Internet Addiction

PopHistorian

The Living Force
FOTCM Member
They're talking about Internet addiction on CNN today. They always bring up the fact that China and South Korea have opened treatment camps for 'net-addicted kids. _http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/144098.html

Now a psychiatrist wants it classified officially as a mental disorder. _http://www.ohsu.edu/xd/about/news_events/news/internetaddiction031808.cfm

I find it interesting that the Internet offers the potential to discover some truths possibly damaging to the PTB. Also, that TV "addiction" is surely as bad, has been for fifty years, and is far less interactive, yet never seems to be mentioned in such articles. My search engine gets 2.14 million hits on "internet addiction" but only about 0.27 million hits on "TV addiction" plus "television addiction."
“There are at least three known forms of compulsive computer use: excessive computer gaming, preoccupations with sexual content and email or text messaging,” explained Block. “These compulsive behaviors can have very serious health and social consequences ranging from fatigue, depression, social isolation and poor work performance. In some very extreme cases, those addicted to Internet use have suffered cardiopulmonary-related deaths.”

As Block points out in his editorial, studies from South Korea suggest that Internet addiction is one of the country’s most serious public health issues. Scientists there believe that 2 percent (210,000) of Korean children suffer from one form of Internet addiction or another. In China, experts believe that almost 14 percent of adolescent Internet users are considered to be addicted. In both of these countries, Web use is more public due to the prevalence of Internet cafes. In the United States, the prevalence of Internet addiction is more difficult to estimate because Internet use is often confined to the home.

Block believes that Internet addiction and its associated disorders should be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical manual of Mental Disorders which is widely used by psychiatrists to diagnose mental illness. The next edition of the manual is due out in 2012.

“About 80 percent of those who suffer from Internet addiction also suffer from some other form of mental illness,” explained Block. He adds that therapists in the United States may have difficulty detecting Internet addiction where providers in other countries are taught how to screen for it.
 
AdPop said:
They're talking about Internet addiction on CNN today. They always bring up the fact that China and South Korea have opened treatment camps for 'net-addicted kids.
consider also that China already censors the Internet to an extent that all those "truths possibly damaging to the PTB" are really hard to come by. All those poor internet addicts, laboring for nothing. I am only half joking -- the future does look bleak.
 
AdPop said:
They're talking about Internet addiction on CNN today. They always bring up the fact that China and South Korea have opened treatment camps for 'net-addicted kids. _http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/144098.html
Its kind of like 'blaming the child', isn't it?

Where reality in those countries may be so awful, controlled and disempowering, the internet offers an 'escape' (albeit sometimes not a very contructive one), it then gets blamed for all the childrens problems.

I'm not sure which is worse, the totalitarian regimes or the manipulative (and far more subtle) ones.
 
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