In this era of texts and tweets, few of us can make the time (or brain space) to digest a 6-page story. So, to break down Tony Dokoupil’s exposé in Newsweek asking, “Is the Web Driving Us Mad?” we’ve “top-tenned” it for you.
- Americans spend at least 8 hours a day staring at our tech screens, (laptops, smartphones, iPads). That’s more time than we spend on anything else, including sleeping. A third of us check our smartphones before we get out of bed in the morning; 80% of vacationers bring along laptops or smartphones to check in with work.
- One of the early flags for addiction is spending more than 38 hours a week online. By that definition, we are “all addicts now, many of us by Wednesday afternoon, Tuesday if it’s a busy week”.
- Too much time online is making us more impulsive. There has been a 66% increases in OCD and ADHD in the last decade.
- Every ping we get signals a potential social, sexual, or professional opportunity, and “we get a mini-reward, a squirt of dopamine, for answering the bell”.
- Internet addiction leads to “structural abnormalities in gray matter” in the brain. There is a shrinkage of 10 to 20% in the area of the brain responsible for processing of speech, memory, motor control, emotion, sensory, and other information.
- The brains of Internet addicts look like the brains of drug and alcohol addicts. The computer is like “electronic cocaine,” fueling cycles of mania followed by depressive stretches.
- The average person, regardless of age, sends or receives about 400 texts a month. Some of us even report feeling our phone vibrate when in fact nothing is happening. Researchers call this “phantom-vibration syndrome.”
- Web use often displaces sleep, exercise, and face-to-face exchanges – all of which can lead to stress, depression and even suicide.
- The next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, to be published in 2013, will include “Internet Addiction Disorder” in its appendix, earmarked for further study.
- Jason Russell, the guy who launched the #StopKony campaign earlier this year, totally lost it after gaining insta-fame on the Internet. In fact, he was diagnosed with “reactive psychosis” as a direct result.
Kathy Drasky regularly writes about online culture. Her marketing and communications work with the ANZA Technology Network, Advance Global Australians and with various Australians and Australian enterprises has led to at least a dozen trips Down Under.
An accomplished digital photographer, her photos have appeared in 7×7 Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle and Google Schmap.
