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We bloggers love to talk about our Internet addictions. We mostly use the term "addiction" loosely and endearingly. But we do use it frequently! Angry Julie Monday confesses:
YES, I have an addiction to the Interwebz as much as I do to my Monster Energy Drinks, and my iPhone. I've slowly realized that I'm not getting certain things done, because I just want to read one more blog, do one more tweet, or finish up one more post. I say ten more minutes, but in reality, it's an hour or more. I know that I can't do it all. I've started to slow down with the invitations that I RSVP to, the committees I join, and the activities I participate in. It's just too much.
ScaryMommy talks about her all consuming addiction to Ebay:
From the moment I sold my first pair of jeans, I was hooked. I went to bed thinking about what I could list next and woke up ready to photograph, write, and post my listings. My dining room table was assembly line of boxes, bubble wrap and tape. I bought a postal scale and formed a tight bond with the postman who appeared at my door daily to pick up my newest sales. I systematically went through every time in my house, making piles of the best things to sell and mapping out the most successful listing times (collectibles and Sunday nights, if you’re interested.) I sold old clothes, old books, my wedding crystal and stemware… I sold everything.
Tea of Tea and Cookies.blogspot.com chronicles of her descent into the food blog obsession that resulted in her own food blog. First she writes of her food blog discovery:
I discover food blogs...The recipes, the photos, the writing--- it's all gorgeous. I find Gluten-Free Girl--damn that girl can write, and her enthusiasm is contagious. I spend days reading, drooling, and dreaming of food.
Then later she confides:
I stage a self-intervention. Too many hours spent reading food blogs. I do have to work and my friends would like to see me. But still I am thinking about food and cooking more. ..I’m officially obsessed.
We bloggers joke about our attachment to our blogs and the blogs of our friends. We often refer to our fixation with our stats and how many followers we have. We are planted on Twitter, laughing out loud at inappropriate times in inappropriate places as we travel to and fro, tweeting all the while. (Hopefully, not while driving!). We all have inside jokes about what is not getting done in our households or our offices--- sometimes our households and our offices—because we are too busy with our online lives.
But is this really addiction? Seriously?
I fully played along with the addiction jokes until I read about the opening of the reSTART Program in July. This is the rehab facility located near Seattle, Washington, devoted solely to Internet addiction. Then around the same time, the Internet was all abuzz about a teen who was killed by a counselor at a Chinese Internet addiction camp for kids and about the Chinese hospital that was treating internet addiction with shock treatment. Yikes!! It’s clear that lots of folks think this addiction thing is real. So I’m thinking perhaps I’d better get a clear definition of internet addiction… at least before I mosey on over to China!
It turns out that Internet addiction is no joke, according to experts. Even though the American Psychiatric Association does not yet recognize it as a separate disorder…and even though the debate continues surrounding whether or not to include Internet addiction as a separate disorder in their authoritative "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, psychiatrists and psychologists alike are seeing behavior that is extreme enough--- disruptive enough---and harmful enough-- to cause great concern. Since there is no official designation or consensus about the definition of Internet addiction, I decided to scour medical and psychology websites (I am, after all, an expert medical-information-site scourer) for a clear understanding of what Internet addiction is, exactly. I find that Dr. Jerald Block, in his American Journal of Psychiatry editorial, offers the most comprehensive (and scientific sounding) guideline. According to Dr. Block, internet addiction is, in essence:
A compulsive-impulsive disorder that has three subtypes, excessive gaming, sexual preoccupations, and e-mail/text messaging. All of these types of addiction share the same four components: (1) excessive use, which often means a loss of sense of time; (2) withdrawal, or fellings of anger, tension, and or depression when the Internet
