What on Earth is a "real thing"? And what does that have to do with the name given it?
Concepts are mental activities that identify disparate concretes by ignoring some aspects of their differences. As such, we can unify pretty much anything under a concept. The question is never "is this abstract thing really real for reals?" It is: "Does this way of grouping things give us any useful way of dealing with the underlying reality?"
Debates about whether the constellation of phenomena that get united under a named concept constitute a "real thing" are almost always undertaken in more-or-less willful ignorance of this fact. The very way of posing the question--"Is this real?"--obscures the actually interesting and important question: "Is this useful?"
Addiction is a fairly well-defined and useful category of pathology. People who are addicted to something have similar symptoms and issues, and treatment of addiction can be usefully studied across groups of addicts, so what is learned about people with alcohol addictions may be useful to people with heroin addictions and so on (or not: simply because two things are grouped under the same concept for a given purpose does not mean they are usefully identical for all purposes, as anyone who has handled a sail boat and a row boat--both members of the abstract category "boat"--knows.)
No concept has perfectly crisp edges, and on the borders there are plenty of cases that one person would count as "in" while another would count as "out". If enough such cases start accumulating and impede communication and thought, we create new interstitial concepts. In the case of "Internet addiction" the interesting question is, "Is this enough like other addictions to group it usefully under the came concept, or do we need something intermediate or possibly orthogonal to usefully categorize it?"
In this case, since it does show certain addiction-style attributes, the actual categorization question is "is this severe enough to qualify as addiction" (possibly excluding extreme outliers). That's a very important question. It affects how seriously we should take it.
I think a better way to look at it is "information addiction" or "social snooping addiction". "Internet addiction" is a silly concept, because the internet is merely the medium. Its like referring to gambling addiction as "casino addiction".
That's exactly what I was thinking of posting when I read the article.
I know a lot of people who could be classified under the "information addict" category.
Two decades ago they would've most likely been regulars at a library, part of book clubs, have all the encyclopedia's they could get their hands on etc.
Two decades ago they would've also have been classified as well read, informed and all similar good things.
If anything the internet has made it easier for them to understand different perspectives and participate in discussions.
Would I call they "information addicts"?
Definitely not.
But there are some types of addictions that the internet as a , medium has made easier to achieve "social snooping addiction" and "WebMD addiction" would definitely be the big ones.
But as OP said, the internet is merely a medium, not the addiction.
This is a ridiculous dismissal of a serious issue, and frankly it reads like you and the parent commenters didn't bother to RTFA.
>through a combination of excessive time spent online and that time interfering with necessary social and professional activities, Internet use would result in either mental distress or clinical impairment, akin to the type of inability to function associated with pathological gambling
Does that read like your typical book club member?
I was referring specifically to the notion that people who spend a lot of time in libraries are information addicts. I think that notion is not serious, and I do dismiss it.
I think baddox may have meant it like "Yeah, right". That and "Right" are often spoken with a hint of sarcasm when disagreeing with said statement.
Also, I never said a casual book club member of library goer fits the definition of an information addict.
I said, and I quote:
Two decades ago they would've most likely been regulars at a library, part of book clubs, have all the encyclopedia's they could get their hands on etc.
Which in my case implies, two decades ago, people who would be classified as information addicts on the internet(in present times) would have gotten their fix using multiple mediums in conjunction; including but not limited to:
- being regulars at a library
- part of book clubs
- getting their hands on as many informative/factoid sources such as encyclopedias
I go on to say:
Two decades ago they would've also have been classified as well read, informed and all similar good things.
Implying that it is a new phenomenon that well read, informed and curious people who like understanding the world around them are unfortunately and too easily classified as addicts.
After which I stated:
Would I call they(sic) "information addicts"? - Definitely not.
Trying to establish, that just because a person seeks out and consumes a lot of data does not make them an internet addict or an information addict.
Now to address your comment:
through a combination of excessive time spent online and that time interfering with necessary social and professional activities, Internet use would result in either mental distress or clinical impairment, akin to the type of inability to function associated with pathological gambling
Since you mentioned it; In my opinion that statement unfortunately seems to get the causality and effects mixed.
It points to excessive time spent online and that time interfering with necessary social and professional activities as the cause for mental distress or clinical impairment.
Unfortunately in reality things are usually the other way around (there may be exceptions, albeit few).
That is, people who suffer from mental distress, clinical impairment or extreme cases of dissonant discomfort in today's day and age use the internet to get easier access to their fix.
People suffering from these alleged symptoms would most likely always sacrifice social and professional activities, regardless of the medium that delivers their fix.
By focusing on the internet and other effects of the real disorders, it perpetuates a disregard for the serious issues that people are actually suffering from.
ex:
A serious hypochondriac would not get fixed by reducing time spent on the internet.
The same goes for disorders dealing with paranoia, obsessions, social stalking etc.
This still isn't right. I think you're throwing around the word "addict."
Perhaps you are using a very loose definition of the word "addict" while the author and I are using a narrow, clinical, definition.
When I, and the author, say "internet addiction" we don't mean that the person just has a thirst for knowledge. We mean that if a person has a behavioral addiction then that person has "an inability to control how often or how intensely you engage in an activity, even when you feel the negative consequences."
This is probably just a semantic disagreement.
The people that can browse the web all day, hold down jobs, care for themselves, these aren't the people the author is talking about. They are talking about the ones that drop out of school, quit their jobs, etc.
>Since you mentioned it; In my opinion that statement unfortunately seems to get the causality and effects mixed.
Do you hold the same stance if we swap out internet addiction for another addiction, such as gambling or heroin?
> Trying to establish, that just because a person seeks out and consumes a lot of data does not make them an internet addict or an information addict.
This wasn't implied in the article. Maybe the grandparent comment implied it, but I don't think so.
As to your comments about "real disorders" and "serious issues" well, we take the bottle away from the drunkard, but that's really another discussion on its own.
Probably, but at the same time (and the article touches upon this a bit) the Internet is somewhat of an all encompassing medium the increasing use of which is not necessarily a sign of negative addiction.
I use the Internet a lot, but that is because the Internet has grown to encompass some amount of nearly every aspect of my life, not (in my non-professional opinion) because I have an addictive tendency toward it.
I'm a software developer, so clearly Internet use for research/testing/etc is very common; I'm a movie/tv watcher and all of my at-home movie/tv watching has migrated to the Internet; I'm a reader and most of my reading has migrated to the Internet (at the very least for delivery to my Kindle); I'm a gamer and most of the games I play have at least some Internet-based multiplayer component; I'm a hobbyist at various things like photography, quadcopter building/flying, and 3D printing and the Internet is a spectacular way to communicate with like-minded hobbyists, so I do; I'm someone who lives across the country from most of my extended family, and we keep in contact via the Internet (in addition to occasional phone calls and visits, but the contact via the Internet is much more consistent due to the easy time-shifting of leaving messages).
I spend hours and hours and hours a day on the Internet, but OTOH I can easily go camping for a week or two and live completely without it with no ill effects. I have IRL friends I spend time with on a weekly basis, I "get out" and do plenty of things not related to the Internet, etc. So while I use it very often on a regular basis, that in and of itself does not signify an addiction, as far as I understand it (again, in my non-professional opinion).
What you're describing is the distinction between addiction and high engagement. The DSM unfortunately doesn't do a good job with this distinction as its criteria for addiction are heavily based on chemical addictions. The DSM works like sorta like this: If you meet 4 out of 6 basic criteria for addiction you're addicted. For behavioral addictions unfortunately they use the wrong criteria (At least they did in DSM-IV). The only things you really care about are the negative consequences (as most people understand intuitively) and not some arbitrary number like "spends more than 60 hours a week involved in this activity."
The internet is like electricity - you can live without it, but due it the prevalent use of it, you will not be part of modern society/culture and be at a significant disadvantage in terms of economic impact vs those who use it.
You could have said the same thing about tobacco, 50 years ago. That did not make the suffering of those with the proclivity to develop cancer any less gruesome.
But that's also the trouble, isn't it? It's a bit like people who are compulsive overeaters -- the easiest thing to do would be to just totally abstain, like most reformed alcoholics choose to, but you can't just stop eating and you can't just never use the Internet.
Depends on your definition of addiction. Addiction is a real medical disease. To be addicted in the medical sense you have to a) have a dependence on the object of your addiction (your body has a negative response when you don't get the thing you're addicted to) and b) it changes your behavior and causes extreme negative consequences in your life. Things like Internet addiction only account for one half of that. I think that if the statement "you can be addicted to anything" can be true then either the definition of addiction your using is too broad or it needs redefining.
> Summary
>
> People commonly debate whether social and mental
> conditions are real diseases. This masquerades as a
> medical question, but its implications are mainly social
> and ethical. We use the concept of disease to decide who
> gets sympathy, who gets blame, and who gets treatment.
>
> Instead of continuing the fruitless "disease" argument,
> we should address these questions directly. Taking a
> determinist consequentialist position allows us to do so
> more effectively. We should blame and stigmatize people
> for conditions where blame and stigma are the most useful
> methods for curing or preventing the condition, and we
> should allow patients to seek treatment whenever it is
> available and effective.
The word "addiction" is usually used for things that fulfill either of those two criteria. That's why you typically talk about physiological dependence or psychological dependence if you're actually treating it.
How about my dependence on air to breath and food to eat? I think you also need to add the requirement that the dependence is not common, and causes problems for the person that fall outside the norm.
Those are innate dependencies, and almost all definitions of a dependence disorder include that the dependence must cause social, occupational, or recreational issues.
Check out the DSM4 criteria for substance dependence[1], but note that it has been phased out in the DSM5. They merged it with substance abuse to form "Substance Use Disorder."
well, few minutes ago switched into the browser out from the VNC console of my Linux workstation (where i was doing something productive for almost 20 minutes) to check something on the wiki... i'm still to reach that wiki page tab :)
Concepts are mental activities that identify disparate concretes by ignoring some aspects of their differences. As such, we can unify pretty much anything under a concept. The question is never "is this abstract thing really real for reals?" It is: "Does this way of grouping things give us any useful way of dealing with the underlying reality?"
Debates about whether the constellation of phenomena that get united under a named concept constitute a "real thing" are almost always undertaken in more-or-less willful ignorance of this fact. The very way of posing the question--"Is this real?"--obscures the actually interesting and important question: "Is this useful?"
Addiction is a fairly well-defined and useful category of pathology. People who are addicted to something have similar symptoms and issues, and treatment of addiction can be usefully studied across groups of addicts, so what is learned about people with alcohol addictions may be useful to people with heroin addictions and so on (or not: simply because two things are grouped under the same concept for a given purpose does not mean they are usefully identical for all purposes, as anyone who has handled a sail boat and a row boat--both members of the abstract category "boat"--knows.)
No concept has perfectly crisp edges, and on the borders there are plenty of cases that one person would count as "in" while another would count as "out". If enough such cases start accumulating and impede communication and thought, we create new interstitial concepts. In the case of "Internet addiction" the interesting question is, "Is this enough like other addictions to group it usefully under the came concept, or do we need something intermediate or possibly orthogonal to usefully categorize it?"