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INTERNET ADDICTION
DISEASE OR A NEW STAGE OF CIVILIZATION DEVELOPMENT?
Throughout human history, there has never been a time when people did not suffer from some kind of addiction. Narrow-minded Pithecanthropus greedily swallowed psilocybin mushrooms, slender Cro-Magnons threw wormwood leaves into the fire and inhaled the smoke with pleasure, Egyptians injected infusions made from pufferfish guts under their skin to catch an unearthly high. Need I even mention the Greeks, Romans, and representatives of later civilizations? Wine, ale, vodka, tobacco, natural and synthetic drugs...
Getting hooked on something not particularly useful is a simple matter. It is much harder to give up a harmful habit later. There is another important point: even a hobby that seems completely innocent at first glance can become own ruin for the body if one does not know moderation. You don't have to look far for examples. Women, television, computer games and, of course, the internet. Doctors, scientists, and even ordinary users have been concerned about the problem of global "internetization" for more than a year. On one hand, it is wonderful: the circle of communication expands, racial boundaries are erased, and the general level of human education increases. On the other—negative consequences are evident: the number of people with red eyes, shaking hands, and speaking a language incomprehensible to an ordinary mortal is steadily growing.
Researchers from the Chicago Institute of Human Physiology have published the results of a very interesting study. These workers of the cerebral front classified different types of network addiction and highlighted the main signs by which one can distinguish a user suffering from one form of internetomania or another. Let's see what the scientists came up with, what the doctors say, and at the same time think for ourselves—is humanity digging its own grave in virtuality or moving to a new stage of development?
TONGUE TO KIEV
The first form is addiction to online communication. A person who cannot imagine themselves outside of internet chats, forums, and conferences. Eyes red, bulging. Movements are fussy and imprecise. While walking, they may bump into various objects or injure others with ribs protruding from long periods of fasting. If such an internet addict has no way to get onto the Web, they fall into a prolonged depression, the cause of which they sometimes do not even realize themselves.
In everyday life, such a user is sluggish, insecure, and shy when communicating with the opposite sex. In short, a nobody. But on the internet—a hero among heroes. They vigorously wave a saber of arguments, shake a mace of criticism, fire revelations from a machine gun, and generally consider themselves the center of the universe, whose opinion everyone is obliged to listen to. Overall harmless, they cause inconvenience only to their relatives, who are concerned about the poor soul's behavior, and to doctors, whom they may end up with after a long absence from the internet.
THESE MAD GAMERS
The second form is addiction to online games. Single-player titles are no longer enough for such a player. Having grown tired of battles with virtual opponents, they dive into multiplayer projects, hoping to gain a wealth of new experiences. And they do.
At first everything goes well, but if the fellow does not know moderation, after some time the boundary between virtuality and reality begins to blur for them. They have a vague idea that in order for the body to feel good, it needs to be fed and walked occasionally, rather than just grinding more exp points. Such an "addict" is thin, apathetic, answers most questions monosyllabically, but is ready to chat for hours about the need to stock up on new armor in some online RPG and about the difficulty of completing another location with high-level monsters.
Finding themselves far from a computer, such an individual strives to flock together with other similar apathetic creatures. This flatters their vanity—it's as if "there are many of us," and together they form some kind of community. Of course, this is only self-suggestion. An isolated online "addict" is pathetic, helpless, and completely maladapted to surrounding reality. A total klutz. But with an attitude!
VIRTUAL "STRAWBERRIES"
The third form is a penchant for virtual sex. A very piquant form of internetophilia. You would think: walk down the street, depending on your age pull girls' braids, seduce beauties on the boulevard, arrange wild dances to an accordion with lonely old ladies... But no! An XXX-addict wants a sublimated form of "strawberries." Live communication no longer satisfies them; they want a refined sex surrogate.
Day after day, such a—if you'll excuse the term—user spends time in sex chats, studies profiles on dating sites for hours, and downloads terabytes of piquant videos from the Web. The question is logical—why? Why does a person try to replace the sensations of real communication with the pleasure of virtual amusements? Especially if they are not an ugly person or a pervert, but are good-looking, liked by the opposite sex, and generally a normal guy/girl. To this, scientists already have an extremely witty, though not very simple to understand, answer. Pay attention!
Communication in reality is always associated with direct contact with other people. Want to talk to a girl—invite her to a cafe for a cup of mulled wine. Or to the cinema. Or for a walk. The object of desire is always before your eyes. And being always right there, it inevitably comes into conflict with some ideal image painted by the consciousness. And an ideal, make no mistake, is invented in the head by everyone. Without exception. And this very ideal possesses one very unpleasant property—it is NOT detailed. Some amorphous picture of something best spins around in the head—and that's all.
And then such an idealist meets... well, let's say, a beautiful stranger. And seemingly in all parameters she resembles his undetailed ideal. But communication continues and it turns out that the lady's tone of voice is slightly off, the shape of her eyes differs by a millimeter from what was desired, she snores at night, plus pimples occasionally pop up on her nose. Hey, brother! What kind of ideal is that? With pimples?
On the internet, however, everything is much simpler. When it comes to pornographic pictures and videos, the ideal created by the consciousness is overwhelmed by numbers. Seemingly all options are strictly concrete, but there are so many of them that in total they give a feeling of complete satisfaction. That same blurred image. And if we talk about sex chats and forums, then for the consciousness it's a complete free-for-all. You can't see who you're talking to, and that's all the brain needs. It will imagine such an ideal—an ideal of all ideals.
Actually, this is where I'm going. Initially, a person striving for internet sex pursues quite noble goals. They want to realize a basic dream: to find and possess the best that can be. But the result—alas—is not quite what many would like to see. A little man lives his life, wanders through XXX forums, but in real life pays no attention to the opposite sex. He doesn't need them; they don't meet the ideal, you see.
This is the kind of cunning trap that human consciousness has prepared for humanity. And with enviable regularity, it hooks newer and newer users. You reap what you sow...
THAT SWEET WORD "SHOPPING"
The fourth form of addiction. It's not very common in Russia yet, but in the West there are already millions of people obsessed with shopping in virtual stores. They cannot live a day without ordering some trinket via the Web. And they order! And couriers deliver. That's what couriers are for. And soon the house of such an "addict" is piled to the ceiling with mountains of absolutely useless things. Fluffy rabbits on sale, sets of potato peelers with bright handles, self-adhesive pearlescent light bulbs, and collections of multicolored mugs with busts of popular singers. What isn't in the apartment of such a near-kleptomaniac... only paid for with hard-earned money.
Scientists believe that this is an extreme manifestation of any person's urge to accumulate. As if a hamster carries grain in its cheeks into its burrow, a bird carries twigs into its nest—well, why should a human be any worse? They also hoard. What's unclear is another thing: why does the urge to buy get cut off like with a knife for such users in ordinary stores? Seemingly the same things—only on shelves instead of a monitor screen. Buy them by the bunch, but you don't want to.
And those same scientists answer. This, they say, is also a human urge toward idealization. Only in a slightly different form. If an item is on a store shelf, it's immediately visible; it's concrete and, as they say, "totally useless." But if it's in a photo on the Web, there's a possibility that when it's delivered home, the item will be slightly different from the picture. And the consciousness again has an opportunity to fantasize. That's why some people buy everything through the web, hoping to find an unattainable ideal.
Interesting? Interesting. But practical use—zero. No one has quite figured out how to cure such a shopping-man of this harmful habit yet. Psychologists vaguely mutter something about shifting the mental dominant; psychiatrists feed the poor souls tranquilizers and sedatives. But the wagon is still there. The addiction hasn't gone anywhere, and the number of its victims continues to multiply. Do they suffer? No, they enjoy it. And at the same time, they blow fortunes (their own and others') on what is essentially useless junk.
INFORMATION HUNGER
The fifth form—the urge to obtain information. Humanity has always wanted to possess maximum knowledge. Once, our distant ancestors listened with bated breath by the fire to a traveler's stories about far-off lands. A bit later, some desperate fellows offered half a kingdom for some particularly rare book. And indeed, a person thought: what is half a kingdom when I learn from a book how to turn lead into gold, and all the kingdoms on earth will be mine?
But alchemy as a science did not materialize; instead, mass media appeared. And so respectable burghers, lean gentlemen, and progressive merchants, upon waking in the morning, first ask for... no, not water to wash their faces and not even a cup of coffee. But the morning newspaper. They are curious about what happened in the world while they slept.
Then—more. Television hit, and now millions starving for information glue their gaze to the blue screen. Give me, give me, give me... Actually, dear readers, a warm greeting to you. Reading these lines, you are doing the same thing—satisfying your information hunger. Is this good or bad? Scientists cannot answer unequivocally. Therefore, they answer differently. That is, on one hand, it's good—you learn many new things, can use them for your own selfish goals and for the benefit of civilization's development. On the other hand—if information fever begins to shake you with terrible force, then nothing good remains. You, to put it mildly, "devour" information by the ton. All your strength goes into this. No time is left to use the knowledge obtained. And why, one asks, did you find out then?
Partly a curse and partly a huge benefit of the internet is that it is oversaturated with information. In a few minutes, an answer to any question can be found. And here the problem of choice arises. The one in favor is not the one who knows the most, but the one who knows where and how to find the necessary information. That is, "internet-people" have essentially jumped to a new level of operating with information. Seemingly I don't know anything yet, but at any second I will find it, read it, and know.
Information internet-hunger, in the opinion of scientists, is a kind of rudiment. An anachronism. Simply not everyone has figured out yet that you don't need to try to be aware of all events; it's enough to simply figure out where to look for the necessary information. And those who haven't figured it out are the ones trying to "eat their fill" of news until they are stuffed. Sometimes to complete...
SO WHAT THEN?
All these internet addictions—what are they even about and, most importantly, for what? It is clear that in extreme forms it's bad, but humanity must need all this for some purpose. Scientists have come to the conclusion that, say, smoking and alcoholism are harmful, but if they didn't exist, people would find other addictions. Because tobacco and alcohol are artificial ways to release excess system energy. A kind of safety valve for civilization. And so states no longer ban smoking and do not introduce prohibition laws. And in those countries where they do ban it, the number of drug addicts (cocaine, heroin, LSD) steadily grows.
So is internet addiction just another way to blow off steam? A replacement for other forms of addiction? Partly yes. And from this point of view, attacks on internetomania look ridiculous. Because it's obvious that it's better if people learn many new things on the internet than poison themselves with tobacco and burn their livers with vodka. But it doesn't stop there.
Yes, internet addiction is "just another form of drug addiction." But not only. There is an opinion (supported by a sufficient number of analysts) that we are dealing with another turn in the development of society. Humanity is moving to a new level of possessing and operating information. To that very managerial turn mentioned above. And within the framework of this theory, various forms of internetophilia look completely different.
This is no longer some "drug addiction," but—attention!—a process of humanity's adaptation to a new form of interaction with the information field. That is, people have entered conditions that are new to them and are beginning to gradually get used to them. And until they are used to it, various extreme forms of interaction are inevitable. From complete rejection of the internet by some to total dependence in others. Once we get used to it—the number of internet addicts will decrease. More accurately, a certain sufficiently advanced level, which is currently considered extreme, will become the norm.
The negative attitude of society toward internetomania is merely a side reaction to the appearance of something new. It has been this way in all times. Newspapers appeared, and immediately a sea of scientists, doctors, and intellectuals were found who declared that it was terribly harmful, unnecessary, and generally the scourge of humanity. Because newspapers distract from work, report a sea of useless information, scatter attention... After some time, people got used to newspapers; they became the norm. Television appeared... And again, a mass of dissatisfied people. Television became the norm, the internet grew. Is the analogy clear?
DISEASE OR A NEW STAGE OF CIVILIZATION DEVELOPMENT?
Throughout human history, there has never been a time when people did not suffer from some kind of addiction. Narrow-minded Pithecanthropus greedily swallowed psilocybin mushrooms, slender Cro-Magnons threw wormwood leaves into the fire and inhaled the smoke with pleasure, Egyptians injected infusions made from pufferfish guts under their skin to catch an unearthly high. Need I even mention the Greeks, Romans, and representatives of later civilizations? Wine, ale, vodka, tobacco, natural and synthetic drugs...
Getting hooked on something not particularly useful is a simple matter. It is much harder to give up a harmful habit later. There is another important point: even a hobby that seems completely innocent at first glance can become own ruin for the body if one does not know moderation. You don't have to look far for examples. Women, television, computer games and, of course, the internet. Doctors, scientists, and even ordinary users have been concerned about the problem of global "internetization" for more than a year. On one hand, it is wonderful: the circle of communication expands, racial boundaries are erased, and the general level of human education increases. On the other—negative consequences are evident: the number of people with red eyes, shaking hands, and speaking a language incomprehensible to an ordinary mortal is steadily growing.
Researchers from the Chicago Institute of Human Physiology have published the results of a very interesting study. These workers of the cerebral front classified different types of network addiction and highlighted the main signs by which one can distinguish a user suffering from one form of internetomania or another. Let's see what the scientists came up with, what the doctors say, and at the same time think for ourselves—is humanity digging its own grave in virtuality or moving to a new stage of development?
TONGUE TO KIEV
The first form is addiction to online communication. A person who cannot imagine themselves outside of internet chats, forums, and conferences. Eyes red, bulging. Movements are fussy and imprecise. While walking, they may bump into various objects or injure others with ribs protruding from long periods of fasting. If such an internet addict has no way to get onto the Web, they fall into a prolonged depression, the cause of which they sometimes do not even realize themselves.
In everyday life, such a user is sluggish, insecure, and shy when communicating with the opposite sex. In short, a nobody. But on the internet—a hero among heroes. They vigorously wave a saber of arguments, shake a mace of criticism, fire revelations from a machine gun, and generally consider themselves the center of the universe, whose opinion everyone is obliged to listen to. Overall harmless, they cause inconvenience only to their relatives, who are concerned about the poor soul's behavior, and to doctors, whom they may end up with after a long absence from the internet.
THESE MAD GAMERS
The second form is addiction to online games. Single-player titles are no longer enough for such a player. Having grown tired of battles with virtual opponents, they dive into multiplayer projects, hoping to gain a wealth of new experiences. And they do.
At first everything goes well, but if the fellow does not know moderation, after some time the boundary between virtuality and reality begins to blur for them. They have a vague idea that in order for the body to feel good, it needs to be fed and walked occasionally, rather than just grinding more exp points. Such an "addict" is thin, apathetic, answers most questions monosyllabically, but is ready to chat for hours about the need to stock up on new armor in some online RPG and about the difficulty of completing another location with high-level monsters.
Finding themselves far from a computer, such an individual strives to flock together with other similar apathetic creatures. This flatters their vanity—it's as if "there are many of us," and together they form some kind of community. Of course, this is only self-suggestion. An isolated online "addict" is pathetic, helpless, and completely maladapted to surrounding reality. A total klutz. But with an attitude!
VIRTUAL "STRAWBERRIES"
The third form is a penchant for virtual sex. A very piquant form of internetophilia. You would think: walk down the street, depending on your age pull girls' braids, seduce beauties on the boulevard, arrange wild dances to an accordion with lonely old ladies... But no! An XXX-addict wants a sublimated form of "strawberries." Live communication no longer satisfies them; they want a refined sex surrogate.
Day after day, such a—if you'll excuse the term—user spends time in sex chats, studies profiles on dating sites for hours, and downloads terabytes of piquant videos from the Web. The question is logical—why? Why does a person try to replace the sensations of real communication with the pleasure of virtual amusements? Especially if they are not an ugly person or a pervert, but are good-looking, liked by the opposite sex, and generally a normal guy/girl. To this, scientists already have an extremely witty, though not very simple to understand, answer. Pay attention!
Communication in reality is always associated with direct contact with other people. Want to talk to a girl—invite her to a cafe for a cup of mulled wine. Or to the cinema. Or for a walk. The object of desire is always before your eyes. And being always right there, it inevitably comes into conflict with some ideal image painted by the consciousness. And an ideal, make no mistake, is invented in the head by everyone. Without exception. And this very ideal possesses one very unpleasant property—it is NOT detailed. Some amorphous picture of something best spins around in the head—and that's all.
And then such an idealist meets... well, let's say, a beautiful stranger. And seemingly in all parameters she resembles his undetailed ideal. But communication continues and it turns out that the lady's tone of voice is slightly off, the shape of her eyes differs by a millimeter from what was desired, she snores at night, plus pimples occasionally pop up on her nose. Hey, brother! What kind of ideal is that? With pimples?
On the internet, however, everything is much simpler. When it comes to pornographic pictures and videos, the ideal created by the consciousness is overwhelmed by numbers. Seemingly all options are strictly concrete, but there are so many of them that in total they give a feeling of complete satisfaction. That same blurred image. And if we talk about sex chats and forums, then for the consciousness it's a complete free-for-all. You can't see who you're talking to, and that's all the brain needs. It will imagine such an ideal—an ideal of all ideals.
Actually, this is where I'm going. Initially, a person striving for internet sex pursues quite noble goals. They want to realize a basic dream: to find and possess the best that can be. But the result—alas—is not quite what many would like to see. A little man lives his life, wanders through XXX forums, but in real life pays no attention to the opposite sex. He doesn't need them; they don't meet the ideal, you see.
This is the kind of cunning trap that human consciousness has prepared for humanity. And with enviable regularity, it hooks newer and newer users. You reap what you sow...
THAT SWEET WORD "SHOPPING"
The fourth form of addiction. It's not very common in Russia yet, but in the West there are already millions of people obsessed with shopping in virtual stores. They cannot live a day without ordering some trinket via the Web. And they order! And couriers deliver. That's what couriers are for. And soon the house of such an "addict" is piled to the ceiling with mountains of absolutely useless things. Fluffy rabbits on sale, sets of potato peelers with bright handles, self-adhesive pearlescent light bulbs, and collections of multicolored mugs with busts of popular singers. What isn't in the apartment of such a near-kleptomaniac... only paid for with hard-earned money.
Scientists believe that this is an extreme manifestation of any person's urge to accumulate. As if a hamster carries grain in its cheeks into its burrow, a bird carries twigs into its nest—well, why should a human be any worse? They also hoard. What's unclear is another thing: why does the urge to buy get cut off like with a knife for such users in ordinary stores? Seemingly the same things—only on shelves instead of a monitor screen. Buy them by the bunch, but you don't want to.
And those same scientists answer. This, they say, is also a human urge toward idealization. Only in a slightly different form. If an item is on a store shelf, it's immediately visible; it's concrete and, as they say, "totally useless." But if it's in a photo on the Web, there's a possibility that when it's delivered home, the item will be slightly different from the picture. And the consciousness again has an opportunity to fantasize. That's why some people buy everything through the web, hoping to find an unattainable ideal.
Interesting? Interesting. But practical use—zero. No one has quite figured out how to cure such a shopping-man of this harmful habit yet. Psychologists vaguely mutter something about shifting the mental dominant; psychiatrists feed the poor souls tranquilizers and sedatives. But the wagon is still there. The addiction hasn't gone anywhere, and the number of its victims continues to multiply. Do they suffer? No, they enjoy it. And at the same time, they blow fortunes (their own and others') on what is essentially useless junk.
INFORMATION HUNGER
The fifth form—the urge to obtain information. Humanity has always wanted to possess maximum knowledge. Once, our distant ancestors listened with bated breath by the fire to a traveler's stories about far-off lands. A bit later, some desperate fellows offered half a kingdom for some particularly rare book. And indeed, a person thought: what is half a kingdom when I learn from a book how to turn lead into gold, and all the kingdoms on earth will be mine?
But alchemy as a science did not materialize; instead, mass media appeared. And so respectable burghers, lean gentlemen, and progressive merchants, upon waking in the morning, first ask for... no, not water to wash their faces and not even a cup of coffee. But the morning newspaper. They are curious about what happened in the world while they slept.
Then—more. Television hit, and now millions starving for information glue their gaze to the blue screen. Give me, give me, give me... Actually, dear readers, a warm greeting to you. Reading these lines, you are doing the same thing—satisfying your information hunger. Is this good or bad? Scientists cannot answer unequivocally. Therefore, they answer differently. That is, on one hand, it's good—you learn many new things, can use them for your own selfish goals and for the benefit of civilization's development. On the other hand—if information fever begins to shake you with terrible force, then nothing good remains. You, to put it mildly, "devour" information by the ton. All your strength goes into this. No time is left to use the knowledge obtained. And why, one asks, did you find out then?
Partly a curse and partly a huge benefit of the internet is that it is oversaturated with information. In a few minutes, an answer to any question can be found. And here the problem of choice arises. The one in favor is not the one who knows the most, but the one who knows where and how to find the necessary information. That is, "internet-people" have essentially jumped to a new level of operating with information. Seemingly I don't know anything yet, but at any second I will find it, read it, and know.
Information internet-hunger, in the opinion of scientists, is a kind of rudiment. An anachronism. Simply not everyone has figured out yet that you don't need to try to be aware of all events; it's enough to simply figure out where to look for the necessary information. And those who haven't figured it out are the ones trying to "eat their fill" of news until they are stuffed. Sometimes to complete...
SO WHAT THEN?
All these internet addictions—what are they even about and, most importantly, for what? It is clear that in extreme forms it's bad, but humanity must need all this for some purpose. Scientists have come to the conclusion that, say, smoking and alcoholism are harmful, but if they didn't exist, people would find other addictions. Because tobacco and alcohol are artificial ways to release excess system energy. A kind of safety valve for civilization. And so states no longer ban smoking and do not introduce prohibition laws. And in those countries where they do ban it, the number of drug addicts (cocaine, heroin, LSD) steadily grows.
So is internet addiction just another way to blow off steam? A replacement for other forms of addiction? Partly yes. And from this point of view, attacks on internetomania look ridiculous. Because it's obvious that it's better if people learn many new things on the internet than poison themselves with tobacco and burn their livers with vodka. But it doesn't stop there.
Yes, internet addiction is "just another form of drug addiction." But not only. There is an opinion (supported by a sufficient number of analysts) that we are dealing with another turn in the development of society. Humanity is moving to a new level of possessing and operating information. To that very managerial turn mentioned above. And within the framework of this theory, various forms of internetophilia look completely different.
This is no longer some "drug addiction," but—attention!—a process of humanity's adaptation to a new form of interaction with the information field. That is, people have entered conditions that are new to them and are beginning to gradually get used to them. And until they are used to it, various extreme forms of interaction are inevitable. From complete rejection of the internet by some to total dependence in others. Once we get used to it—the number of internet addicts will decrease. More accurately, a certain sufficiently advanced level, which is currently considered extreme, will become the norm.
The negative attitude of society toward internetomania is merely a side reaction to the appearance of something new. It has been this way in all times. Newspapers appeared, and immediately a sea of scientists, doctors, and intellectuals were found who declared that it was terribly harmful, unnecessary, and generally the scourge of humanity. Because newspapers distract from work, report a sea of useless information, scatter attention... After some time, people got used to newspapers; they became the norm. Television appeared... And again, a mass of dissatisfied people. Television became the norm, the internet grew. Is the analogy clear?
