INTERNET ADDICTION

Are you an enthusiastic video game player who spends hours consecutively playing? Or maybe you are a person who likes to post everything you do on social media? To be a little more concise, do you think that the virtual world affects your daily life? If that is the case you might suffer from IAD, which is short for internet addiction disorder. This behavior has not been classified as a disorder yet, but it has been given increasing attention. Since there is no standardized criteria for diagnosing IAD, there is a lot of different data about it. Estimates of its frequency among the global population go from 8% all the way up to 38%. With the introduction of smartphones, IAD has been drastically increasing (Gregory).

IAD has many negative effects, ranging from a physical level to a mental level. This is the reason for which we should create awareness about it and explain its symptoms.

Now, there shouldn't be misunderstandings about this disorder. Just because you are a person who spends a god amount of time online it does not mean that you are an addict; at least not until the internet starts eating up time you should spend with friends and family or in which you should be working. The brain chemistry of people with IAD is similar to the one of people with other addictions, such as drugs and alcohol. What this means is that it works pretty much the same way. You stay online and your brain likes it as much as you do, it releases dopamine (think about it as pleasure), and every time you think about the internet your brain wants more and more because it releases more dopamine. That is how dependency builds up, in a sentence.

For other people instead, virtuality is simply escape from reality (Young). People who are depressed often think their real life is miserable, and build a virtual one in which they are better under their own eyes. If instead you are socially challenged, spending time on the internet will make you more comfortable because interaction is limited to chatting or playing online. This is just a vicious circle because the more time you spend in your fake world, the more you will come to hate your real one.

Internet addicts often lie about the amount of time they spend online and about their mental situation because they are scared of being judged. If you want to help somebody who is suffering from IAD you have to be gentle and comprehensive, or you will worsen the situation and make them feel even more guilty. Yes, internet addicts do feel guilty about what they do, but they cannot do anything about it. It is stronger than them; they have to spend time online. Not doing so will cause them a terrible anxiety because they cannot wait to get back to their virtual life. Once they do get back to it, they will feel overly happy, causing alternate peaks of sadness and then happiness. The latter are symptoms of bipolarism (Gregory).

Staying all day in front of a screen will severely limit your social interactions and isolate you. Internet addicts may forget how to conversate and act with people and will become socially challenged. They will fail to set priorities in their life because the internet comes before anything. This may cause the not to work or study. they will lose the conception of time, and everything, including food and water, will have to wait and leave space to the online realm (Gregory).

You might be surprised to know that these are less than half the symptoms, but I am sure they would discourage anyone from using their PCs and smartphones too much. Along these mental symptoms there are also many physical symptoms, such as hand, back, arm, and head pain, and failure to sleep, eat, and bathe, the last of which are simply projections of mental conditions (Gregory).

I will make it clear and easy to understand: in conclusion, do not use the internet too much. You would not want to become merely a shadow of some imaginary virtual hero or of a profile that displays all but what you really are.

Works Cited

Gregory, Cristina. "Internet Addiction Disorder". PSYCOM. 22 May 2019. Web. 18 Feb 2020.

Kimberly Young, for having created the Internet Addiction Test and being the first researcher of IAD in the Americas.