* Is Internet Addiction A Mental Illness Or Social Problem ???
Mira is just an year old; with the latest smart phones and
gaming consoles available in the market, her parents devote less time to taking
care of her and more time to playing video games online or socializing with
friends on Facebook. There are times when Mia’s parents forget that they have a
daughter who is in need of their care. They feed her only once a day; on
multiple occasions they have even forgotten to feed her. One day when Mia’s
mother walked into her daughter’s room, she found the little girl had died. Do
you think this is just a story? If yes then maybe you ought to think again. A
3-month old child died in South Korea in 2010 when her parents, obsessed with
marathon online gaming sessions, fed her only once a day leaving her to die a
slow death. This incident is only one of the many negative consequences of
internet addiction.
When the Bible of mental disorders – the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM-IV – decided that internet
addiction needs to be designated as a serious mental illness in its May 2013
edition, a controversial debate sparked off across the globe. While researchers
state the need for more research into the ways and means of accurately
diagnosing internet addiction, the American Psychiatric Association is already
comparing the symptoms of Internet Use Disorder (IUD) to substance abuse.
Psychologists are also pushing for broadening the diagnosis of IUD to include
much more than online gaming addictions.
Web addiction, indeed, affects the white matter of the brain
that contains nerve fibres. Researchers have found that excessive internet use
does affect the fibres impacting a person’s emotions, self-control, and
decision-making abilities. As told to BBC by Dr. Henrietta Bowden-Jones, “white
matter abnormalities in the orbito-frontal cortex and other truly significant
brain areas are present not only in addictions where substances are involved
but also in behavioral ones such as internet addiction”.
World over, kids obsessed with internet games and social media
are slowly and steadily distancing themselves from the real world. Without
access to their emails even for a few minutes these children experience
frustration, anxiety, depression and irritability. According to psychologists,
these are deemed as withdrawal symptoms; the same as those observed in
substance abuse. Nearly 70 % of the kids being treated at addiction-treatment clinics
in Sydney are unable to focus without their smart phones. They struggle to pry
themselves away from their IPads and their tablet computers. Are these the
children who will be the leaders of tomorrow? For children in South Korea,
sleeping with a smart phone instead of a teddy bear is not a new phenomenon.
Nearly 160,000 children between the ages of five and nine are addicted to the
internet. In the race to be constantly ‘wired in’, children forget to eat
lunch, ignore sports and other physical activities, forgo going to the toilet
and end up being nervous and distracted when their smart devices are taken away
from them. With digital and web addiction affecting nearly 2.55 million people
in South Korea, medical practitioners are calling for the categorization of IUD
as a mental illness and they are certainly right in doing so. With children as
young as the age of 3 being addicted to the internet and technology, the
inclusion of IUD in the DSM – V is justified.
Internet use needs to be monitored and the youth must learn to
balance technology with other activities. When the darker side of internet
addiction is exposed through display of violence, tantrums, and outrage then it
becomes a serious problem; it can even be termed as a mental illness. In the
last couple of years, we have been exposed to situations where the line between
addiction and insanity has been blurred. In 2009, a boy in Ohio shot his mother
and gravely injured his father when his parents prevented him from playing an
online game because they were afraid that he was becoming obsessed with it. He
was only a teenager who probably would have been sent to a juvenile home but if
the same happens with an adult then he will be tried for manslaughter. If
internet addiction is deemed a mental illness and there are no amendments made
to the criminal justice system then it’s quite possible that the defendant will
be let off on an insanity plea and may be offered a community sentence rather
than a jail term. This will prove to be a serious disadvantage of including
internet addiction as a mental disorder, especially in a country like the US
where guns are freely available on sale in stores such as Wal-Mart. A teenager
who is addicted to the internet and at the same time is charged with murder,
which is actually premeditated, can plead to insanity as internet-addiction is
a mental illness. This means that he could be given only a community sentence;
is that fair to the murder victims?
The inclusion of internet-addiction in the DSM-V could actually
be misused. To avoid this, there will need to be reforms and amendments to the
existing laws of a country. Only then is it feasible to classify internet
addiction as a mental illness.
Many of us use the internet, especially social media, to stay
updated on current news and world stories. Often, we check our emails more than
30 times per hour. Are we all mentally ill patients? When someone tries to pry
me away from Facebook or LinkedIn, I get upset but not violent. Am I suffering
from a mental illness? As I was randomly searching the Internet, I came across
an internet addiction test that includes some very familiar questions: How
often do you find that you stay on-line longer than you intended? How often do
you neglect household chores to spend more time on-line? How often do you snap,
yell, or act annoyed if someone bothers you while you are on-line? I
answered ‘frequently’ to these questions. Does this mean I am
suffering from a mental illness called internet-use disorder? In such cases
that I am sure most of us find resonance with, it becomes imperative to
accurately define the conditions and symptoms of IUD.
As the debate rages on among researchers, medical practitioners,
health officials and the millions of users; we need to understand that only
classifying IUD as a mental illness is not enough. We need to amend laws and
conduct in-depth research into the symptoms and extent of IUD. Once research
shows that IUD can indeed be classified as a mental illness and laws are
amended to incorporate IUD and its consequences, we must take steps to include
IUD in the DSM – V. Technology and the internet is taking over our lives
rapidly and we need to control them before everything is destroyed – humanity,
emotions, and societal structure.
