After watching the PBS Dateline documentary, “Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier,” and witnessing the growing issue of Internet addiction in China, I thought it would be interesting to see what programs and information were available for this addiction in America. Before this documentary I never really considered Internet addiction a serious problem, but after observing the amount of time my friends and I spend on the Internet, it does consume a large amount of time.
I found an article on “Psychology Today” titled “Do you have a digital addiction?” which addresses the issues of digital addiction first acknowledging the problem facing China and now considering the problem Americans share with them. This article is short and addresses the fact that before digital technology people would have to manually compose things such as letters when today in a matter of minutes, we can email anyone, with the same amount of satisfaction that we would receive from the old school version.
There is a link to another site, “Restart: Internet Addiction Recovery Program,” where anyone can participate in a survey to figure out whether or not they are addicted to the digital technology. After completing the survey, I am happy to find out that I am not addicted to digital devices but I also do not think that I could necessarily live without, quit cold turkey. “Restart” is also a site for information and help for those struggling with the addiction.
Even though having an addiction is hard to admit to, it is interesting to take a step back and really look at our lives without technology. Could we just take an afternoon off without checking our smart phones, emails, and laptops? It isn’t a bad idea to leave the phones and laptops at home and take an afternoon to absorb life without digital technology.
Links to both of these websites are available below.
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The links did not appear above so I re-posted them here.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-power-slow/200911/do-you-have-digitial-addiction
http://www.netaddictionrecovery.com/
I thought that the links are really interesting! It seems to be really scary that this is some new trend that is here to stay. I understand that individuals love computers (because it is such a great tool). However, it poses ver serious risks to adolescents. It is strange that critics of the Internet say it is dangerous due to the likes of pornography, security threats, etc. Nobody ever considers that the Internet in and of itself is an addiction. Perhaps they are too afraid to admit that their worse fears have come true?
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