Pathological Internet Use
Upon waking up this morning I stumble towards my desk like a zombie caught in the stench of brains. In transit I stub my toe on a chair, because I’m not really awake yet, and drop down into my chair. It’s difficult to focus on the computer screen at first cause my eyes are still sleepy slits and everything looks like a Picasso painting but after a few minutes I gain operational eyesight and discover I’m on Alex Barnett’s blog reading about Internet Addiction. And they tell me there are no coincidences.
Alex links to a SmartMobs post which in turn links me to a Scotsman article about the “real and damaging” effect of internet addiction. The Scotsman lede proclaims “Internet addiction is a real phenomenon which could be as destructive as alcoholism and drug addiction, doctors in the United States have said.” Great, I think as I fiddle with my coffee IV, probably should remind myself to always start the day on Belief.net or something more inspirational — though that doesn’t brighten my morning either as I go to test my theory and I’m immedaitely assaulted by this picture on Belief.net’s homepage:
Which jams a guilty dagger deep into my hardened heart. I get that you can’t have pictures of smiling kids, playing tag and eating Bomb Pops cause who wants to help the happy, but can’t you appeal to something other than my guilt. Look at her face will you. I can hear the kid judging me for christ sakes. But anyway, I navigate back to Internet Addiction cause I’m curious, is Internet Addiction Disorder, (IAD), apparently the phrase of choice though I prefer the more stigmatizing Pathological Internet Use, a real phenomenon or just another Mickey Mouse issue bored Docs can exploit for those fifteen minutes we all crave? Stay with me and I’ll give you all the troubling truth.
Before diving into the question, I was amazed to discover all sorts of crap about IAU on the web. Not like, “wow look at all this info.” That amazement is so 90’s. Hell, you could Google “Naked Foosball” and probably find a swarming community, maybe even a few organizations:
Allow me a digression. So I went ahead and Googled “Naked Foosball.” No organizations, which is a bummer cause I was hoping for a local club, preferably at the Hooters over on Route 280. Of course I didn’t leave the first page of results so it might exist. While there were no organizations there was a CBS article about “The Importance of Marital Sex” on the first page. Who would have figured? The article was shilling some dudes book about how married couples should fuck a lot and this passage from the article got caught in Google’s hooks:
Leman’s book has tips and ideas for putting the spark back into a flagging love life. His suggestions range from cutting back busy schedules and spending more time at home, to bubble baths and naked foosball.
Hmmm, bubble baths and… naked foosball you say? C’mon man, that’s too obscure an activity to be anything other than Leman’s own personal perverse pleasure. I’m not knocking naked foosball. A good question to orient yourself with when confronted by any activity is “Would the world be a better place if everyone did it” and I’m gonna go out on a limb and say the world would indeed be better place if everyone struck up a match of naked foosball every day. So I got no problems with the activity. I simply find it funny it’s included in the passage. Bubble baths, sure, a common sensual activity, massages would be a natural follow up, but naked foosball. Again, nothing wrong with it, just fodder for a spin around the comedic brain. Now back to IAD.
I was curious about IAD so I surfed the term and found self-tests for IAD like this one or this one, diagonstic tools, organizations with important titles like The Center for Online Addiction and articles galore. My favorite being this one from TechWeb entitled, It’s Offical: Net Abusers are Pathological. Great headline folks. Grabs you right away, though if there is indeed a disorder called IAD and you were suffering from it then reading that headline would more likely drive you off the edge of high rise then to a doctor’s office. I can almost sniff the perverse pleasure in the headline like teenagers smelling blood in the water. It’s Offical: Sally Jenkins is a Ragging Slut reads the school paper. Anyway, tons of stuff on IAD but does it amount to anything. I mean is IAD just another bullshit diagnosis we can all worry about while we wait for the pharmaceuticals to concoct another mega expensive side-effect-may-be-sudden-and-unexpected-death drug instead of shipping cheap ones to Africa?
In some ways it’s a moot point cause if you define addiction broadly as any habit that one engages in habitually and obsessively despite negative consequences then sure, internet addiction is very real. But then so is snorting snow, jerking off, eating boogers, and breathing (if you’re a raging, anger management drop out, asshole). Hell by this broad definition you could be a cell phone addict, a TIVO addict or an Ipod addict. The variations are unlimited and thus useless. If we put our foot down on this point then all Doctors promoting IAD are simply fishing for their Dr. Phil moment in the sun. They’re self-serving hucksters.
Now let’s look at the word Internet, an integral part of any Internet addiction. What the hell is the Internet? I’m to lazy to spear a definition elsewhere so I’ll throw my own out and call the Internet an environment. This works cause it’s simple, broad and it’ll let me make my next point which is you can’t be addicted to an environment. You can be addicted to things in an environment. For example, you wouldn’t say I’m addicted to the playground, well you could but you’d be wrong. The more apt statement would be,
I can’t get off that fucking see saw man. It goes up. It goes down. The thrill of it all. I think I’m addicted to that fucking see saw dude.
That statement would be correct in so far as addictions go. In other words, the see saw addict would soon be foregoing trips to the playground and building one in his living room out of discarded boxes and pieces of his furniture. So can you be addicted to the Internet? Not really, no more than you could be addicted to Central Park. However, how about specific architectures of the Internet? Like the see saw in the playground, could one be addicted to, say, email, Instant Messaging, Forums, or Web 2.0 applications?
On this point I’d have to say yes. One could be addicted to chat or email but it’s tricky cause what you’d really be addicted to would be a feeling these things give you, like the thrill of the see saw above. It’s not so much the see saw as it is the thrill you derive from the activity. In this way, Internet activities are pumping you with feelings that one thinks they can’t manufacture otherwise. Adictive activities, before biochemical changes occur, typically result from people feeling powerless in some aspect of their lives, feeling a lack of creative control. Unfortunetly, it’s impossible to escape sex here. It’s the gorilla dropping a crap in your living room.
Sex, sex, sex, as I’ve mentioned before most of our hang ups are sexual hang ups. Hell parents can’t even bring themselves to tell their kids they got a penis or vagina. “Oh that’s a pee pee dear.” Pee Pee? What the fuck is a pee pee. Coupled with the fact that parents kiss and cuddle around their kids about as often as the Arizona Cardinals win a playoff game then you got yourself repeating generations of kids mind fucked on sex. Ends up being a technical document, insert rod into hole, two pumps, quiver and act awkward. But the sex thing kinda misses the point in some respects. All these Internet activities, email, chat, forums, things which people can become addicted to, they are all social applications. They connect people in relationships. And here’s where I think Web 2.0 can play a part.
Please, don’t misunderstand me. I’m no Web 2.0 cheerleader. It’s not the tonic for all our social ills but I do think addictions are often about people attaching to activities that supply them with feelings they think they cannot manufacture on their own. One way around this is to give the person a substitute. It’s why at most drug rehabilitation facilities people walk around jacked on coffee and chain smoking, why methadone is used to treat heroine. Subtraction and addition. But before you can subtract and add you need to foster awareness. Awarness comes first.
Which isn’t an easy thing to do in our culture. I can’t choose a fuckin’ toothpaste product without some asshole trying to make me feel guilt about it. Everyone and everything wants to be The Shit. It’s all preposterous. What’s needed is awareness. Whatever toothpaste or email client I read doesn’t make me wrong. There isn’t a bigger and better out there for me. All there is is what works for me. If I like “The Worst” email client it doesn’t make me “The Worst Asshole on the Planet.” Web 2.0 applications would be served to keep this in mind. Competition is fine, but it’s not compete to destroy. All competition at the expense of others does is foster an environment ripe with confusion. It’s a loamy bed for growing people feeling lack and loss of control which lead to addictions. Positive social relations foster the opposite and if Web 2.0 is anything it’s about social networks, or it should be.
The Internet is a hub of interconnect and enmeshed social networks. Web 2.0 or whatever the fuck it is needs to expand these relationships. Building an application that traps someone in another tunnel, gives them pretty colors and a horse blinder, doesn’t serve any purpose. It’s just another pathetic toothpaste commercial. I don’t have all the answers. Shit I don’t even have some but a good start would be this: If you’re building a Web 2.0 application eliminate the work best or right from your site. In fact that’s my new rule for Web 2.0. If you have “right” or “best” on your site and don’t link to other similar applications then your Web 1.0 or whatever the fuck that is. So that’s two rules. Third would be don’t suck.
Postscript: This appears to be a somewhat timely topic even though I wrote it six or seven months ago. Suppose you could argue addiction is a timeless topic anyway, but I noticed that Ars Technica ran a story on Internet Addiction [via Lifehacker]. Ars cites a new study that identifies five different web-based addictive behaviors. They are:
- Cybersexual addiction
- Cyberrelationship addiction
- Net compulsion
- Information overload
- Interactive gaming compulsion
The article also points you to another self-test that’s ironically fodder for the Net complusive addict. I didn’t take it cause I’m an Information overload addict. I know it exists and that’s enough for me. Now onto the next headline.
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