Internet Addiction Alters Brain Chemistry In Young People, Study Finds (theguardian.com) 59
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Young people with internet addiction experience changes in their brain chemistry which could lead to more addictive behaviors, research suggests. The study, published in PLOS Mental Health, reviewed previous research using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine how regions of the brain interact in people with internet addiction.
They found that the effects were evident throughout multiple neural networks in the brains of young people, and that there was increased activity in parts of the brain when participants were resting. At the same time, there was an overall decrease in the functional connectivity in parts of the brain involved in active thinking, which is the executive control network of the brain responsible for memory and decision-making. The research found that these changes resulted in addictive behaviors and tendencies in adolescents, as well as behavioral changes linked to mental health, development, intellectual ability and physical coordination. "Adolescence is a crucial developmental stage during which people go through significant changes in their biology, cognition and personalities," said Max Chang, the study's lead author and an MSc student at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health (GOS ICH). "As a result, the brain is particularly vulnerable to internet addiction-related urges during this time, such as compulsive internet usage, cravings towards usage of the mouse or keyboard and consuming media. The findings from our study show that this can lead to potentially negative behavioral and developmental changes that could impact the lives of adolescents. For example, they may struggle to maintain relationships and social activities, lie about online activity and experience irregular eating and disrupted sleep."
Chang said he hopes the findings allow early signs of internet addiction to be treated effectively. "Clinicians could potentially prescribe treatment to aim at certain brain regions or suggest psychotherapy or family therapy targeting key symptoms of internet addiction," said Chang. "Importantly, parental education on internet addiction is another possible avenue of prevention from a public health standpoint. Parents who are aware of the early signs and onset of internet addiction will more effectively handle screen time, impulsivity, and minimize the risk factors surrounding internet addiction."
They found that the effects were evident throughout multiple neural networks in the brains of young people, and that there was increased activity in parts of the brain when participants were resting. At the same time, there was an overall decrease in the functional connectivity in parts of the brain involved in active thinking, which is the executive control network of the brain responsible for memory and decision-making. The research found that these changes resulted in addictive behaviors and tendencies in adolescents, as well as behavioral changes linked to mental health, development, intellectual ability and physical coordination. "Adolescence is a crucial developmental stage during which people go through significant changes in their biology, cognition and personalities," said Max Chang, the study's lead author and an MSc student at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health (GOS ICH). "As a result, the brain is particularly vulnerable to internet addiction-related urges during this time, such as compulsive internet usage, cravings towards usage of the mouse or keyboard and consuming media. The findings from our study show that this can lead to potentially negative behavioral and developmental changes that could impact the lives of adolescents. For example, they may struggle to maintain relationships and social activities, lie about online activity and experience irregular eating and disrupted sleep."
Chang said he hopes the findings allow early signs of internet addiction to be treated effectively. "Clinicians could potentially prescribe treatment to aim at certain brain regions or suggest psychotherapy or family therapy targeting key symptoms of internet addiction," said Chang. "Importantly, parental education on internet addiction is another possible avenue of prevention from a public health standpoint. Parents who are aware of the early signs and onset of internet addiction will more effectively handle screen time, impulsivity, and minimize the risk factors surrounding internet addiction."
Melange (Score:2)
The spice grants a certain prescience
The Digital Abyss (Score:3, Funny)
The Digital Abyss: How Internet Addiction Sparks Nymphomania in Teenage Girls
The internet, that omnipresent motherfucker, has society by the balls. Its grip is especially tight on our teenagers, who are spending more time online than ever before. But it's not just their time that's being swallowed by this digital behemoth; it's their sexual innocence too. Recent studies suggest that internet addiction is sparking a surge in nymphomania among teenage girls, turning their budding sexual curiosity into a raging inferno.
The teenage years are a hormonal rollercoaster, where the body undergoes a myriad of changes. The ovaries begin to release eggs, the breasts start to develop, and the vagina starts to lubricate - all part of the body's way of saying, "Hey, you're ready to fuck." But the internet, with its constant stream of sexual content, is taking this natural process and supercharging it into overdrive.
Internet sex stories, in particular, have become a powerful aphrodisiac for these young girls. These stories, with their graphic descriptions and tantalizing narratives, are like sexual dynamite, capable of inducing a powerful orgasm with just a few well-chosen words.
But what happens in the body during a female orgasm? Well, it's a complex, multi-stage process. As arousal builds, the clitoris, that sensitive little button, swells and hardens. The vagina begins to lubricate, preparing itself for sexual activity. The heart rate increases, and the body becomes more sensitive to touch.
When the orgasm hits, it hits hard. The muscles of the pelvic floor, including the uterus, contract rhythmically, creating waves of pleasure that ripple through the body. At the same time, the brain releases a flood of endorphins, creating a sense of euphoria that's as addictive as any drug. This is followed by a period of relaxation and satisfaction, the body's way of saying, "Good job, pussy."
But this internet-induced nymphomania is anything but good. It's leading to risky sexual behavior among teenage girls, exposing them to the dangers of STDs and unwanted pregnancies. It's like they're playing Russian roulette with their reproductive health, all because of this digital fuckfest.
According to Dr. Jane Dickerson, a leading expert in adolescent sexuality, the solution lies in education and regulation. "We need to teach girls about safe sex and the dangers of internet addiction," she says. "And we need to regulate the content that they're exposed to online. It's time to pull the plug on this digital shitshow."
In conclusion, the internet, that insidious motherfucker, isn't just stealing our time; it's turning our teenage girls into nymphomaniacs. It's time to get our heads out of our asses and address this issue before it spirals out of control.
Re: The Digital Abyss (Score:2)
"We need more Internet access at school."
- Teenage boys
Pleasure or boredom-breaking? (Score:1)
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Whatever. No one cares.
Just shut up and watch my ads.
Re:Pleasure or boredom-breaking? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I file this study alongside the others that I find dubious or obvious:
Sports Participation Alters Brain Chemistry In Young People, Study Finds
Social Interaction Alters Brain Chemistry In Young People, Study Finds
Repetitive Studying Alters Brain Chemistry In Young People, Study Finds
Normal Activities Alter Brain Chemistry In Young People, Study Finds
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Sniffing Glue Alters Brain Chemistry In Young People, Study Finds
Re: Pleasure or boredom-breaking? (Score:2)
Just because narcc huffs glue doesn't mean you have to make fun of his brain chemistry.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Taurine is just an amino acid. They're everywhere, not just your ass. Your whole body is made up of them. The reason you got ass cancer is because you let a genital wart get in there.
https://www.healthline.com/hea... [healthline.com]
See? Think about that: 91%. That's no small figure.
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Re: Pleasure or boredom-breaking? (Score:2)
Whatever you do with it, be sure to check it for warts first.
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Yeah, I file this study alongside the others that I find dubious or obvious:
Sports Participation Alters Brain Chemistry In Young People, Study Finds
Social Interaction Alters Brain Chemistry In Young People, Study Finds
Repetitive Studying Alters Brain Chemistry In Young People, Study Finds
Normal Activities Alter Brain Chemistry In Young People, Study Finds
LOL! any brain, old or young, works by constantly altering its chemistry so TFA is highly redundant.
link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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It's also further evidence that we need regulation around internet access & social media for children.
Re:Pleasure or boredom-breaking? (Score:4, Interesting)
Once it is a widely recognised disorder, sufferers & their families will more than likely find better opportunities to get help with treatment.
No, it will be another excuse people can use to justify themselves. "I'm on the autism spectrum so I can be an ass to everyone." "I'm addicted to the internet which is why my work isn't getting done but you can't fire me because it's a recognized syndrom."
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It's called reality.
Re: Pleasure or boredom-breaking? (Score:1, Interesting)
No he's right. Everything is a fucking syndrome these days requiring eggshell walking by everyone else.
Back when I was a kid they called that shit laziness and fired you for it.
Now they made up a word with 19 syllables for it and you get paid leave.
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No, it will be another excuse people can use to justify themselves. "I'm on the autism spectrum so I can be an ass to everyone."
Sooooo... how long have you known you were autistic?
Seriously though, there is a real difference between clinical treatment and pop psychology, but scientific inquiries that lead to better treatment options can always be distorted, misunderstood, and profited off of by the willfully or otherwise ignorant. One doesn't cancel out the other. More insight is still a good thing.
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Once it is a widely recognised disorder, sufferers & their families will more than likely find better opportunities to get help with treatment.
No, it will be another excuse people can use to justify themselves. "I'm on the autism spectrum so I can be an ass to everyone." "I'm addicted to the internet which is why my work isn't getting done but you can't fire me because it's a recognized syndrom."
I get the humour but in all seriousness, this would be a huge boon to actual autistic people.
Contrary to popular opinion, autism doesn't make you an arse, it makes you scared. Specifically of unexpected events or for people really far down on the spectrum, things outside a routine. It's the effect of not knowing how to deal with complex and unknown situations, social situations in particular.
if all the arseholes pretending to have low-level assburgers syndrome had a new excuse, people with actual Aspe
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I wonder how they measured enough students repeatedly, to have comparable timescale of results? Did they fit everyone with some sort of headset? They claim to have used "functional magnetic resonance imaging", but of what size? Were they lined up at a machine? And what about the enjoyment of meeting friends between classes? Wouldn't that have skewed results? What about enjoying the class that day? Were the measurements based on recording anything above nothing? Does breaking up boredom result in dots on the chart? What is the median level? Does looking up the answer on a cell phone have the same readings as looking it up in a paper dictionary? Or looking at someone else's paper for answers?
Yeah, I'm bored with being an AI expert & I've decided that I'm now an expert on fMRI studies. Nice start! So how do you propose the study should've been carried out? How can we better control for threats to construct validity?*
/. & Poe's law applies, yeah, this is sarcasm.
*Since this is
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a large amount of studies simply trust the participants are testifying honestly/accurately... with that kind of certainty its no wonder science moves along at a crawl
The brain is plastic, it learns (Score:5, Interesting)
"They found that the effects were evident throughout multiple neural networks in the brains of young people, and that there was increased activity in parts of the brain when participants were resting. At the same time, there was an overall decrease in the functional connectivity in parts of the brain involved in active thinking, which is the executive control network of the brain responsible for memory and decision-making."
So people minds rambled over what they'd seen on the internet afterwards and they relaxed instead of accessing memory and making decisions? This sounds exactly like what happens to someone who comes home from a day at the office. How did they rule out confounding factors like whatever is going on in their personal lives or what the people actually saw while on the internet? Were these people being bullied over the internet? Can they even define internet addiction biochemically? The article is full of weasel words: "could potentially", "another possible", "may struggle", "research suggests".
Try replacing "the internet" in this sentence with "work": “There is no doubt that the internet has certain advantages. However, when it begins to affect our day-to-day lives, it is a problem." Maybe they should take a look at how money leads to work which leads to addictive behaviors, billions of people doing things they would not normally do if given a choice. Certainly some people exhibit excessive behaviors related to the internet, but the same is true of people and cars, what defines addiction? The internet -is- a major part of the world now, people have to learn to live in it. Did they have any sort of control groups, such as people learning to use word processors or CAD programs or doing school homework on the internet? Is the definition of internet addiction "behaviors we don't like"? There are known problems with fMRI studies:
https://www.thebrainblog.org/2... [thebrainblog.org]
https://ideas.ted.com/much-of-... [ted.com]
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"plastic" ... when it comes to materials .. plastic is the thing you don't want your brain to be like. It scars, it is subject to deformation and has low yield strength, it's not aesthetically pleasing, it's flammable, it can retain toxic chemicals. Which of those properties are great for your brain?
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Try to be more plastic about the definition.
Re: The brain is plastic, it learns (Score:1)
He is.
You're not.
Re:The brain is plastic, it learns (Score:4, Funny)
Watch out: Next time mom says "It will rot your brain" she will cite sources!
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Try replacing "the internet" in this sentence with "work"
Just because the final sentence is grammatically correct and could in theory apply to people doesn't mean that there's the same context behind it. The context is what characterises an activity, a simple word substitution doesn't prove or disprove anything. People do not want to work, they do not get dopamine hits in doing so, they do not stress when they can't do it, and do not experience withdrawals either physical or mental (no, stress of something going wrong at work is not the same as a withdrawal from
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People do not want to work, they do not get dopamine hits in doing so...
Workaholism is a thing, and it can take different forms. Some are textbook cases of addiction.
Furthermore, addicts usually don't enjoy whatever they are addicted to, that's what makes it an addiction and not a simple habit. It is compulsive behavior, they know it is bad, they don't get any more pleasure doing it, but they can't stop and they need help. This can apply to work, and I mean working for the sake of working, not just about getting paid.
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Workaholism is a thing, and it can take different forms. Some are textbook cases of addiction.
Of course it is, but what was my opening sentence about? "Context". The "Context" here was that the OP was talking about work as a generalised thing we all do to disprove the idea that the internet can be addictive.
Context matters.
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Teenage brains appear to be rather "malleable" and sometimes that's a one-way trip. Things we know...
1) Various despots around the world have specifically armed teenagers and taught them to kill people. In a lot of cases, this makes them grow up to be ice-cold killers, generally obedient to their masters. They end up pretty fucked up people, many don't last long because they get killed in service, but would likely need a lifetime of therapy to rejoin a "normal" society.
2) We've seen girls in particular, see
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"Maybe they should take a look at how money leads to work which leads to addictive behaviors, billions of people doing things they would not normally do if given a choice." .01% of us. But it could be you! You just need Drive, Ambition, and the ability to get on that stage at and sell your heart out and make people believe in your money-making idea! Do what Sam Altma
Well we can't very well just escape from the grips of capitalism that easily. Someday we might all be wealthy! Not all of us, just 1% or maybe
How would I raise my kids now days? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Any extreme thinking is usually bad. Totally banning TV was probably not a good idea. What's the long term large scale statistical outcome? Any first-hand knowledge is likely to be Poisson noise.
Moderate restrictions, age-specific supervision, and somewhat disciplined education enforcement (lots of practice questions etc.) probably work best for the median kid.
I went to check the data (Score:5, Interesting)
and not only do those links go nowhere, I can't find any instance of a guy named Max Cheng being associated with UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health... although one other article notes that he's an masters student.
Something tells me that someone published something perhaps a bit prematurely, did a bunch of media work to promote it... and then got sick of people pointing out problems with their methodology.
Re:I went to check the data (Score:5, Informative)
Slashdot editors fucked up the link, but so did the article. Journal is here: https://journals.plos.org/ment... [plos.org]
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Oh.
It's a lit review. Not a study.
The article didn't just mess up the URL then, it also messed up its whole premise.
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I'm not sure I agree with that exactly.
Whether or not it is better depends significantly on the early career researcher who produced it, and it will be used to judge their handling of relevant data. In an ideal case you're certainly right, but this appears to be the young lad's first publication.
Every generation finds an addiction (Score:4, Interesting)
Every generation finds an addiction
For many past generations, booze, drugs, or whatever. These days it is TikTok et al.
The thing is us monkeys like fucking with reality, whether by chemical routes or mainlining other people's emotions. Back in Jane Austen's time they were worried that young ladies were reading too many novels. I must admit I'd rather my grand daughter got hooked on Jane Austen rather than endlessly swiping left right up and down on her phone, but JA was 'designed' by single amateurs, Insta by leagues of professionals.
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Fucking with reality? What creature doesn't like doing that? What do you think a mosquito does right before a giant hand smacks it on the head?
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Every generation finds an addiction
It's more of a "every previous generation finds something they don't like to blame",
Comic books, Movies, Rock and/or Roll music... Destroying the moral fabric of our society... It seems every older generation makes it's own subculture of pearl clutchers. I expect mine to be next, I grew up with the music of Marilyn Manson, a favourite of the pearl clutchers of my parent's generation, we turned out all right ( especially compared to those who grew up with ultra-religious restrictions) but we're getting to
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I'm safe. (Score:4, Funny)
I've been using the internet for around 35 years -- that's before the web was invented. The equivalent of slashdot, as in the place where idiots used to hang out, was a thing called usenet and also IRC --- both of which were major sources of brain rot. Luckily my brain function is perfect, that's why I've been able to teach you guys so much stuff.
So do (Score:1)
diet, alcohol, aging, sex...
Pretty much any lived experience..
compulsive internet usage, cravings towards usage of the mouse or keyboard and consuming media
Congratualtions. You're describing humans. Da fark is this noise?
Oh (Score:2)
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So us meanies who didn't let our kids have pocket internet connected computers aren't actually medieval loonies?
The same people that were telling you that you were a troglodyte for not letting your 13 year old online ten years ago are the same people that are saying "Parent your kids!" when states require age verification for porn sites today, because clicking "I am 18" is a massive violation of their personal dignity.
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Saying we are addicted to our phones when they are now how we accomplish a great many things in any given day is like saying we're addicted to food and sleep.
I could definitely go without my phone and the Internet for 24 hours. Sounds like a great idea. Of course, I'd also be cut off from society and would probably upset a lot of people for going dark but it's definitely doable. Would probably be pretty awesome actually. Especially the no Internet thing. Turn that fucker off for a week. Please! Would be gre
Anything (Score:2)
Screentime psych expert here (Score:2)
Talks about internet addiction without nuance. When you're talking about addiction, you need to look at the context around it. A lot of parents like to say that their kids are addicted to screens, but when you actually look at their home life, the parent