Some would argue that one can become “addicted” to the Internet. I’ve argued for over a decade this is a fairly ridiculous assertion that doesn’t even withstand a simple test of logic. Because if we can become addicted to the pipes that bring us information and friendship, it stands to reason one can become “addicted” to virtually anything in the world — sex, cake, shopping, TV, reading, the Internet, even friendship itself. Where do we draw the line and how? Why single out Internet use as its own disorder, but not someone who can’t be pried from in front of the TV 30 hours a week? Or from reading a book?
I’m certainly not alone noting how the term “Internet addiction” helps sells newspapers more than it helps us understand human behavior. And certainly I write about the latest rounds of research every year that call into question “Internet addiction” for various reasons.
For instance, did you know that despite the fact that dozens of studies have been done on “Internet addiction,” few studies have been done examining the scales used to measure this phenomenon? One that was published last year found that a commonly used scale in early Internet addiction research was basically useless and invalid (invalidating any research that used it). And there has been only one independent study done on the psychometric properties of the “new and improved” 20-item Internet Addiction Test (IAT) used by virtually all other researchers. Five years ago. The researchers who did the study — Widyanto & McMurran (2004) — called for more studies to be done, as its sample size was small, self-selected (not randomized) and therefore their results could hardly be classified as “conclusive:”
[The IAT’s] reliability and validity need to be further tested using a larger sample. Once a valid and reliable measure has been devised, more can then be researchers about the nature of Internet addiction.
Despite the fact that nobody has done that followup research yet (at least for U.S. populations), it hasn’t stopped researchers from using the IAT anyways.
So I was glad to read Vaughan Bell’s entry in Slate yesterday, as he makes sensible points about why it’s bad to medicalize every behavior we engage in a bit too much:
This creeping medicalization of everyday life means that almost any problem of excess can now be portrayed as an individual falling foul of a major mental illness. While drug addiction is a serious concern and a well-researched condition, many of the new behavioral addictions lack even the most basic foundations of scientific reliability. In light of Tiger Woods’ extramarital trysts, “sex addiction” has been widely touted by the global media despite the fact it lacks official recognition and scientific support. Perhaps the most widely publicized of these new diagnoses, Internet addiction, is flawed even on its own terms: A 2009 study published in the journal CyberPsychology and Behavior revealed that it has been classified in numerous, inconsistent ways in published research. Most studies of the “disorder” rely on self-selecting samples of college computer users and are otherwise subject to significant bias.
Despite the scientific implausibility of the same disease — addiction — underlying both damaging heroin use and overenthusiasm for World of Warcraft, the concept has run wild in the popular imagination. Our enthusiasm for labeling new forms of addictions seems to have arisen from a perfect storm of pop medicine, pseudo-neuroscience, and misplaced sympathy for the miserable.
The full article is worth your time if you’re interested in this topic.
Read the full article: Can you really be “addicted” to shopping or using the Internet?.
27 comments
I’m in agreement with this point of view. “Internet addiction” is way too unspecific to mean much – people can use the internet addiction for anything.
As far as I’m aware people can develop an unhealthy obsession/ addiction to on-line gaming. But using the world “addiction” too losely doesn’t help to clarify.
KISS= Keep It Simple Stupid. Obsessive,Compulsive behavior. PERIOD!
addiction is a behavioral disorder.
suggesting that anyone believes individuals are ‘addicted to the pipes of information’ in order to make your somewhat valid point is disingenuous reductionism that undermines your basic point.
people under stress engage in all sorts of obsessive compulsive behavior. the fact that the internet is ubiquitous in the lives of most people here means that one can in a moment of weakness and alone, act on impulses to gamble, shop, stay up all night and chat with strangers, or pay to watch strangers perform physically in front of you, order food, trade stocks etc.
if there are specific remedies to the ocd problem within the context of the ubiquitous intimacy of the internet, why can’t those treatments be associated with their own designation even if the ensuant problems can be described in a generalized way?
here’s an example:
my mother is 78 and in the beginning stages of slight senile dementia. she believes she has most of her faculties. but i do not doubt the day will come when she wipes out her life savings in the stock market on the internet and will not remember. an octogenarian could not do this ten years ago. it’s a new problem. it will require specialized trewatments when the larger community understands what’s happening in a few years.
a specific Dx might be overblown but ir is useful. why do we associate alcohol addiction with drinking when a general diagnosis might be more truthful? we all know about the personality types who substitute smoking for drugs etc.. one addiction for another..
i think it is both pragmatic and effective to cure specific problems with particular treatments without regard to the generalized suffering people go through.
therefore i am less likely to view the term of art ‘internet addiction’ with the same level of condescension that a very intelligent and otherwise helpful dotcom visionary might wish to parenthesize it. and it is no surprise that a dotcom magazine like slate will share your attitude but i don’t think this will bolster the force of your predicate either.
I love how the same commentors bring up the same straw man argument over and over again — that since I make a living from the Internet, I can’t possibly be objective about this.
So I’m sorry, can you please explain what Vaughan Bell’s or Ronald Pies’ inherent bias is that made them write these articles to begin with?
You can shoot the messenger all you want, but it won’t change the evidence.
“my mother is 78 and in the beginning stages of slight senile dementia. she believes she has most of her faculties. but i do not doubt the day will come when she wipes out her life savings in the stock market on the internet and will not remember. an octogenarian could not do this ten years ago. it’s a new problem. it will require specialized trewatments when the larger community understands what’s happening in a few years.”
This has nothing to do with ‘addiction’ as defined by anyone. It is to do with informed consent to financial interactions and mental capacity.
‘Internet addiction’ is vaugely irritating as it purports to give scientific and diagnostic credence to the observation that some people spend rather more time on the internet than they consider healthy. There is no evidence of such an ‘addiction’ in the same way that there is in relation to drugs or alcohol (although even there the term is open to debate and discussion).
To argue that it’s fine to use the term because the problem is with a specific behaviour that a person wants remedied seems reasonable enough (provided we’re all agreed that we’re not going to take it too seriously), but even this I would question.
In my view the problem faced by people who spend too much time on the internet is that they have too little else going on in their life that is of interest to them, so why don’t we talk of “Serious deficiency of interesting life-activities other than internet use disorder”? Only that would sound a little bit ridiculous wouldn’t it?
The argument isn’t that people who spend most of their free time on the internet mightn’t have a problem of some description. The issue is one of how we go about trying to understand and discuss it.
@ adam: thank you for thinking seriously about what i wrote.
I agree there is a ‘mental capacity’ issue here. but there is a mental capacity issue to all addictive compulsive behavior so why are you drawing a distinction which is perhaps arbitrary?
a point i was attempting to make about the internet is its accessibility and ubiquity within the context of larger mental health issues and this requires specialized response. i am sorry i failed to do that. explicitly, the octogenarian who cannot leave the house needed to interact with someone to trade stocks and could not divest herself without observation until recently.
I’m glad that you feel I thought seriously about your posting – you’re welcome.
My point was that while you had a very valid concern if your mother is in danger of blowing all her savings through on-line interactions that she doesn’t really understand, this has nothing to do with the topic under discussion.
From what I can gather your argument doesn’t so much disagree with what Dr John has said so much as pass it by in the night. He wasn’t suggesting that internet use isn’t something that we should be concerned about and interested in – that’s pretty much his specialist field from what I can gather.
The point being made in the article is very limited and very specific. It is just simply that the term ‘internet addiction’ may not be a very apt or accurate one. It is NOT that internet use isn’t something that we should be concerned about or interested in. It is NOT that a person’s internet use mightn’t be harmful to them.
The problem with ‘internet addiction’ is that it contains a whole series of implicit assumptions that circumvent a meaningful discussion of the nature of the problems under discussion.
Doing away with the term allows for a more objective, reflective, and open-ended consideration of the problems people feel they may have with respect to their internet use.
I’m glad you think that – you’re welcome.
The issues you describe with respect to your mother has got to be a cause for concern, but this is something else.
From what I can gather your arguments don’t so much disagree with the point that Dr John is making so much as pass it by in the night.
The point made in the article is very limited and very specific. It is NOT that we shouldn’t be interested or concerned about people’s use of the internet. It is NOT that people can’t possibly have problems with respect to their use of the internet. It is just simply that the term ‘internet addiction’ is not a helpful way of describing them.
The problem with ‘internet addiction’ is that it contains a whole series of implicit assumptions that circumvent a meaningful discussion of the nature of these problem.
Doing away with the term is not meant to be a way of doing away with the discussion. Quite the opposite – it is a prelude to a more objective, meaningful, and open-ended discussion of the problem in which we all unwarrented assumptions and try to work out what is really going on for people and how it can be delt with.
@Adam: Agreed. The term “addiction” has gone from being a clinical/medical term to one very much related to moral panics about consumptive behaviour of traditionally “at-risk” groups like children (as gamers are usually and simplistically characterised as being). The use of such terminology and exnomination of other behaviours which might be considered addictive (say, as Dr John does, TV-watching) is the problem, not the idea of addiction itself.
As Dr John suggests, the naming of something can indeed be as important (or even more so) than the something itself (read some of Barthes or Foucault if you’re sceptical). Of course we can’t avoid the connotations that come with naming, but we can at least strive to look at the issues around the internet in a more logical, open way. Reductivist arguments about children-at-risk and folk-devils don’t usually end up anywhere constructive.
While sex addiction has been around long before the internet was invented, I believe the net makes it much easier to become a sex/love addict.
This is just my opinion, so I’m not stating this as fact. One can remain anonymous and reinvent ones own identity online to develop relationships with others, which provides a different outlet and capacity for compulsions. (as opposed to gambling, drugs, alcohol, spending $, etc.).
A person predisposed to relationship issues, someone with social anxiety, a healthy person?, or even just someone who is lonely can become a fantasy person online, using pictures of another, such as that of a fashion model, to become anyone they want. The appeal of being anonymous and geographically distanced, and the ability to become someone you are not is a lot different than dating where you obviously can lie, but can’t completely reinvent yourself such as your height, looks, body, career etc (yes, they would eventually find out you are not the owner of a diamond company when they run into you with your Walmart uniform on).
I think the fantasy element-especially with those who are vulnerable with low self esteem or other self issues does differentiate internet based addictions from others. And it’s just easier to get hooked – It was never so convenient to access porn before because people used to have to go to a porn shop to rent movies, but now it is so easy to just click a button and get it online in the privacy of your own home.
More extreme material such as child porn that may have been difficult to come by before is now available to those who may have not even sought the stuff before but now can just by clicking a button. With sex addiction, needs often escalate, requiring more and more extreme stuff. An addict would risk being caught doing that outside of the virtual world, but the temptation may be more difficult to refuse if the addict thinks they will not likely be caught while acting out in the privacy of their own home.
Also new is virtual sex where you can interact with a male or female sex object.
Without these changes in technology/society, who knows if less people would have become sex addicts? It seems these changes could make it easier to become a sex addict, and I am only stating some possibilities…but singling out internet addiction? It seems so obvious when you think about it.
Dr. Patrick Carnes’ illustrates the relationship between the internet and (no one is saying causes) sexual addiction in his book:
http://www.amazon.com/Shadows-Net-Breaking-Compulsive-Behavior/dp/1592854788/ref=pd_sim_b_4
I also once knew someone who became an internet love/sex addict. He would have never have been able to maintain the numerous relationships with these dozens of women (many lonely, vulnerable) in real life as he could by using the internet to cultivate his false image. Maybe research studies will one day be designed appropriately and this reality so many of us know will be captured.
There is a social context, like with smoking. Years ago, when cigarettes were cheap and fashionable among movie stars or the wealthy, more people became addicted. Now that smoking is looked down upon, and the price keeps going up, less people are addicted. And people once did not see a link between smoking and ill (physical) health. Notice any similarities here?
Do you think all the former smokers where just people who would have been gamblers and shop-a-holics had it not been for the invention of mass produced and cheap cigarettes, along with widespread advertising? Maybe, maybe not. Or do you think the difference in the number of people who don’t smoke cigarettes today and those who currently smoke represents the same proportion of the population who would currently have other addictions, manifestations of compulsive behavior? Do all ex smokers have other compulsions now?
People experience a high from internet activity, and people experience a high from smoking. There are regulations and remedies specific to smoking cessation. Even AA is differentiated from NA, though based on a similar foundation. I guess I just don’t see why internet addiction shouldn’t have its own “category” as well.
The reason we don’t believe that ‘internet addiction’ is unhelpful is because it implies a specific indentifiable addiction disorder that probably doesn’t exist as a phenomena seperate from other things, such as a lack of interest in other things.
Your previous points seek to demonstrate that since smoking can be separated from other problems, and since there is no evidence that people substitute smoking for other compulisve behaviour it deserves its own designation. (Well, I think there is some evidence that people can substitute smoking for over eating but this is a side-point.)
The best undestanding of nicotine addiction that I’ve come across is given by Allen Carr in “The Only Way to Stop Smoking Permanently.” It is an excellent exposition on the nature of addiction.
‘Addiction’ as defined by Carr, is where we come to develop a sense of dependence on a substance such as nicotine, alcohol, heroin, or other druges, in the illusory belief that they are providing us with a crutch and a support when in reality they are causing us nothing but harm. It is a dangerous trap (as we know) based on a fatal combination of psychological and physiological (and sometimes social) factors.
There is some sense in ‘addiction’ used in this limited sense, as there are clear parallels between the addiction processs involved in smoking, drinking, and drug use, as well as differences; and we can actually gain in insight and understanding from a comparison of the similarities and differences between them.
The term ‘internet addiction’ implicitly assumes that the model applies to this activity with equal force, but it just doesn’t. The differences between internet use and compulisve drug use are SO great that the comparison does more to obscure than to clarify.
What is being claimed is that the problems and issues surrounding internet use, or excessive internet use, are better approached without the designation ‘internet addiction.’
The double negative in the first sentence of the above post was a mistake – I meant to say “the reason we don’t believe ‘internet addiction’ is helpful…”
I understand addictions are not usually about the substance itself, but I do see differences in the nature of internet vs. other addictions and I do see a different treatment protocol. Just as food addiction calls for different treatment venues (one cannot eliminate food from their lives) many people must use the internet in their daily lives and thus the addiction needs to be treated differently.
Alcohol can be almost totally avoided by someone in recovery – a person can refrain from buying it and going to bars, refrain from hanging out with people who drink while they deal with the source of the addiction. How do you deal with internet addiction when you must use the internet for work and personal businesses?
I definitely know and have known people who are only addicted to one ‘thing’, and the elmination of one compulsion does not necessarily transform to another addiction.
The point that people can overeat after smoking cesassation is a valid one, but I just cannot believe that most ex smokers have other pathological compulsions. If cigarettes never existed, would people seek to dry other plants and smoke them? If cigarettes never existed, I don’t believe the addiction would exist. Just because research does not or cannot prove this does not mean it is not true.
The creation of new things requires new treatments. If the internet did not exist, people would not have the addiction. the internet adds elements to social relationships that did not exist before. People can transform themselves to live in a fantasy world either through gaming or reinventing their identity to become someone who they are not. While perhaps this behavior fills a void within, there were never such means to fill this void before.
People use drinking, drugs etc to avoid feeling or whatever, maybe an escape, much like the internet can fill a void or offer an escape from reality. I think, however, people never had such tools to fill a void in the manner in which the internet allows, and I wonder if it cultivates a new void in people-because perhaps people would never have known this element of human nature existed had they not had the opportunity to actively immerse themselves in a total fantasy world before via the internet.
Elements of addictions with social interactions and the ability to recreate one’s identity are much different than addictions involving reading books and watching television-passive activities. I don’t understand why Dr. Grohol keeps designating these outlets as one and the same. Maybe those in the fields of sociology or anthropology can see this more clearly than psychologists do?
Addiction to the internet calls for different methods of treatment, and I think it is more helpful than not to differentiate it from other addictions and that much research needs to be done. Delineating internet addiction from other addictions will also encourage such research.
i am enjoying this thread. and i will stipulate that the point i was making is not a direct refutation of ‘the pretext’ of docJohn’s remarks. but there’s more to be said.
first the taxonomy issue. if you must differentiate between gambling addictions expressed over the internet and promiscuity expressed over the internet from ‘internet addiction,’ you might be raising a valid point. i disagree with that point because of my own presumptions about treating the specifics of the situation with regard to immediate computer use. but i must defer to experts which you are and i am not.
the second issue is numinosity. naming something gives it a magical power which can invoke a response. you don’t want to name ‘internet addiction’ because the connotations are misleading or unsavory in reference to the healthy behavior of others being misrepresented. this has a taxonomy subtext also since too much of any behavior has obssessive aspects.
as an aside about smoking: i was a teenager during the 1970’s and drug education was part of the junior high school curriculum. every single public speaker who came to us as a reformed addict smoked. they smoked right in front of us in the social studies class room. correctly or not, we were taught to believe that one behavior was a surrogate for another.
Does this reflect on the fact that there is presently no literature about chemical dependencies in internet addiction?:
well perhaps there is some sort of serotonin rush involved with the gambling etc. but i believe the problems will have vast economic consequences before insurance forces medicine’s hand in making this official. and as our usa population ages, this is as much a certainty to me now as global warming was to a few a dozen years ago.
i need to sum up my point more cogently. here’s an analog in psychopharmacology:
anti-depressants sometimes lead to suicide. the mechanism involved is that the medicine lifts and energizes a depressed and suicidal person before the illness has been diminished. the medicine might therefore enable a suicide which might not have happened without treatment because the suffering person was incapable of executing the ensuing tragedy. even the best anti-depressants take at least two or three weeks to work right and patients need some level of monitoring to keep them out of trouble, however slight.
an anti-depressant is not a disease but a useful thing. like an anti-depressant, the internet can magnify our abilities beyond our capacity to deal with them if there is an underlying disorder.
This one seems to be running and running!
I can understand and accept ‘internet addiction’ as a purely descriptive term, and no one has the right to ban it as such. However, I agree with Dr John’s questioning of its validity:
1) Because it implies that it is a single identifiable phenomena, when it seems obvious to me that it can’t possibly be when there are so many different uses to which someone can put internet use. Their differences are greater than their similaries, it seems to me, and so it is better to describe each in turn rather than subsume them all under the same term.
2) Because it implies that excessive internet use follows the model of addiction as originally applied (I presume) to such things as alcohol and drugs. I very much doubt the idea that excessive internet use does follow this model, although I can see how it might be seen to looked at from a superficial behavioural point of view.
As I suggested in earlier posts, ‘excessive’ internet use could merely be a sympton of having nothing better to do with one’s life. In which case perhaps we should be speaking of “Severe Deficiency of Interesting Life Activities Other than Internet-use Disorder” or SDILAOID for short. What do you think…..?
Do you get the point? The use of both ‘internet addiction’ or my preferred SDILAOID make presumptions and claims that some of us may question, and thereby close down an aspect of the discussion before it has started.
People have every right to refer to ‘internet addiction’ if they so wish, but Dr John, myself, and others also have the right to question the usefulness and/or validity of this term, (unless it is used, explicitly, as nothing more than a descriptive term for someone who thinks they are using the internet too much, although in this case it would be better to describe them as “someone who thinks they are using the internet too much.”)
Note: I would conceed that the presence of so many other ‘addictions’ muddies the water of this discussion somewhat, and maybe makes an objection to ‘internet addiction’ seem somewhat arbitrary. I would have a questioning attitude towards some of the other ‘addictions’ also…. It is a big discussion.
The Slate article is also worth reading if you haven’t already done so:
http://www.slate.com/id/2239010/pagenum/all/
Hmm. I think I was seeing internet addiction much differently from you. I was not at all thinking of it in terms of excessive use or the number of hours one spends online. I was thinking about the person who is late for work, doesn’t take care of their children properly, loses their friends, and any other number of adverse affects due to one’s constant ‘need’ to do whatever they do online/their inability to stop using the internet.
The concern is not necessarily how much time a person spends online. It’s more related to someone who is ruining their life because of their addiction to the internet, like the person in denial, or the person who wants to spend less time online to live their life functionally (not miss work, tend to their children, etc) but cannot stop being online…When their addiction to the internet leads to the internet becoming their priority over taking care of themselves and their children-things like that.
I find Stanton Peele’s perspective on this to be quite interesting. He is a rather unconventional expert on addiction, and his piece “Will Sex Addiction Be in DSM-V?” (http://www.peele.net/blog/091213.html) is well worth considering. As Peele points out, “addiction” doesn’t even appear in the DSM IV, so until that term is properly considered, arguments over what things people can be “addicted to” will simply go in circles.
I recommend reading Peele’s short piece (also posted on Peele’s “Addiction in Society” blog at PsychologyToday.com) in full, but here are a few quotes:
“The fight over the new psychiatric manual, DSM-V, has escalated. The conflict is due to an underlying flaw in the manual’s conception. Rather than tracing human activity in terms of its impact for people’s lives, it instead attempts to list each separate manifestation of abnormal functioning. This is madness.”
“The problem is not in identifying too many debilitating preoccupations as mental disorders. It is in listing the objects of people’s preoccupations in separate sections of the diagnostic manual.”
“In fact, the DSM-IV substance use section lists a range of problems people may incur through drug-taking and drinking. But what such an approach implicitly recognizes – that drug use and alcohol are themselves not inherently problematic – undercuts the validity of having a separate section designating only substance use disorders.”
“DSM-V can only make sense if it (1) specifies addictions and other problems in terms of the severity of the life disruptions they cause (e.g., schizophrenia not defined by hallucinations, or obsessive compulsive disorder by specific preoccupations), (2) conceives disorders not as traits but as conditions or experiences that vary depending on people’s life stages and situations.”
“Unfortunately people who advocate for these ‘illnesses’ [i.e. sex and internet addiction] – and psychiatry’s diagnostic manual – insist on each condition being separated into its own domain. The very act of designating specific disorders creates a sense that people are defined by their conditions and that they may never escape them. It also leads to an infinite expansion of such conditions.”
“Categorizing psychological problems in terms of the severity of their consequences has the potential to cut the size and shape of the manual drastically. If DSM-V insists on listing each specific manifestation of dysfunctional behavior and thought, then the kind of turf fights we are witnessing for each disorder are inevitable.
And DSM-V will start looking like the Oxford English Dictionary in its inclusiveness – and size.”
Bob D., thanks for the link and quotes. I’m not a clinician, so of course I see things differently. I’m just an analyzer and information junkie, and a person interested in optimizing social capital (not in the same context as Putnam).
As a patient in the system for 10 plus years, I personally think the whole diagnosis concept is flawed to begin with, and the whole thing needs changed. Maybe a Meyers Briggs type of classification system would better reflect reality-just throwing that out there for an example. Not something I thought through, just trying to illustrate a point that maybe the structure itself, the system, the foundation-could be better.
The narrowness of so-called disorders has many implications that are easily seen and can be rightly debated. But instead of debating the micro concepts involved, let’s look at the big picture from another angle…
Maybe someone, or a group of the extroadinarily bright and insightful will come up with a new system. Some things are better left unchanged, but some things can improve with change.
I think part of the problem is that the DSM was originally designed based upon old theory that has changed over the years? It keeps adapting as new theory is synthesized or validated, and I cannot see how this could be avoided. However, perhaps it should just be redone from scratch, rather than revised.
Consider a task force of people from all different disciplines – psychiatry, psychology, sociology, anthropology, computer scientists, political scientists, mathematicians, etc. and of course the mentally ill. The best and brightest from around the world, educated, creative, introspective, innovative. Social entreprenuers included! Anti-group think is where I’m getting at….
Maybe it isn’t traits; maybe it isn’t maladaptive behavior, maybe it isn’t a persons ability to function. The possibilities are there but perhaps unknown-maybe could be better designed in a manner from a concept completely undiscovered. It could be art, it could be science, it could be a mixture. Maybe it could be none of the above.
Overall, I think it would be interesting to have an open internet site that allows everyone and anyone to come up with ideas and see how it goes from there. You really never know what could be obtained from a collusion of so many different types of thinkers, or how the input of creativity could output a whole new system that better reflects reality.
What do you all think about that idea? It would not be expected the results of the collusion would be adopted, it would just explore the possibilities that are not being explored. Group think, imo, affects our society more than its credited for. Let’s create an open forum and see what transpires! There would be no risk in doing this – no one would have anything to lose, except maybe some personal narcissistic motivations, and alot could be gained.
“When their addiction to the internet leads to the internet becoming their priority over taking care of themselves and their children-things like that.”
iaid – I’d certainly agree that this is a very serious problem that needs to be understood and dealt with. However, the fact that there is no common understanding between us as to what ‘internet addiction’ demonstrates one of the problems of the term.
“As Peele points out, “addiction†doesn’t even appear in the DSM IV, so until that term is properly considered, arguments over what things people can be “addicted to†will simply go in circles.”
Bob. D – thanks for that point, that is the other one.
i don’t want to digress about peele. he has some valid points but he is wrong about dsm because the dsm is a taxonomy and he seems to resent that on principle. it makes his critique of the specificities of a taxonomy irrelevant.
if i understand your quotes of peele correctly, he wants to subordinate diagnosis to an evaluation of foundational severity, which seems subjective and cultural– perhaps even theological.
“Internet Addiction” is a good term which everyone can understand, so why bother arguing about it?
I understand your point of view, but can’t you get addicted to anything that gives you pleasure?
sports are addicting too, and they are bad for your joints. SO in reality, sports are worse for you than drugs.
Interesting view from Dr. Marty Klein who says that sex addiction is a myth.
http://www.sexed.org/newsletters/issue01.html#myth
Comments are closed.