internet addiction does not really exist
Is the behaviour that parents are concerned about real addiction?
Jordan Peterson a well-renowned clinical psychologist is one of the champions of the internet. He said if you have a fast enough phone you can then in your spare moments, like waiting for a bus, acquire a university education in one year by attending online university tutorials. You would obviously spend some time doing this but it would be easier than actually attending those same lectures at university and you don't have to be at university to do it. Since I heard that smart piece of advice I started listening to those who can inform me of things I do not know. I feel kind of transformed.
He said that young people can quickly become much more knowledgeable and prepared so is being on the internet something negative? After all, you can spend six hours in school and everything depends on the teacher. On the internet, you can pick the best.
One of the most important things I learned was to listen and ask but not constantly offer an opinion. With the type of lessons one can do with Peterson and others you can open up a great new world with the internet. But like the invention of TV, it might be used badly. Parents and adults spend hours watching TV just like the young spend on computers. There's very little difference. It is enough to hear most adults offer an opinion and you know it's directly from the TV and mostly hearsay. So I think there is little difference between the groups except that the young might be watching people like Peterson who is rarely on TV and if the young are watching something that tells them something important then the kids are in the driving seat. Adults will never be in the driving seat watching what is propaganda driven tv news or that in the newspaper. The thing is no one ever says to adults "Er I think you spend too much time in front of the T.V" as they do to the young on the internet.
You might think when was the last time I heard a pearl of wisdom from an adult? The answer might be never. But I can say that on rare occasions students have made me think with points of view that are not from the TV.
What parents are alarmed about is usually two things: the sheer amount of time their kids spend on screens, and their kids’ resistance to cutting back on that screen time. Getting them to put away their devices and come to dinner, engage in other activities, go outside, or do their homework (without also checking social media and streaming TV shows) seems to be an increasingly uphill battle.
Kids sometimes use the word “addiction” to describe their own behaviour, too. In a 2016 survey by Common Sense Media, half of the teenagers said they “feel” they’re addicted to their mobile device. Three-quarters of them said they felt compelled to immediately respond to texts, social media posts, and other notifications.
By calling it an addiction, parents are often communicating their concern that so much screen time is unhealthy, as well as their feeling that they’re powerless to stop it.
While the comparison to substance abuse is tempting, because devices are stimulating to the same reward centres of the brain, experts point out crucial differences.
“Addiction doesn’t really capture the behaviour we’re seeing,” says Dr Matthew Cruger, a neuropsychologist and the director of the Learning and Development Center at the Child Mind Insititute. “With addiction, you have a chemical that changes the way we respond, that leads us to be reliant on it for our level of functioning. That’s not what‘s happening here. We don’t develop higher levels of tolerance. We don’t need more and more screen time to be able to function.”
There is, technically, no such thing as the internet or phone addiction. Some in the psychiatric community have proposed a new disorder called internet gaming disorder, to recognize unhealthy patterns of game-playing. But to rise to the level of a disorder, Dr Anderson notes, the behaviour would be very extreme, and seriously impairing a child’s life.
They think it crowds out other age-appropriate activities, like socializing, sports, school work — even hygiene and sleep. “We would be looking at adolescents who are pushing everything else out of their lives,” explains Dr Anderson. “They are not having friendships, not engaging socially — at least offline — and they may be failing in school.”
Some parents may see addict-like behaviour, Dr Anderson adds, when kids get angry if they’re required to stop, insist on more and more screen time, spend a lot of offline time thinking about how and when they will get back online. But this kind of behaviour can be prompted by many pleasurable activities and doesn’t constitute an addiction. “More often than not, what I see are parents who are concerned about their teenager’s behaviour around screens use the word addiction when it doesn’t really fit.”
One reason to be cautious about using the term, he added, “is that we have a tendency right now within the zeitgeist to pathologize normal adolescent behaviour.”
The time teenagers typically spend on phones and other devices can be misleading as a measure of whether they are unhealthily engaged. That’s because many of the things kids do on those devices are age-appropriate activities that in the past have been done offline: socializing with peers, exploring personal interests, shopping, listening to music, doing schoolwork, watching movies or TV.
Texting and use of social media sites, for instance, have become important channels for adolescents connecting to others and being validated. Role-playing games allow kids to interact not only with friends but with people around the world. A 2016 report by Common Sense Media concluded: “What looks like excessive use and distraction is actually a reflection of new ways of maintaining peer relations and engaging in communities that are relevant to them.”
Is it masking a mental health disorder?
When a child seems unhealthily focused on video games, to the point of social isolation, the behaviour maybe, rather than addiction, a product of other mental health problems.
Dr Anderson reports that he finds himself saying to parents, “We understand your hypothesis that your kid is addicted to games, but it may be that he is socially anxious. It may be that he is depressed. It may be that he has a learning disorder.”
Dr Anderson recalls treating a 16-year-old whose mother was adamant that he was addicted to video games. “I was doing in-home sessions with him, and it was, indeed, very hard to get him off playing Call of Duty to even have the session. But what I realized very quickly was that he had both ADHD and depression, and he had been failing school for as long as he could remember.”
Call of Duty was actually a positive in his life, Dr Anderson said, “the only thing that provided solace, a sense of belonging. He had joined a crew of people who play Call of Duty and post YouTube videos of them playing.”
Once his ADHD and depression got appropriate treatment, he was able to cut back on Call of Duty and make offline friends. “He joined the football team at school. His grades improved,” said Dr Anderson. “In that sense, it was the treatment of ‘internet addiction’ through treatment of the actual underlying conditions.”
Problematic use
While experts say that parents should remain sceptical of the notion of addiction, they also argue that parents should be alert for potential negative fallout from screen use. Apps and games are designed to keep us engaged as much as possible, and it can be hard for children to exercise self-control when their impulse is to keep scrolling.
There is ample evidence that intense social media use is correlated with an increase in anxiety and depression as teenagers, especially girls, compare themselves unfavourably to their peers and worry about missing out.
Research shows that excessive gaming — spending two-thirds or more of free time — is correlated with negative mental health outcomes, including a higher incidence of anxiety, depression and substance use.
There is evidence that multitasking — using social media, texting, watching tv while doing homework — undermines cognitive functioning and decreases learning.
And, of course, experts note constant attention to devices comes at the cost of other activities that are ultimately more valuable, and developmentally important.
“Our brains are hardwired to like things that are novel and stimulating, and the phone captures that,” notes Dr Cruger. “It’s easier to engage in constantly checking your phone or playing a game than tasks that require more mental effort, though those are ultimately more rewarding for a lot of people.”
Why would you pick up a book if you’re stimulated by Instagram or Candy Crush, Dr Cruger asks. “You still retain the capacity to apply more mental effort to things but the opportunity is lost when you’re constantly superficially engaged.” But a book is only words put together on paper. You might read words on a computer. Like paper, it depends on what words.
“There are absolutely alarms to be sounded,” concludes Dr Anderson, “but the vast majority of kids are engaging in screen-related behaviour that may not be either pathological or damaging.”
The key, he notes, is to help parents set appropriate boundaries around screens, to understand what their kids are doing online, to feel confident that they are is engaging in the right developmental tasks — online or off.

1. Do you think adults waste their time watching TV just as much as students do online?
2. Is the internet a great chance to gain enormous amounts of knowledge?
3. Whats the difference in reading things on the internet as opposed to a book?
4. Why was Call of Duty was actually a positive ?
5.Kids sometimes use the word “addiction” to describe what?
6. Why is addiction the wrong word to use ?