Internet Addiction?

An article in today's Washington Post (Caught in the Web) outlines in some detail the current "hue and cry" over the idea of Internet addiction. In fact, the American Psychiatric Association is considering listing "Internet Addiction" as a actual condition -- something anyone could be diagnosed with.

Give me a break. While I completely agree that some people use the Internet inappropriately, this is like saying that anything we spend too much time doing can be a "disease." How about a "hanging out at Starbucks" addiction? Or maybe a "reading too many books" addiction?

The key problem here is that some people use the Internet excessively at the cost of other things. As Maressa Hecht Orzack at Harvard puts it, excessive Internet use should be considered in the context of losses. In other words, are important things suffering (like your relationship with your spouse, you ability to pay your bills, or even your personal hygiene) because you spend so much time in chat rooms, playing video games or surfing? The article quotes a "sufferer" as saying "I am self-employed and need the Internet for my work, but am failing to accomplish my work, to take care of my home, to give attention to my children..." Her reason was that she spent too much time surfing, shopping and updating her profile on online dating sites.

But what that really sounds like is just regular, plain old poor time management. Sometimes people become so obsessed with the things they choose to engage in that they forget the necessities. To me this is less about the tool that they use to engage (the Internet, books or hanging out at Starbucks) and more about why they can't break away from it to focus on critical aspects of their lives.

The important thing to bear in mind is that using the Internet a great deal is not INHERENTLY bad. Many critics would argue that spending time with a computer as opposed to people is always the wrong choice. In fact, spending time with people through the computer can often be a positive choice, as is using the computer to focus your attention on other things you care about, like interesting content or entertaining games. It's when you make bad choices about what should happen at a given time (i.e., you choose to spend time playing World of Warcraft instead of finishing a paper) that the real problems begin. And believe me, those kinds of bad choices have been made since the beginning of time.