"In
1995, psychiatrist Ivan Goldberg coined the term internet addiction disorder.
He wrote a satirical essay about “people abandoning their family obligations to
sit gazing into their computer monitor as they surfed the Internet.” Intending
to parody society’s obsession with pathologizing everyday behaviors, he
inadvertently advanced the idea."(Boyd, 81)
One September, I sat in a college classroom and listened to a middle aged man lecture us on the beast that was internet addiction. At this point in time it was still unusual to see rows of students with laptops open in front of them, and even more unusual to see someone on campus with a cellphone in hand. I can only recall one classmate with a laptop that has a color screen, and most who did have personal computers in their dorm rooms has basic word processors that were capable only of creating and printing assignments. The college I attended had one computer lab, and here we could access the internet in order to email family and friends, or to type essays. I, however, had been raised in a computer friendly home and therefore knew how to access chat rooms.
The institution I attended was located in the middle of Manitoba, in a tiny town that housed the college, a post office and a curling rink, this access was my only link to the outside world. If you didn't own a car you were pretty much relegated to dorm life 24/7. Trips off campus were few and far between, unless you managed to find the keys to a friend’s car and 'borrowed' it for a couple hours, but that is another post altogether. As the lecturer went on to explain internet addiction, he listed off a few of the signs that you might be addicted to the internet. I mentally checked off the list faster than he could verbalize it, and decided that I was indeed one of the hapless teenagers who had been lost to the web. It didn't change anything. I still spent hours in the computer lab, happily chatting with people that I was meeting online and immersing myself in their worlds, often when I had had enough of the one that I currently inhabited. Why?
For many years I have dumbed down the answer, shrugged my shoulders and blamed it on my 'addictive personality,' as though this gave me some kind of free pass to engage in online media as I currently do without asking any more questions or seeking more answers. However, in the above quote, the year 1995 triggered something in my brain, and I realized that I had attended that first year of college in 1997, just two years after the initial indication that internet addiction might be a thing. Although internet addiction was not conclusively proven, someone told me that I was addicted, and I believed them without ever questioning how they arrived at that conclusion.
From where I am sitting now, the answer has shifted. In 1997 I was 18 and had just moved from a large city that I roamed at will, to a small town where I had very few outlets for interaction outside of the area. My internet usage spiked dramatically that year. The second time I would experience this kind of isolation would be when I was put on bedrest while pregnant with my first child. Again, my internet usage went up, as I found myself alone and longing to connect with someone between Oprah and Ellen. I still use social media heavily on a daily basis, though the majority of that is related to my employment. At the same time, I think that if I were to re-enter a state of social isolation, my usage rates would likely go up again. What drives this is not my desire to engage in screen time, but my desire to engage. Why do I need to engage? Am I that uncomfortable with myself that I can't just be alone and be comfortable in that space? Truthfully? I like to be alone. I like being alone in body, but not in thought. While I dislike being physically connected and often experience the feeling of being touched-out[1], I also thrive on endless conversation and the exchange of information. This is where the internet becomes an incredibly attractive place for me.
As far as the concept of internet addiction goes, the second half of the quote that I started this post with was what triggered my questioning of my own acceptance of my supposed internet addiction: "Goldberg responded critically when academics began discussing internet addiction as a legitimate disorder: “I don’t think Internet addiction disorder exists any more than tennis addictive disorder, bingo addictive disorder, and TV addictive disorder exist. People can overdo anything. To call it a disorder is an error.” (Boyd, 81-82)
Someone
should have said that to my professor in 1997.
References
Boyd, D. (2014). It's
Complicated, The Social Lives of Networked Teens. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
[1]
Touched-Out: A common phenomena that occurs when an individual spends a large
amount of time touching or being touched by those around them. A person who is touched-out
will express a desire to refrain from touch for a period of time in order to
regain a sense of agency within their own physical sphere.
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