I Wish I Knew How to Quit You
Comments: 3 - Date: November 28th, 2007 - Categories: Information Overload
“I don’t have a problem,” Chang-hoon said in an interview three days after starting the camp. “Seventeen hours a day online is fine.”
The New York Times has an article about a South Korean boot camp for kids with Internet addictions. South Korea, which claims to be the most wired nation on the planet, recently held an international symposium on Internet addiction . According to a government study, 30% of its youths under 18 (this people would be Digital Natives) are at risk for Internet addiction. With dramatic stories like gamers dying after gaming binges (one such case), Internet addiction is becoming an increasingly discussed phenomenon in Asia. In the United States, however, the American Psychiatric Association does not officially recognize Internet addiction as a disorder, though some argue that it should.
To go off on a slightly tangential idea, the question on my mind is whether this is a matter of a generational shift. Seventeen hours a day, like the kid quoted above, is excessive, but where do you draw the line? When most people think of Internet addiction, they probably think of gaming, yet what most Digital Natives spend hours online doing is socializing. Even in Internet gaming, the social interactions with fellow gamers is an important component. Meanwhile, for the average teenager, “I’m addicted to Facebook!” is an excuse for procrastination I often hear (and occasionally use), yet is it correct to characterize this as an addiction if you’re building and reinforcing social networks? The answer will probably be colored by your opinion on the quality of online social interactions. Either way, Internet use is becoming increasingly common and even necessary in today’s digital world.
-Sarah Z.
Comment by Vincent NI - November 30, 2007 @ 5:20 am
and also, media coverage’s also noteciable. There are also some astonishing stories about the “Suicide after Online Gaming” in China. I found that their coverage has some problems…
Comment by Christopher Patton - November 30, 2007 @ 11:51 am
I think it’s important to recognize that the internet offers a unique opportunity to be social in a way that the physical realm even outside of the whole time/space compression phenomena does not. In the physical realm, there seem more often than not to be elements of command and control latent in everyday conversations that don’t exist in online communication.
It used to be that online interaction was more anonymous which many perceived as the key liberating factor in online relations, but even as social networking has attached identities to real people, the fluidity and seamlessness of an online communication still remains.
It seems to me that this addiction is acting in response to the feeling that in day to day relations, the online realm can offer something the physical realm cannot.
Comment by Sam Jackson - November 30, 2007 @ 6:59 pm
Some very very interesting results have turned up while I’ve been poking around for danah, incidentals about the nexus of “addiction” and social networking, at least in the eyes of teens!
n.b., the kinds of gaming which are most addictive in nature have historically always been those with social elements. although this past year or so NYT etc has had a thing for writing about the internet book camps etc in china, before then on /. and the geeky sites we’d hear news stories every now and again of yet another south korean who died after a marathon Lineage session or something like that; not a recent thing where the games are concerned. For internet at large… data will tell all.