Are we facing cyber addiction?

Ordinary morning: on the way to work, you have already checked your mail on your mobile and answered the most important messages. And as soon as you get to the workplace, you start parsing official correspondence and quickly deal with dozens of emails that have accumulated overnight in your mailbox. In the eyes of colleagues and superiors, you are the most valuable employee. But at the same time, you risk earning a reputation as a workaholic …

Are you familiar with the following symptoms? You check your work inbox on the weekends, even if you don’t have to; at any time instantly respond to received sms; panic if you forget your laptop charger at home or find yourself without access to the Internet; visit Facebook ten times a day, viewing not only your page, but also your friends’ feeds; in the midst of a family holiday, you are looking for somewhere to retire with your laptop or smartphone … Our relationship with digital technology sometimes becomes compulsive, turns into an obsession, an escape from reality, and, therefore, into a painful addiction.

This addiction is encouraged by society

Cyber ​​addiction (a code name for dependence on various kinds of high-tech means), according to psychotherapist Michel Hautefeuille, is similar in manifestations to a serious form of drug addiction or alcoholism. This is the inability to resist attraction, and the growing tension from the inability to perform an action, and instant relief when moving to it … It turns out that the Internet can affect us like a hard drug? Not at all, the psychotherapist reassures: “A real computer addict has his whole life subordinated to one thing – a computer, and compared to millions of ordinary users, there are few such people. However, cyber addiction is a real phenomenon, which, unfortunately, often causes not anxiety, but simply a smile on the part of those around you. Many of us do not find anything reprehensible in the fact that a person can spend 15-18 hours a day at a computer screen, including on weekends and vacations, at work or play. And yet it does him the same harm as other forms of addiction. We only recognize this only when this hitherto latent, imperceptible suffering makes itself felt, leading to breakdowns, severe depression or aggressive behavior.

Maybe we are all potential computer geeks? After all, each of us, man or woman, teenager or adult, can fall into the Internet trap that suits his individual needs: shopping online on impulse; the need to talk and be heard; games; Sigmund Freud’s porn sites… There are different types of Internet addiction: information “bulimia” (the need to constantly be aware of events), games on online exchanges (day trading) and, of course, network games. “Any addiction is a reaction to a particular problem that a person cannot cope with,” notes Michel Otfey. “And the object of addiction first becomes its solution, and only then complications appear and it itself becomes a problem.” The first alarm signal that a person gives himself to a computer beyond measure usually comes from relatives: they complain that he literally “dropped out” of life. But, as a rule, this signal goes unnoticed. The line between effective, conscious use of digital technology and dependence on it is a thin one. What are the signs that the situation is getting out of control? How many hours spent at the computer would most consider to be above the norm? It is difficult even to imagine in a society that puts speed and increased activity above all else, behind which, the psychotherapist believes, hides the main fear of our era – the fear of boredom.

Read more:

• How smartphones affect us

To be free means to be able to say “stop” to yourself.

As in relation to various types of substance abuse, here we can talk about a person’s tendency to become addicted. “A patient came to our clinic, a former drug addict who, 20 years after getting rid of drug addiction, became a slave to online games. Since the real cause of his illness was not eliminated, he changed one form of addiction to another, says the psychotherapist. – It seems that the network is not so dangerous to health. But in fact, this is a real bomb for those who are prone to addiction, because the Internet contains a whole “bouquet” of its various objects (games, sex, chats, etc.) and can cause not one, but multiple addictions. In Russia, as well as throughout the world, the number of people with cyber addiction is constantly growing. These are simple statistics: with the spread of the phenomenon, the number of its victims increases proportionally. The trend of the Russian market is poker sites (online bets) and social games. To play them, you need to be a member of a social network (“VKontakte”, Facebook …). In many social games, the participant receives the more bonuses, the more his friends on the network install this game for themselves. Social games are also addictive because they need to be played after a certain period of time, otherwise the player will miss some stages of the game and become an outsider. Notifications that it is time to return to the game are sent to the mobile phone, so that its participant willy-nilly is constantly in the virtual playing field.

So, despite social and market pressures, we should be more vigilant in protecting the integrity of our freedom. In other words, do not lose the ease with which we can say “stop” to ourselves and select the “shutdown” command from the computer menu.

* Bulletin of Public Opinion, 2010, No. 4 (106).

** Based on the materials of the conference “Gaming Addiction: Myths and Reality”, which was held in Moscow in June 2006.

*** The survey was conducted by the Romir research holding in July 2008.

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