[h2odragon]

There was a time when the impact of Novels (fiction books) on young women's health was a topic of hot debate. When this "Internet addiction" label got pasted onto the same old "be scared of the new fad" it coincided with Nancy's "Just Say No" campaign and sought tailwind from the term "addiction"; oddly just as "addiction by prescription" began its meteoric rise.

Nor should we forget all the Internet Sex Predators; small town sheriffs all over the country getting their rocks of role playing then busting their playmates when they need a news story. That movement drew some of the worst elements of our society into just exactly the positions of power we didn't need them to be. Many are still there, i think.

[Mezzie]

I remember when this article came out. I was 8 and definitely fit the criteria and have ever since, but for some reason it's not a 'problem' anymore since now everybody has internet access to the point where it becomes logistically difficult if you DON'T for whatever reason. Instead of "Mez is a weirdo who spends all of her time online", now it's "Oh, ask Mez [about whatever thing they heard online], she'll know what's going on."

Now the "problem" is TikTok/"the algorithm". Which, don't get me wrong, algorithmic discovery and content provision have issues, but a lot of the panic is non techy people just not understanding something new. I'm sure in 10 years we'll be panicking about something else.

[bumby]

All of that may be true, but it doesn’t necessarily negate the article claims of professional and social impairment. It just normalizes that behavior.

[Mezzie]

The claims are missing an important variable when trying to determine if a behavior is harmful: The social context of that behavior.

In the context of the 90s (and especially for adults), spending too much time online was, in some ways, an inherently anti-social act: You had to be physically tethered to the machine, often monopolizing the only other of long-distance communication available (the landline phone line) for the entire house, and, when people and households shared computers, it often meant others COULDN'T use the tool.

In 2021, none of that is true.

Also, there were certain cultural ideas about what types of 'socializing'/'friends' counted as well as what constituted 'normal' behavior.

It's entirely possible Internet addiction is real and this article is interesting as one of the first to mention such a thing, but the Internet and Web just hadn't been embedded into society well enough to be evaluated.

[bumby]

I think the context was described. The article lists 5 dimensions where adverse behavior was documented: academic, relationship, financial, occupational, and physical. While I think you may be right about the different socializing role of the internet 25 years later, I'm not sure that explains away the adverse affects across all those dimensions. For example, with online gambling becoming more of a norm now, that doesn't mean the adverse financial aspects are any less bad. Normalization of deviance doesn't equate to unharmful.

[Mezzie]

That's a fair point.

I think the difficulty here is that because we had no way of knowing there things were going back in 1996, they didn't ask the questions/gather the information we would need in order to do the apples-to-apples comparison we'd need between these behaviors and their harms in 1996 and in 2021.

They wouldn't think to consider physical isolation separately from internet use: Unless you were hauling your machine to LAN parties, being on a computer was physically isolating. Likewise, monitors and accessories are way better ergonomically now so spending 60 hours a week online now is probably LESS damaging than it used to be (but still damaging).

Also, some degree of these impairments is acceptable depending on the reason: Most people in the trades aren't doing well physically after decades, we just don't care because they bring value. How much of the 'worry' about their physical state is because they weren't destroying their bodies doing something that made $$?

I'd be curious if you (or anybody) knows if gambling IN GENERAL is better or worse than it was 30 years ago. If online gambling is more of a norm now, is that due to non-gamblers starting to gamble, or are the people who would've been at the casino every weekend just saving the gas?

We can't solve these issues unless we know if the internet is a symptom or the cause.

[bumby]

I don't know, but a quick search on Google Scholar seems to indicate that Internet gambling makes gambling worse for those who already have a predisposition for gambling problems. It seems to be more about availability, as "land-based" casinos mediate the Internet effect somewhat.

[whatroot8]

Maybe our past definitions of professional and social effort were arbitrary.

Point to a past social meme or industrial behavior that’s stood the test of time.

“Past worked like X so future must too.” is not a reasonable or rational position to hold given the evidence it will just change.

[bumby]

Is your point that the maladaptive effects in the study are not legitimate or that this behavior would just be supplanted by some other “fad”?

I wonder if Internet addiction may have addition problems beyond those other examples. For example, the very tool used for many service jobs (the computer) is the same mechanism used to feed the addiction, making it extra hard to abstain. Or algorithms used to capture attention, etc.

[Mezzie]

This is similar to the problems faced by people recovering from Eating Disorders. You can't just NOT eat; you have to build a healthy relationship with the thing that almost ruined you. I wonder if anything in that field has been successful and might help people who DO feel like their internet use is out of control?

[h2odragon]

"supplanted by" or "attributed to?"

There's always some reason to criticize other's behavior as bad, for them or society or whatever. There's always the problem of "you don't see the value the behavior gives me the same way I do."

Even if the effects are legitimately objectively bad for someone, was the cause really "internet addiction?" Or was that merely a convenient label to apply or even a pet cause that could be furthered by latching on to a new fad? The folks who were worst affected by "internet addiction" in 96 were not likely to have been pursuing wildly different lifestyles without it.

[bumby]

I meant supplanted but I can see why the distinction may matter. I meant that today people may blame the Internet but at sometime later the Internet is no longer a concern because we've found some other boogeyman to blame. I believe the ancient Greeks, with their strong oral traditions, felt that written history would erode society. Not many people are lamenting the downsides of books today.

>was the cause really "internet addiction?"

According to the study, it would appear so.

"They reported developing a preoccupation with being on-line again which they compared to "cravings" that smokers feel when they have gone a length of time without a cigarette."

Although the authors do acknowledge possible sampling bias.