Is Internet Addiction A Real Thing? By Maria Konnikova

Technology is increasingly becoming a significant part of life for adolescents and adults in our current society. Social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook, are used across the world, and these networks connect individuals, young and old, in a quick and easily accessible way. While many proponents of social networks believe that the Internet provides users with a sense of confidence in a new environment, along with the opportunity to connect with others, research suggests that increased usage of technology may entrap users with a false reality, which may lead to an unhealthy addiction to the cyber world. Although it is inevitable to escape the Internet as digital technology evolves, we can acknowledge the dangers that the Internet poses …show more content…
Further substantiating Rosen’s and Essig’s claims, The New Yorker writer Maria Konnikova exposes the truth about Internet addiction in her article “Is Internet Addiction A Real Thing?” Konnikova highlights Marc Potenza, a psychiatrist at Yale and the director of the university’s Program for Research on Impulsivity and Impulse Control Disorders, who treated an internet addicted college student who allegedly went from being a “social student in high school” (Paragraph 5), to finding herself dropping classes, increasingly using the internet, and meeting up with individuals that she had never met in real life. Challenging the validity of Internet compulsion as a behavioral addiction, psychiatrist Jerald Block concluded, after a decade of research, “Internet addiction is resistant to treatment, entails significant risks, and has high relapse rates” (Paragraph 8). Block’s conclusion rang true to Potenza who believes that the problem associated with Internet addiction is “the very knowledge of connectivity, or its lack” (Paragraph 10). One study of roughly twelve thousand adolescents in eleven European countries, published in 2012, reported that a 4.4 per cent prevalence of “pathological Internet use” (Paragraph 9) affected subject’s well-being and life. Excessive time spent using the Internet inhibits an Internet user’s ability to invest time on necessary social activities, which results in mental distress and other psychological problems (Paragraph 9). All in all, Potenza suggests several solutions to Internet addiction, including: downloading apps that tell you when to put your smartphone away, downloading apps that disable a computer’s Internet Connectivity, and seeking guidance from a therapist (Paragraph