" it coincided with Nancy's "Just Say No" campaign and sought tailwind from the term "addiction"; oddly just as "addiction by prescription" began its meteoric rise. Nor should we forget all the Internet Sex Predators; s…

Is your point that the maladaptive effects in the study are not legitimate or that this behavior would just be supplanted by some other “fad”?

I wonder if Internet addiction may have addition problems beyond those other examples. For example, the very tool used for many service jobs (the computer) is the same mechanism used to feed the addiction, making it extra hard to abstain. Or algorithms used to capture attention, etc.

Re: Internet addiction: The emergence of a new clinical disorder (1996) [pdf]

#52

Post by bumby »

Mezzie wrote: post #50
h2odragon wrote: post #40

There was a time when the impact of Novels (fiction books) on young women's health was a topic of hot debate. When this "Internet addiction" label got pasted onto the same old "be scared of the new fad" it coincided with Nancy's "Just Say No" campaign and sought tailwind from the term "addiction"; oddly just as "addiction by prescription" began its meteoric rise. Nor should we forget all the Internet Sex Predators; s…

I remember when this article came out. I was 8 and definitely fit the criteria and have ever since, but for some reason it's not a 'problem' anymore since now everybody has internet access to the point where it becomes logistically difficult if you DON'T for whatever reason. Instead of "Mez is a weirdo who spends all of her time online", now it's "Oh, ask Mez [about whatever thing they heard online], she'll know what…

All of that may be true, but it doesn’t necessarily negate the article claims of professional and social impairment. It just normalizes that behavior.

Re: Internet addiction: The emergence of a new clinical disorder (1996) [pdf]

#53

Post by Mezzie »

kypro wrote: post #38
cloudengineer94 wrote: post #33

I have been giving a lot of thoughts into this for quite a few years now. A few years ago I went on a trip and ended up staying at a friend's house where he didn't any internet connection. There was Mobile Data available but where I was it was very expensive due to the data cap being 1GB at the time. Anyhow, being disconnected for like 3 days in a row felt like a drug user without their "fix". There was no way to con…

Sometimes I wonder if the tech withdrawal people experience is more related to the inconvenience of not having tech like smart phones and computers, rather than an actual addiction. For example, when my car is at the garage I feel like I'm going through a kind of drug withdrawal. It really bothers that I can't just jump in my car and go somewhere and instead I now need to catch a bus or walk. Before having a car this…

I think it has to do with the number of people who've adopted the advancement. I've spent hours a day online since before this article came out, and it's much less of a social 'problem' than it used to be because now it's understood that sometimes people check things + I can easily do so on the go vs. being tethered to the desktop (and wired Internet).

Plus more 'normal' people are 'addicts' now. The only people spending tons of time online back in the 90s were weirdos who were REALLY into some aspect of it (for me, it was web design and UI/UX though of course I had no idea there was a term for it). We're not addicted to electricity, but I bet people were side-eyeing the first people who were obsessed enough to learn wiring and hook up their houses themselves.

We also had a similar reaction to television, which followed a similar pattern: My grandfather who was born in the 1910s was a factory worker who was OBSESSED with TVs when they were invented. His basement was full of parts and Franken-TVs. He was an 'addicted weirdo' in the 1930s and 1940s but by the time he died in the 1990s EVERYBODY was spending hours a day in front of a TV.

Re: Internet addiction: The emergence of a new clinical disorder (1996) [pdf]

#54

Post by Mezzie »

bumby wrote: post #52
Mezzie wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when this article came out. I was 8 and definitely fit the criteria and have ever since, but for some reason it's not a 'problem' anymore since now everybody has internet access to the point where it becomes logistically difficult if you DON'T for whatever reason. Instead of "Mez is a weirdo who spends all of her time online", now it's "Oh, ask Mez [about whatever thing they heard online], she'll know what…

All of that may be true, but it doesn’t necessarily negate the article claims of professional and social impairment. It just normalizes that behavior.

The claims are missing an important variable when trying to determine if a behavior is harmful: The social context of that behavior.

In the context of the 90s (and especially for adults), spending too much time online was, in some ways, an inherently anti-social act: You had to be physically tethered to the machine, often monopolizing the only other of long-distance communication available (the landline phone line) for the entire house, and, when people and households shared computers, it often meant others COULDN'T use the tool.

In 2021, none of that is true.

Also, there were certain cultural ideas about what types of 'socializing'/'friends' counted as well as what constituted 'normal' behavior.

It's entirely possible Internet addiction is real and this article is interesting as one of the first to mention such a thing, but the Internet and Web just hadn't been embedded into society well enough to be evaluated.

Re: Internet addiction: The emergence of a new clinical disorder (1996) [pdf]

#55

Post by JoeAltmaier »

A young friend in medical school around 1996 was one of the first to diagnose 'Internet Addiction' in a student at the UofIowa. Missing classes, forgetting to eat, losing sleep, all classic addictive symptoms? I don't know why folks are dissing this; disfunction is disfunction.

Re: Internet addiction: The emergence of a new clinical disorder (1996) [pdf]

#56

Post by Mezzie »

kypro wrote: post #47
throwamon wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you spent over half your day watching cat videos and posting low-effort Hacker News comments and the other half feeling bad for doing it, you wouldn't be wondering that.

I wasn't denying that people can be addicted to the internet, my comment was in response to whether what the parent commenter was saying is even that analogous to addiction. Internet addiction is a term that seems to get thrown around a lot these days, especially at kids and teens, but I think what people tend to label internet addiction isn't really an addiction at all or even directly damaging -- it's just people u…

> Again, we don't accuse people who spend most of their free time reading sci-fi books as being addicts, even if taking their sci-fi books from them would send them into a state of withdrawal while they found something else to replace their reading "addiction" with.

Parents and adults did do this back in the 90s, at least to me. I read books when I didn't have computer access and both were considered 'problems'. I had books taken away and was forbidden from reading because I would rather do that than socialize. I know I'm not the only one either.

Re: Internet addiction: The emergence of a new clinical disorder (1996) [pdf]

#57

Post by johnisgood »

cristoperb wrote: post #49
johnisgood wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spend around 12 (sometimes 48) hours a day on the Internet. 8.04 hours per week is nothing... ~1 hour per day. That is nothing.

It's 38.5 hours per week (with a standard deviation of 8.04 hours). Still doesn't sound like too much today.

Oh sorry, my bad! Still, that does not sound much either.

Re: Internet addiction: The emergence of a new clinical disorder (1996) [pdf]

#58

Post by zeta0134 »

sabellito wrote: post #16
zeta0134 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely recommend checking out your local public library, or going for a long walk in a nearby park. Don't take your phone. Allow yourself to be bored. Let your mind wander. Once you get over the weird feeling, and the anxiousness of not knowing what's been happening, you'll likely find that your mind amuses itself. I have a sneaky suspicion that relaxing in this way and encouraging that mental wandering grants…

Your advice to the comment, sadly, amounts to someone telling a drug addict to "just not use drugs", or a depressed person to "just go outside".

Ah, perhaps it has been misinterpreted. That was not my intent. "Take occasional breaks, they seem to help" was the goal, not "stop entirely and never start again."

Re: Internet addiction: The emergence of a new clinical disorder (1996) [pdf]

#59

Post by h2odragon »

bumby wrote: post #51
h2odragon wrote: post #40

There was a time when the impact of Novels (fiction books) on young women's health was a topic of hot debate. When this "Internet addiction" label got pasted onto the same old "be scared of the new fad" it coincided with Nancy's "Just Say No" campaign and sought tailwind from the term "addiction"; oddly just as "addiction by prescription" began its meteoric rise. Nor should we forget all the Internet Sex Predators; s…

Is your point that the maladaptive effects in the study are not legitimate or that this behavior would just be supplanted by some other “fad”? I wonder if Internet addiction may have addition problems beyond those other examples. For example, the very tool used for many service jobs (the computer) is the same mechanism used to feed the addiction, making it extra hard to abstain. Or algorithms used to capture attentio…

"supplanted by" or "attributed to?"

There's always some reason to criticize other's behavior as bad, for them or society or whatever. There's always the problem of "you don't see the value the behavior gives me the same way I do."

Even if the effects are legitimately objectively bad for someone, was the cause really "internet addiction?" Or was that merely a convenient label to apply or even a pet cause that could be furthered by latching on to a new fad? The folks who were worst affected by "internet addiction" in 96 were not likely to have been pursuing wildly different lifestyles without it.

Re: Internet addiction: The emergence of a new clinical disorder (1996) [pdf]

#60

Post by Mezzie »

rbobby wrote: post #37
bigger_inside wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is about psychiatric colonization of making sense of things that need not be framed that way, and where that framing is not only stigmatizing, but also defends "legacy" ways of doing things against existing social power structures. Ivan Goldberg was criticizing that in the 90s, by making that joke: look, all the things they take as "symptoms of addiction", if you transfer that to what we, we realize that th…

Usually isn't addiction also defined in terms of some harm to the person? Damaging relationships, getting fired, going broke, and so forth. And having some guidance that Bob spending too much time on the internet is something serious and should follow an addiction recovery treatment plan is a net good thing (by a lot).

Those are all socially constructed to a degree, though.

When I was growing up in the 90s, my strong preference for online communication prevented me from making/doing some connections that were, at the time, considered mandatory: It was thought that there was no way I would meet a mate or land/keep a job if I spent my time online instead of partaking in a more 'acceptable' activity.

Such harm can also vary based on the person and their place in society. I'm female and one reason my time online was so disparaged was that it 'wasn't useful' and my interest in/passion for web development was seen as WRONG and a sign of possible sexual deviancy (I AM a lesbian...). I was also gently guided towards being a librarian because that was an 'acceptable' career for a smart girl who liked reading, and reading was an 'acceptable' odd pastime for a girl as opposed to my other obsessions (Tech! Building! Math!).

Some problems are socially constructed.

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