Net Addiction

Hi, my name is Alexandra, and I’m a netaholic.

In the course of writing this column, I have checked my email 19 times, watched four youtube videos, read 26 past issues of xkcd, attempted to watch Pirates 2, and read an entire Wikipedia article about the history of conjugal visits. The only way I was able to finish at all was to go somewhere where there wasn’t any internet, but given the expansion of wireless technology, this was harder than it seemed. One of the best reasons to oppose the Obama campaign right now is its promise of expanding wireless coverage to include the whole nation. If it weren’t for dead spots, I’d never accomplish anything.

And maybe I’m not alone. If you “spend more time than you think you should surfing the Net,” “feel you have a problem limiting the time you spend on the Net,” “find it hard to stay away from the Net for several days at a time,” “find particular areas of the Net, or types of files, hard to resist,” “have trouble controlling your impulses to purchase items, products, or services on the Net,” “have tried, unsuccessfully, to curtail your use of the ‘Net,” or have had “either your work output or your personal relationships [suffer] as a result of spending too much time on the Net,” you too may be at risk of “Net” addiction, according to an online survey linked by the Bureau of Study Counsel Web site.

The obvious question aside—isn’t listing the signs of internet addiction online like inscribing the symptoms of alcohol addiction at the bottom of a vodka bottle?—it was disturbing to find that what I had chalked up to simple procrastination could, in the right hands, be transformed into a terrifying condition. Ours is a culture that throws serious terms like “rape” and “addiction” around unthinkingly, e.g. “I was raped by that ec test” or “I’m addicted to internet porn.” But at what point do you stop being “addicted” to something and become actually addicted to it? And what if I had reached that point? I needed to take action, and soon!

I called the Bureau of Study Counsel and asked if I could “turn myself in” as a Net addict. But some helpful pamphlets on time management aside, they didn’t have anything to tell me about my condition. My counselor apologetically suggested, “You could google it.” University Mental Health Services proved similarly forthcoming. I gave my number to someone rumored to be an expert on the subject, but he has yet to call me.

I was puzzled. Based on the descriptions, internet addiction seemed utterly dire. I expected to be whisked away to a clinic with an optimistic name like “Wireless Promises” and slowly nursed back to health by a team of experts. Instead, no one seemed to think I had a problem. And perhaps there was good reason for this. Perhaps “Net Addiction” is not so much a constant danger that looms over people who know and use the internet as it is a fear of people who don’t.

Indeed, many of the case samples cited on the website ComputerAddiction.com, the online face of Harvard Medical School’s Computer Addiction Study Center in Belmont, Mass., sound more like jokes from “The Office” than indicators of anything dire: “A corporate department head stays late each night to meet deadlines. In-house monitoring of computer use reveals he frequently accesses inappropriate sites, including gambling and pornography.”

According to Harvard Medical School Assistant Professor Maressa Hecht Orzack, the problem is that “our society is becoming more and more computer dependent not only for information, but for fun and entertainment. This trend is a potential problem affecting all ages, starting with computer games for kids to chats for the unwary or vulnerable adult.”

Yet this doesn’t sound like a problem. Our generation has grown up on the internet, and most of us still manage to lead normal lives. Indeed, the very term “Net Addiction” belies the fact that those coming up with these horrifying categories do not belong to the internet generation. No one who has been near a computer since 1997 still uses the term “Net.” These are people who still say things like “What’s the URL?” or “surf the World Wide Web,” or have AOL. Add to this the fact that ComputerAddiction.com hasn’t been updated since 2003—it doesn‘t even use frames—and it begins to look increasingly as though internet addiction is, for the most part, not a mental disorder but a generational issue. Professor Orzack herself was born in 1924. As experts tend to agree, the internet is not a substance so much as it is a medium—although it offers access to a world of harmful behaviors, the same could be said of the state of New Jersey. The internet is not the culprit—it’s simply the conduit. And those terrified by visions of an entire generation hunched over glowing screens into the wee hours of the night are the people who still think jokes about confusing computer mice with live animals are funny.

So the fact that you probably found yourself meeting the criteria for internet addiction shouldn’t send you running towards treatment. It should suggest that the very terms of internet addiction could stand to be redefined. Which is good news for all of us, because I have a fun Youtube link.



Alexandra A. Petri ’10 is a English and classics concentrator in Eliot House. Her column appears on alternate Tuesdays.