How Computer Addiction Works Obsessively checking e-mail. Playing online games for 12 hours or more at a time. Placing more value on chat-room friends than real friends. Neglecting family, work and even personal health and hygiene. These are all symptoms of a new form of addictionthat has surfaced only in recent years: computer addiction. Creating a single definition for computer addiction is difficult because the term actually covers a wide spectrum of addictions. Few people are literally addicted to a computer as a physical object.
They become addicted to activities performed on a computer, like instant messaging, viewing Internet pornography, playing video games, checking e-mail and reading news articles. These activities are collectively referred to as Computer Mediated Communication (CMC). Computer addiction focused on Internet use is often called Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD). The various types of computer addicts have different reasons for their habits. Obsessive chat room use or e-mailing might fill a void of loneliness, while excessive viewing of pornography might stem from relationship problems or childhood abuse.
The matter is further complicated by the fact that a computer is a useful tool. It’s not like heroin, for example — there are many legitimate reasons why someone might spend hours using a computer. Even if someone uses a computer extensively for purely recreational purposes, that doesn’t necessarily represent a real addiction any more than someone who spends hours working on a model train set, making quilts or gardening is “addicted” to those activities. Even the agreed-upon definition of addiction itself has evolved over the decades and remains a matter of debate in the medical community.
In fact, the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association do not currently consider computer addiction a valid diagnosis, a controversy we’ll discuss later. As a result of all these complications, any single definition of computer addiction is necessarily broad and a little vague. If the computer use is so pervasive that it interferes with other life activities, and if the user seems unable to stop using the computer to excess despite negative consequences, the problem might be a computer addiction. Computer Addiction Computer Addiction . rg began as a non-profit site in 2007. Since then we have assisted thousands to understand and break their computer addiction. While some consider online help a little like holding an AA meeting in a bar, we believe online is the most likely place to find, and offer support, to people with computer and internet addiction. Through offering understanding and support sufferers are able to transform their addiction from other sites to more productive ones, and then finally gain control over their lives. Browse our list of recommended cures for computer and internet addiction on the side menu.
It has many useful tricks and ideas to gaining control over your internet addiction – some may be better for your particular case than others. There are many ideas that have been suggested to us that many doctors and patients have found not to have worked, or have been found to be unhelpful. You will not find these referenced in the front guide. Such solutions may include, but are not limited to, automatic web ‘reminders’ and motivational updates, site blockers, and telling family and friends about your problem. Please come back to this site to find a full report about why these things do not work, and the ones outlined on the front-page do.
