Jason Hasselkus

How many times have you heard of someone having an addiction problem? Usually we hear about people either having a drug or alcohol problem but rarely do we ever hear about someone having an Internet addiction problem. After reading an article on Yahoo, I decided to take my chances at the Net Addiction test to see where I rated. Fortunate for me I don’t seem to have an addiction problem, but what is interesting is the signs of addiction. Notice how some of these signs don’t seem to differ too much from your alcohol and drug related addictions.
Common signs include:

• Lying about how much time is spent online.
• General decrease of physical activity and social life.
• Neglecting obligations at home, work, or school to spend time online.
• Spending too much money on computer equipment or Internet activities.
• Feeling a constant desire to be online when they’re away from the computer.
• Going online to escape real world problems.
• Disregarding the emotional or physical consequences of being in front of a computer all day.
• Denial of the problem.

So is this type of addiction a real problem? I would probably have to say YES. The problem with the Internet is that it leads to so many worse things. Take a look at myspace for example. The people that put their profiles online are basically looking for trouble. Do really want the world to be able to know that much about you? The average age of the myspace person is between 16 and 23, which means as you get older you realize that meeting people on the internet is just plain scary. Not that it can’t turn out in a good way, but I’d be willing to bet, more times than not it doesn’t end up being what you expected. Would I rather have an internet addiction than a drug addiction, hell yes. Although both are harmful to your body, at least with an internet addiction you can just turn the stuff off and it goes away. With a drug addiction it’s much harder to fight against it. In looking at it, a work-a-holic is probably just as bad, or a chronic liar. In all I guess as we advance in technology we just create new problems for the shrinks to help us figure out. With today’s society I guess I really missed out by not getting my degree in psychotherapy.