Problematic Internet use or Internet addiction?
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Excessive Internet use certainly has substantial social effects. Several studies have demonstrated that those individuals who spend too much time online tend to lose sleep (Anderson, 2001 and Nalwa and Anand, 2003), decrease social communication (Kraut et al., 1998), have problems in their interpersonal relationships (Lin and Tsai, 2002 and Young, 1998), and use the Internet as their primary means of alleviating stress and depression (Chou, 2001). Those who have asserted that Internet addiction is primarily maintained cognitively believe that cognitive-behavioral therapy may be a possible solution (Davis, 2001 and Yellowlees, 2001). Therapeutic strategies would include cognitive restructuring regarding the Internet applications an individual uses most often, behavioral exercises, and exposure therapy in which the individual stays offline for increasing amounts of time. Others have suggested that education and training about the risks of Internet addiction could alleviate many Internet-related problems (Young & Case, 2004). Lastly, as more work is done in the area of the neurochemistry of non-chemical addictions, it is possible that problematic Internet use can be ameliorated using drugs in combination with other strategies, in the same way that one would treat substance dependence or pathological gambling. Some pharmacological treatments of excessive Internet users have been thought to be effective; in their small 2000 study, Shapira and colleagues showed that six out of seven subjects with excessive online usage decreased their Internet use when administered a combination of mood stabilizing and antipsychotic medications. Many of their subjects, however, had a lifetime diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and it is not clear whether or not the medications acted specifically to reduce Internet-related behaviors or, more likely, acted to simply stabilize their moods.
4. Workplace implications
In Young’s original study of Internet addiction, approximately half of Internet-dependent individuals reported that they had suffered severe work- or school-related problems because they spent so much time online (Young, 1998). It has been shown that in the workplace, like at home, more interactive online applications are associated with more problems with Internet use (Davis et al., 2002 R.A. Davis, G.L. Flett and A. Besser, Validation of a new scale for measuring problematic internet use: implications for pre-employment screening, Cyberpsychology Behavior 5 (2002) (4), pp. 331–345. View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus (22)Davis et al., 2002). Young and Case (2004) demonstrated that the most common applications associated with problematic Internet use in the workplace are pornography, interactive chatting, and playing games. Most companies have access to the Internet, and a large proportion of them have policies in effect regarding the online activities of employees (Greenfield & Davis, 2002). However, few companies enforce these policies, despite reports that at least half of Internet-enabled employees go online for personal purposes at an average rate of 3 h per week. Even fewer companies have actually disciplined employees for inappropriate Internet use. A few companies are starting to use Internet-monitoring software to keep abreast of their employees’ online activities but many employees still view “over the shoulder” observation and monitoring of their Internet use by management as more deterring than invisible software monitoring. As more companies are made aware of their employees’ abuse of the Internet, though, more reprimands and industrial actions are likely. To try and predict problematic Internet use in the workplace, Davis and colleagues designed the Online Cognition Scale to screen for possible Internet-related problems. They found that traits of decreased impulse control and procrastination appear to predict troublesome Internet use, and that in turn, high scores on their Scale predicted reprimands for Internet abuse.
Some Internet researchers have hypothesized that students may be at the highest risk for developing problematic Internet use (Nalwa & Anand, 2003), in part because for many students, online access is free, fast, and available all the time. Lin and Tsai found that Internet-dependent students often scored highly on measures of disinhibition, which in turn predicted social and financial problems (2002). Students who use the Internet excessively are also very likely to favor online activities over sleep, and in at least one study, only sleep patterns distinguished high users from low users (Anderson, 2001). Many students become so involved with using the Internet that they miss class or skip exams, even when they know they might fail their classes (Chou, 2001 and Tsai and Lin, 2003). However, some have cautioned that it may not be practical to label students “Internet addicts” based purely on excessive use, as it is often necessary for them to use the Internet to do their schoolwork (Hansen, 2002).
5. Conclusions
The Internet is a extremely important social and communications tool, and is changing our daily lives at home and at work. It is entirely predictable that any major new technology, or way of doing business, should be associated with a variety of human responses, some good, and some not so good. Research about the effects of the Internet is still in its infancy, and needs to be qualitatively and quantitatively improved. There is no doubt that some Internet users develop problematic behavior. Most of these are probably premorbidly vulnerable people who often have a history of impulse control and addictive disorders, and whose abnormal behavior is a response to specific online content and activities. It is unlikely that “Internet addiction”, as a disorder in its own right, exists.
References
Peter M. Yellowlees and Shayna Marks
University of California, Davis Center for Health and Technology, 2300 Stockton Boulevard, Third Floor, Sacramento, CA 95817, United States
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