Comments on: Internet Addiction: Impulse Control Disorder?

By: Managing Editor

Managing Editor — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 12:56:18 +0000

As you’ve described it, it sounds like using the web as a giant library fits in well with what you like in life. I wonder what is that like if someone else comes along and labels it ‘internet addiction’, or ‘impulse control disorder’, or some such?

Better watch out, you might be a ‘backpacking addict’, too… ;-)

All the best,
Greg

By: person

person — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 18:24:18 +0000

Some of us ‘addicts’ are online not for the social connections, but for information hunting. I a bit of a news and knowledge ‘junkie’. Sure I will visit a few forums and blogs for some discussion, but the main thing that the internet offers to me is an easily accessible infinite library of knowledge. I am an old school Web 1.0 type of person, and do not do much with the social networking, but I could [and do] spend hours researching various topics that interest me.

But…I do also relish the weeks spent away from the internet traipsing around national parks with a pack on my back. It is just a different type of knowledge gathering for me, I suppose.

By: Managing Editor

Managing Editor — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 11:58:11 +0000

Well said, Unknown — many people would probably also feel distraught or forlorn if they were prohibited from using the telephone to speak with social contacts, or prohibited from speaking with them face-to-face. In this respect, there’s a job to be done to explain why social contacts mediated via computer should be conceptualized any differently than those mediated by telephone, paper letter, or face-to-face conversation…

All the best,
Greg

By: Unknown

Unknown — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 20:11:32 +0000

But it is, for a fact, an asset to a social life. The Internet is just an alternative to the real world. It is still all very real, with different confrontations and boundaries.

I would say it is more so an influential part of life than it is detrimental; couldn’t it be that they feel distraught and forlorn when not being online because it is, indeed, very much like a real social life in a different world?

Personally, I wouldn’t worry too much about it.

By: Drug Detox

Drug Detox — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 19:18:45 +0000

I totally agree with the problem that computer and internet use becomes a very sad thing. Is not normal when a mother forget about his children, when people does not work properly, when a child leave the usually playing in the nature or with his friends, and all that is because of the computer. We can try to change the computer and the internet to be useful and not harmful for our social lives.