China Defines Internet Addiction 201
narramissic writes "Three years after the first clinic dedicated to Internet addiction opened in Beijing, Chinese doctors have now officially defined it as an ailment. Those afflicted with this ailment spend six or more hours a day online and exhibit at least one of the following symptoms: difficulty sleeping or concentrating, yearning to be online, irritation, and mental or physical distress. Do you meet the criteria? You're in good company: About 10 percent of China's 253 million Internet users exhibit some form of addiction to the medium, and 70 percent of those people are young men, an official Xinhua News Agency report said."
First psot (Score:5, Funny)
Yes (Score:2, Insightful)
How to tell if you are addicted to Slashdot:
You your recent posting history has more posts than days.
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So if I only have 8 days out of 24 posts does that mean I'm addicted?
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I post around 30 posts every day.* I suppose that makes me an addict, however I disagree with China. Instead I agree with U.S. and EU psychologists who maintain internet addiction is merely a consequence of *already existing* conditions such as obsessive compulsiveness, or loneliness, or poor impulse control.
The fact that these "flaws" manifest themselves on a computer is no different than if they manifested themselves while reading a book & neglecting sleep, or while constantly talking on the phone,
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... how did this get modded off topic? Not only is it really the first post, but he actually makes a humorous reference to the story...
Anyway, I'm online 8 hours a day at work, but I wouldn't consider myself addicted in any way (although it's different when it's your job since you're generally doing work related stuff and not just sitting around playing WoW or whatever.) I don't fit the other criteria though and I have seen people who do. There definitely exists a possibility of becoming addicted to the
Reminds me... (Score:3, Interesting)
Reminds me of the "test" if you need the Guardian's religion in Ultima 7. No matter how you answered the questions, there would be something wrong with you. E.g., if your mother and a small child are drowning, and you can save only one, who do you save? If you chose the child, you obviously are nuts, if you didn't choose the child you obviously are nuts.
Well, ok, maybe this one isn't in the same way, but it's broad enough to make a large chunk of the population "sick" even if they don't have a computer at a
What did that say? (Score:5, Funny)
I read that as "China Defends Internet Addiction".
I hear they also have a problem with youth in asia, but I've been assured that the government has the problem well in hand.
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It's a disease! Just like teh gay!
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Their government did a good job dealing with that whole freedom of speech outbreak a while back too. Our government should learn from th
Just One More Way for Them to Stop You (Score:5, Funny)
About 10 percent of China's 253 million Internet users exhibit some form of addiction to the medium, and 70 percent of those people are young men, an official Xinhua News Agency report said.
News Anchor: And in today's news, an unnamed Chinese dissident has been treated in Beijing for <sinister sounding voice>internet addiction</sinister sounding voice>. After monitoring his internet usage and anti-government e-mails through his ISP, the government was able to find the man and get him the help he needs at a special government run institution at a remote location for his own good. Let's hope he has a swift recovery ...
Wow work related injury here I come (Score:5, Funny)
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I guess they'd be irritated and in physical distress after 6 or more hours on the internet, unless they were surfing with their laptop in the washroom ...
As for "work-related injury" - no problem. You get fired, lose your internet access, problem solved.
Re:Wow work related injury here I come (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, they can't fire you over your injury.
But, hey, these last few weeks your productivity has been rather low, and, well, you don't mesh well with our corporate climate. We're going to have to let you go.
Re:Wow work related injury here I come (Score:4, Insightful)
"Internet addiction" is no more or less real than "Television addiction." Both have the same cure - TURN THE DAMN THING OFF!
Ditto for "XBox addiction", "Playstation addiction", "Wii addiction", "Gamers addiction", "SMS addiction". Turn it off. Can't turn it off? No problem - it's currently a self-correcting situation, since you'll end up not being able to afford your habit.
It's like people who weigh 600 pounds and say "I can't help it - it's glandular." No, it's not. It's from shoveling food into your face regardless of the consequences. Same thing with smokers. They go from "I can quit any time" to "I can't stop." We don't excuse drunk drivers because they decided to have one to many, we should do the same for other "lifestyle addictions."
I'm all for helping people who help themselves, not those who want to hide behind the "addiction" label as an excuse to do nothing. Look at how many lardos say they need gastric bypass surgery to lose weight ... while scoffing down their 3rd box of Twinkies and washing it down with their 4th gallon of soda pop. Here's a thought - make it illegal for anyone who's obese to buy or possess junk food. Ditto for the enablers - you know, the parents who also weigh 500 pounds and insist on shoveling sh*t down their kids' throats.
As for the "internet addicts", who gives a frak? They're antisocial slobs anyways. In times past, they would have been hooked on TV, or crack, to fill their hollow lives.
Sounds mean? Well, you know something - life can be mean. If you want to spend all your life glued to the internet, don't be surprised if nobody wants to hang around you in real life. You made your choice to be ultra-booooring. Just don't as me to help subsidize it.
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Same thing with smokers. They go from "I can quit any time" to "I can't stop."
Smoke 20 a day for six months. Then try to stop. Maybe you'll be able to, but you won't think it's easy anymore.
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Never said it would be easy for someone - just that there is NO excuse, and that it is up to the individual to stop, not hide behind the "I'm addicted" excuse as a "justification" to DO NOTHING ABOUT IT.
How many people do we know ho complain every day about their MARRIAGE, but DO NOTHING ABOUT IT? They stay in a l
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Uh-huh. And what do we do about people who are "addicted" to ALL CAPS? And repeating the same point a hundred different ways in a row? And judging and berating others? And harboring a superiority complex?
On another note, you seem to have a particularly deep well of vitriol (maybe even hate) reserved for the obese. Permit me to remind you that, unlike all those other things whose status as addictions you mock, eating is something which you cannot simply quit "cold turkey".
Finally: these various addicti
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More bullshit, I see ...
You've obviously never done a hunger strike. I did one for 10 days back in my "protest years", so, yes, yu can simply quit cold turkey.
The ONLY sure way to lose weight is to STOP PUTTING FOOD IN YOUR FRAKKING MOUTH!
Exercise won't do it. The number of calories that go in has to be fewer than the number of calories that g
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>>>eating is something which you cannot simply quit "cold turkey".
Sure you can. When I want to lose weight, I fast for two or three days. It works wonders in reducing my waistline. (And then of course you have to go back to eating moderately, not pig out.)
Re:Wow work related injury here I come (Score:4, Insightful)
... DO NOTHING ABOUT IT ...
Unfortunately it is not quite as simple as "doing something about it"; it's like saying "everybody complains about America's addiction to oil, but they DO NOTHING ABOUT IT". As you probably know, you can do a lot about things and still not have any success.
When you are trying to beat addiction it feels like you are fighting against your whole body and all your instincts; which is why that old "Just say no" campaing was so cringelingly stupid and totally missed the point. You can decide all you want that now you are going to stop smoking/shooting heroin/overeating or whatever, but when the craving hit you, it's amazing how obvious it suddenly seems that you don't actually need or want to stop,
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No, what's obvious is that you decide to satisfy your craving. That's a conscious decision, just like buying tons of junk food, or cigarettes, or dope. You choose the immediate satisfaction over long-term satisfaction. Your choice. The fat person who loads up their shopping cart with junk is making choices with every item they pick up off the shelf. A second choice when they get to
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Like being 'addicted' to the internet is not entirely bad either. Simply quitting as you suggest, means what else do they do with their lives? Socialize as you suggested? But... isn't that what you do on the internet?
This goes on to the debate of: if you're online all the time, you 'have no life'. No, last I checked, defining whether someone ha
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Great. Problem solved.
And no, it's not being sanctimonious - it's being realistic. You can't change someone - they have to want it badly enough themselves. We can do our part by occasionally reminding obese smokers that they're smelly, gross, fat, disgusting tubs of lard. (okay, that covers a lot of sysadmins and slashdotters, so I'm getting my asbestos undies :-)
What would you propose? Glorifying t
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You got that right!
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Hey, way to completely miss the point on what personal responsibility means.
A prime example is all the fat people who I see at the supermarket with shopping carts overflowing with junk. Are you going to argue that the boxes of crap just jumped magically off the shelves? Or that they had no choice in their purchases? Do we add "Junk fod shopping addiction" to the "pigging out addiction"? I don't think so. There is NOTHING stopping them from
If we could just harness that anger! (Score:3, Funny)
hook ya up to a turbine or something.
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You've still completely missed the point. Yes, personal responsibility is a must. That does not mean that there aren't going to be some people who get addicted to certain substances or activities. Your pick-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps approach is admirable, but it simply will never, ever work in many cases. Now, you can go on moralizing all you want but the fact remains that there is such a thing as addiction whether or not people try to take personal responsibility or not.
Apparently you've had t
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It's not moralizing. Your stance fails the logic test.
You yourself say:
Personal responsibility means not giving in to the urge to pig out to the point of bursting | gamble your rent money and kids' food | watch TV or the Internet to the exclusion of all else | smoke until you cough up a lung or two | whatever.
Nobody said you have to do it by yourself ... but I've seen so many people who say they WANT to change their beha
Good job parroting a popular sentiment. (Score:2, Insightful)
By what methodology do you judge which addictions are valid? The cure to "crack addiction" is STOP SMOKING CRACK, but saying it in capital letters doesn't make it easy.
You make a good point that not *all* addictions are true "addictions", but it's a point we already know. The question is - how to determine which are, and to what extent? It isn't helpful to try to oversimplify a potentially complex question in psychology.
Re:Good job parroting a popular sentiment. (Score:5, Insightful)
You make a good point that not *all* addictions are true "addictions", but it's a point we already know.
All addictions are psychological addictions so anything that makes you feel good ends up rewiring your brain (this is why you constantly think about what you are addicted to, your brain is looking for ways to feel good again) - and hence your brain rebels against you when you try to quit (it literally becomes a civil war inside your head). So its not really a matter of what are "real" addictions - they are all real because you make them real - even if to the outside observer there looks to be no addictive component.
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Furthermore, all habits involve rewiring of neural circuitry. Some drug habits induce a physiological dependence, which is not to imply that psychological dependence is not physiolog
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As far as I'm concerned, if free will exists, then there are no psychological addictions, just people who refuse to take responsibility for bad choices. If, on the other hand, free will doesn't exist, then the question is pointless, since we're all just automata, and both our comments are predestined, and so are our opinions.
I'll opt for the existence of free will, since that is the only context under which any exchange of opinion makes sense. It's not hard to figure out - people do things because they
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Fallacy of the excluded middle. What if free will doesn't always exist? What if there was a disease of the mind that impaired or eliminated freedom of choice? We could call that disea
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In this case, there is no "excluded middle". They exercise their free choice when they fill their shopping cards with crap instead of spending less for a smaller amount of healthy food. They're not automata. Ditto for the smoker who goes and buys yet another pack of cigarettes. This takes a conscious decision. They're not on autopilot. Just like they could decide NOT to buy them. They don't because they CHOOSE not to have to face the symptoms of withdrawal. They won't face their fears.
We need to stop l
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Free will is entirely relevant. People act on their "wants". They want that crack rock. They want that extra 3 helpings of fries. They want that next smoke. They want to be on the net all day. They want to sit on their asses watching TV from suppertime to bedtime. If they didn't want it, th
Re:Ah, if only our minds were so straightforward.. (Score:2)
If they don't give a crap, then why should I, or anyone else? Their life is their responsibility. If they want to shirk their responsibility, then they have only themselves to blame for the consequences.
If someone says "I really need to get a job", and does nothing about it for years on end except make excuses for why today is not a good time
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Plesae ... I never said it was "easy" to quit anything. However, there is an element of personal responsibility. For example, after major surgery and more than a month on a morphine drip, a few days after I was discharged, as soon as I realized I was looking forward to my 4x-a-day dilaudid, I stopped taking it. Immediately. By the next day, all the drugs that had accumulated in my body simultaneously released - while I was driving to the pharmacy for other supplies.
I felt AWESOME. No pain. No common se
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It was clearly an unnaturally high "high" - so much so that the warning bells went off immediately. Unsustainable, and as such, dangerous. I know the limitations of my wetware ...
I'll stick with the occasional rum and coke, thank you :-)
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We don't excuse drunk drivers because they decided to have one to many, we should do the same for other "lifestyle addictions."
We don't excuse drunk driving because it can lead to physical harm or death of another person. Being addicted to food or the internet currently only harms yourself. Your point is a logical fallacy.
What's amusing is how harshly you condemn people with problems and yet it seems as though you have stress management issues. I guess that means no mercy for those people that can't manage
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Bullshit. Overweight people contribute to global warming and higher food prices [slashdot.org]
That does affect me, and the whole planet.
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What - RTFA? Are you crazy?
Seriously, instead of calling them "boot camps", they could have at least called them "reboot camps".
As to whether I agree with what China is doing or not- that's immaterial to at least one of my points, which is that personal responsibility has to enter into it before the person is "so far gone"
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*notes email address*
*figured there had to be something weird here*
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Yes, I would. Been there, done that [wikipedia.org]. Took me 6 months before I could even sit for 5 minutes and write one lousy paragraph of code, and another 6 months before I could walk properly, but after 6 weeks on a morphine pump and a week on dilaudid, I decided I valued lucidity over feeling good.
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Again, I never said it was easy. The fact is, people DO decide to quit their self-destructive behaviors, and they DO succeed. But until they make that decision, they're just lying to themselves.
This applies to the obese, the smoker, the gambler, the crack addict, etc.
They have to WANT to quit more than they want the feedback from indulging their habit. When you don't want to quit, quiting is impossible, When you DO want to quit, it suddenly becomes possible. Funny how you choose to ignore that - whi
I'm addicted (Score:2)
Ok, so I know we're all biased here, but let me be the first to say that, "I'm addicted to the internet".
I think they're on to something however I don't think people should be forced into camps over it. I'm not hurting anyone with my addiction including myself.
Get a real addiction ... (Score:2, Funny)
difficulty sleeping or concentrating, yearning to be online, irritation, and mental or physical distress.
Get a real addiction--I sucked dick for bandwidth!
Addicted to being human, wanting freedom (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Addicted to being human, wanting freedom (Score:5, Interesting)
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Government control of everything is and always has been the norm, even before the communists.
You weren't around before the Communists. All of those people are dead now.
Before the Communists, China was very loosely managed by the Ching Dynasty. Tibet, Manchuria, and numerous other territories were essentially independent. This is not to say that China has had a tradition of liberty and free expression. Far from it.
But that's no reason to defend the PRC as being somehow "normal". Most of the Chinese I know are from Hong Kong and Taiwan and they definitely feel oppressed by the PRC.
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I also want to add a tidbit to address your last point. Who's to say that the PRC is not "normal"? Normal by whose standards? As far as the average citizen is concerned, their life is perfectly normal, and not many of them give a damn about what Westerners think is normal.
As for your friends from Hong Kong and Taiwan, how exactly were they oppressed by the PRC government? Ta
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Just as the other poster said, before the communists, there's Guomindang - they lost the civil war and had to move to Taiwan. And Guomingdang lost the civil war not because they're "too good" - it's because they're corrupt. Of course, we all know by now that the other alternative is just as bad (worse if you compare it to modern-day Taiwan), but the idea of communism was really attractive to the peasants back then.
Before the civil war and WWII a
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Re:Addicted to being human, wanting freedom (Score:5, Interesting)
From TFA, the Chinese government is not limiting anyone's leisure activities, rather Chinese doctors have formally defined Internet addiction. This is likely a product of the cultural sentiment of abhorring excess in any form and living life by a framework of rules (three square meals a day, eight hours of sleep, etc.), which prolonged hours surfing the web obviously tends to disrupt. Another factor is since the Internet is a rather new development in China, most users are teens and 20-to-30-somethings. People beyond this age group tend to be very traditional, and tend to look down on all the shiny new technology stuff that they don't get (isn't this a problem in the West too? Maybe to a lesser degree.) I know my mother always bugs me when I'm watching too much TV/on the computer too much/reading too many books (I used to average about ten a week back in high school, so I guess that qualifies as excess for her), and it certainly doesn't have anything to do with the government.
I don't quite understand your question regarding the status quo.
My family left China because my father thought he could have better opportunities in America, and later Canada. How wrong he was. He's back in China now, and won't stop going on how about how his old buddies have all struck it rich during the rapid economic development, and how he could have been a lot better off it he stayed behind. Personally I think I've become a more well-rounded person than if I had stayed in China, but I wouldn't mind living or working there once I complete my degree, especially since fluency in English could apparently command quite a premium.
Then you don't really know Chinese life (Score:2)
Trusting the government to do the right thing was a way of life; for most people it was the only way they knew and they lived happily by it. Of course, the media usually projects the government in a rather positive light, but hey, it keeps the people happy. The only thing I dislike the Chinese government for is the education system, where nationalism and reverence of communist heroes were ingrained at an early age.
That shows you have never really lived in the country for more than a few weeks. In China, people all just ignore whatever government said and find ways to bypass whatever rules the government tries. They don't worry about "rights" because they just ignore rules (even as simple as traffic laws) whenever there is a fringe benefit. And if you get in trouble, find some connection in government to bail you out. That's why there are so many tainted products.
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Anyway, I agree with your statement; many people would exploit anything to benefit themselves. But that doesn't invalidate my point that the citizen for the most part are content with the current government.
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People tend to have rather nostalgic and idealized notions of the land of their birth/youth. It's usually irrational. Anyway, I'm guessing that you hail from a very modern and urbanized part of China, where the differences with the western world would not be as stark (The building in the west being smaller for example.)
Perhaps you could
Looks like they have defined IT jobs as an ailment (Score:5, Funny)
Each of which is all too easily inflicted at the hands of a PHB [wikipedia.org] (cluelessly imposing impossible deadlines), without one single minute of WoW involved...
Step 2 (Score:4, Funny)
Step 1 is admit your addiction... yup, i'm addicted.
Well if step 2 is submit to a higher authority.
Well, I have submitted to the power of Google.
Now leave me alone, I got me some good internet.
The COMPLETE 12 Step for Chinese Internet Addicts (Score:3, Funny)
I'll run your comment off right off the rail
1. We admitted we were powerless over the Internet (even the filtered one in China) - that our lives had become unmanageable (Communism is good).
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves (already defined as Google) could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God (Eric Schmidt) as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral database inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God...er Eric, ak
Addiction (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously conflicted here. Addiction should never encompass anything that the bulk of society uses every day. I would imagine that the fundamental definition for any addiction should include a majority of negative repercussion, or at least that the addiction would cause the person's ultimate doom.
Look at alcoholism. Approximately 2% of alcoholics get Korsakoff's Syndrome [wikipedia.org], which ultimately destroys the person's sense of reality while Thiamine B6 is absent from the 3rd & 4th ventricle of the brain long enough for damage to erode/reconfigure brain cells. There is no parallel result in internet addiction, apart from mood swings and perhaps suicide attempts, but these are all mostly related to social mishaps online. Internet abuse does not cause anything like Korsakoff's.
Drug addiction, seems to all fit.
Alas, where a parallel could exist would be with sex addiction, although one could argue that the STD's cause your doom.
About the only thing Internet Addiction could cause is An Hero Syndrome [encycloped...matica.com] (NSFW).
Medically, there could be serious degenerative disorders as a result of being fixated in one place for long periods of time, or perhaps dietary issues from eating and drinking the worst possible food in order to have more time online, but again that's all a bit of a stretch.
If I had to guess, I would say that the term Internet Addiction is a misnomer. This is more aptly that people who struggle to get back online crave attention because their own lives are sparse or deficient in areas of socialization, so they feel powerful online and therefore need it.
I think there is a long way to go on this subject and China's efforts, while interesting, are not quite there yet.
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Thiamine is B1, I fudged that one up. FYI.
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It never seemed to bother my college roommate. He only really got up from DAOC for work. Since he worked at a pizza joint he could always bring back the worst possible food. He even slept on a pile of clothes in front of his compute
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"[...] absent from the 3rd & 4th ventricle of the brain [...]"
Confusing brain with heart, are you ?
Not addicted (Score:4, Insightful)
The Internet is simply ingrained into my life. Imagine a world without coffee. I wouldn't care much because I don't have a taste for it but I bet that millions will cry out in terror and will suddenly be silenced(faiting by lack of cafeine in their bloodstream :) ). Now imagine a world without the internet. I can't. I could. Around 10 years ago we got 33k dailup to get access to "this curious thing called the internet". We used it more and more untill one day we got a bill of 120+ eur and we knew it was time to switch to cable. Every since that moment I and the internet have been connected. If I want to look up an address or zipcode I go the right site and tada, zipcode and address. If I want to look up a term I go to Wikipedia, type the word in and tada, I've got the meaning and some deeper information about the subject. I check my mail every day to see if I have recieved any messages from people and institutions all over the world. If I want to know about technological development I visit tweakers.net or slashdot. I discuss on internetforums in many different countries and have developed my skills in some foreign languages that way.
I am not the only one. The whole world is addicted to the internet. Sending data is now something you do with a few clicks and a few lines of text. You can send huge amounts of data from Vladivostok to Bogota in a matter of seconds. People all around the world can check videomessages people leave on youtube.
Now imagine that somebody "turns off the central switch". I can only fear what would happen. Stock markets would probably go bananas because they are not being fed regular data. The most important letter exchange format in the world(e-mail) would cease to be and sending messages to eachother would become a matter of days not seconds. Distributed projects would die and it would cease to be effective. And that's only the things I can think of. Imagine the extra effects.
We are all addicted to the internet whether we use it or not. That's the paradox.
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I personally have no idea how office workers lived with themselves before the Internet existed. Sitting 8 hours in a cube pushing paper around was a way of life for millions of people for around a century. I would have to do a job that involved "outside" stimulus were it not for the Interbutts (not to mention having a totally different job).
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Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
"Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied."
Alternative interpretation for you there.
Where there is an addiction ... (Score:2)
Where there is an addiction, there needs to be treatment. Mandatory [jaapl.org], if need be — for the betterment of the society, of course.
Redefining healthy (Score:2, Interesting)
Yesterday they announced that taking cholesterol drugs when healthy is a good thing. I told my wife that no one is healthy anymore; we are all simply waiting for a chronic disease to strike.
Today 10% of China's population is declared "sick". So now we don't have to wait for a disease to strike us - we already are diseased, but the doctors haven't told us what we have yet.
Crackberry (Score:5, Funny)
So if my blackberry is constantly connected to the internet and it's on 24/7, I guess that means
...
...
I'm ... what were we talking about? I was checking my mail.
Guitar (Score:2)
Take the guitar away from my brother, and he'll show every one of those symptoms. Does that mean he's addicted to guitar? Or does it mean that internet addiction is bullshit?
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Not to mention that the country of China had absolutely nothing to do with this -- it was a bunch of doctors at one clinic. Hasn't anyone heard of science by consensus?
Korea (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is just as bad, if not far worse there. The prolific MMO play-rate [plus localised social networking] doesn't help either.
But somehow, I don't see Korea classifying it as an illness anytime soon.
Bad term? (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, an alcoholic will get the DT's if they don't drink. A heroin addict will convulse and sweat if they don't get their fix. A cigarette smoker will get headaches, tremors, and an increased appetite without their smokes. I should also mention that alcoholics and some other drug users, when quitting cold turkey, can actually die from withdrawal.
Take away and addicts internet and what, they read the paper or watch TV instead? That's not an addiction, sorry. Take the internet away from an 'internet addict' for a week and they will have found other things to do. A drug addict will still be thinking about his drugs... for months and even years.
I should mention I smoke cigarettes, I'm a recovering alcoholic and have had various drug addictions when I was younger and stupider. I use the internet all the time and even play WoW, but it's hardly an addiction and don't see any possible way it could be classified as such unless there are marked differences in brain chemistry or something like that.
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Brain chemicals are brain chemicals. How you create the need for them to be activated is not relevant.
Yours is chemical. Someone else's is through constant ego-reward.
As for withdrawal, removal from a constant source of attention and validation will lead to a condition known as "grieving," which has distinct symptoms and can be physically painful as well as psychologically traumatic.
Some people may be genetically susceptible to these situations.
Never underestimate your brain's capability to do things to y
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Never underestimate your brain's capability to do things to you that you do not intend and can not control.
God grant my brain the serenity to accept the things it cannot change; courage to change the things it can; and wisdom to know the difference.
hehe
On a more serious note, I can see the argument for internet addiction, perhaps I'm conflating my real life experiences a bit. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that trolling forums or browsing the internet could destroy your life and the people who are close to you.
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Gambling is a recognized addiction and yet, it does not have physical repercussions AFAIK. A person with an addiction will just move the next when the current one is cured, unless the root cause is found and dealt with. This may or may not apply to you...
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Acute effects
Acute (or recreational) drug use causes the release and prolonged action of dopamine and serotonin within the reward circuit. Different types of drugs produce these effects by different methods. Dopamine (DA) appears to harbor the largest effect and its action is characterized. DA binds to the D1 receptor, triggering a signaling cascade within the cell. cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) phosphorylates cAMP response element binding protein (CREB), a transcription factor, wh
Haha! (Score:3, Funny)
6 hours a day?
L4|\/|3rz.
Thanks to virtualization, I spent 6 hours on the Internet in just the past 40 minutes!
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks to virtualization, I spent 6 hours on the Internet in just the past 40 minutes!
Obligatory. [theonion.com]
They forgot pizza and coke!!! (Score:2)
As far as I'm concerned, if you don't spend your time coding or connected to a MMORPG, and living on pizza and coke you're not net addicted!!!
On a more serious note I find it interesting that they don't distinguish between work and play. An addict is online because he or she wants to be, and will not take the opportunity to do other things. A worker may jump at the chance to get away from the computer (provided that doesn't mean they have a hell of a job trying to catch up when they get back).
Those Are Symptoms, Not the Disease (Score:3, Insightful)
Those are symptoms of people who aren't high-functioning addicts.
Any addiction is defined by one simple criterion: can the person exercise self control over the behavior?
The question can become existential: what if they don't want to quit? If they're high-functioning, they might never have call to exercise self control. In which case what's the difference whether they're addicts or not? The only question then is whether something might change requiring their quitting, and they might not be able to, which could be a problem.
Besides, everyone is "addicted" to food. Few complain about the addiction, except people who can't afford to eat, who have some other compulsion/obsession that conflicts with eating, or who have a compounded problem of eating too much. But we all live with our basic addiction to food, which isn't really a problem, and is even celebrated. Why should any other addiction matter, if there are no bad symptoms?
I think I'd better go and do .... (Score:2)
...the shopping before the thought police turn up and haul me off to boot camp in the forest, because I have a 24/7 on Cable connection to the Internet.
I have ALL these, but NONE of the negatives (Score:2)
what they define are stuff normally found in any average home in the modern world in people that are watching daily tv broadcasting after a long day's work. so our modern life is also an ailment too ?
give me a break.
Addictions are an escape route (Score:2)
its natural. its an instinctive reaction. computers, games, internet is the best addiction in that regard, because they are not directly lethal to the biology, or psychology. just, excessive tiredom, or distancing from the physical social life existing around the person.
chinese society should ask itself, what is wrong with their modern way of life, and try
Since I am a doctor (Score:2)
I suppose I can now declare and define a new and dangerous addiction - Air addiction.
My research has shown that people deprived of air for as little as 30 seconds will present "difficulty sleeping or concentrating, yearning to breathe, irritation, and mental or physical distress." Do YOU meet these criteria?
Yawn. The problem isn't the internet, caffeine, nicotine, heroin, crack, meth, etc. The problem is the underlying psychology of the individual. People who b
very convinient for the chinese gov. (Score:2)
I'm sure lots of people in China do surf a lot. Hardly suprising when its probably the only way they can get access to actual news rather than heavily biassed and censored proaganda.
If I was cynical I'd say this is simply just a made-up study for the chinese government to justify further censorship or even a total ban on internet access to all people of china except presumably, government officials.
Addicted? (Score:2)
If the world gives me a good reason to use a different medium for my entertainment or education I'll listen, however the internet is both my work and my play. And I'm quite happy that way.
Yeah right... (Score:2)
Man, what a scam. I could probably make more money than either a Chiropractor or a Naturopath!
Yeah, sure it is (Score:2)
crap (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't forget that there is a huge mental health industry with a vested interest in creating (oops, I mean "identifying") new classes of illness that they will have to paid to treat.
I suspect that what's happening is that they are identifying something that has become a pillar of an individual's life-style and then claiming that this constitutes an "addiction" because the person suffers anxiety when the thing is taken away. A person with a normal social life would start to exhibit anxiety and yearning if soc
Re: (Score:2)