Rehab
Yesterday I started teaching a new module called Psychology of Internet Behaviour to 3rd year students in the various Digital Media programmes at the School of Arts and New Media on the University of Hull's Scarborough Campus. One of the topics I'm exploring with the students is Internet addiction. I don't believe there's such a thing as Internet addiction in as much as there's no such thing as addiction to social interaction or entertainment or knowledge sharing. We'll see what the students make of this in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, through Sabine Cassar Alpert's blog I came across this:
78%
Go figure!
posted by Toni Sant at 9:53 AM
Oh boy, you sure are in denial! :P
I don't think internet addiction refers to an addiction to social interaction in its broadest sense. There are real problems of addiction with gaming/rpg, chatrooms, messageboards... it's a different type of 'social' interaction - you cannot really compare it to regularly having coffee with your real, live, friends that you actually know (which would be an example of social interaction). Especially when you become so engrossed in net life and move into a new reality. I honestly wouldn't downplay the real issues of internet addiction - because there are many cases when professional intervention is required.
Thanks for the comments Sabine and Athena. I can see that the debate on Internet addiction is of broader interest than I originally thought. So, I'll be blogging more about it in the coming weeks.
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