Internet Addiction Left My Brother Homeless By Winston Ross Analysis

The Tantalizing Web Drug addiction, alcoholism, and mental illness: these are all paths that the majority of society recognize lead to a spiraling lifestyle, all too often ending in homelessness. Something nobody considers however, is a relatively new possible addiction: the internet. In an article titled, “Internet Addiction Left my Brother Homeless,” written by Winston Ross, these issues are brought to the surface. A journalist who has personal experience dealing with a family member who suffers from a disorder psychologists coin “internet addiction,” speaks of his brother, who as the title suggests, was exposed to the initial merriment of the internet, but later drowned by the grips of it, as any addiction does. Winston also spent time …show more content…
The article begins with Ross chronicling a visit he made to ReSTART Internet Addiction Recovery Program in Washington. As many might initially, his friends found it laughable. “Most of my friends smirked when I told them I was heading up to Washington to write a story about the newly opened center,” Ross admits. He continues, “We all kid about being hooked on Facebook, but it doesn’t really seem like the kind of thing anybody would need to drop $14,000 (the cost of a 45-day stay at ReSTART) on to quit cold turkey” (Ross 2009, p. 1). He also admits that he himself did not realize the seriousness of an internet addiction until somewhat recently; his realization came only after he took a journey to visit his homeless brother, Andrew. While Ross is visiting, he continues to wonder, “Why had he …show more content…
Salih Zoroglu, MD. As the title reads, the investigation’s purpose was to understand the correlation between mental disorders and internet addiction. It was found that, “the most common disorder diagnosed in the present study was ADHD,” and the article continues to state that, “Anxiety disorders were the second most common diagnostic group in the present study” (Ho, R. C., Zhang, M. B., Tsang, T. Y., Toh, A. H., Fang, P., Yanxia, L., & ... Kwok-Kei, M., 2014, p. 4-5). As suspected, the two topics almost always go hand in hand. Overall the study concluded that the association between mental disorder and internet addiction is continuous and definitely significant; the actual existence of internet addiction was not investigated, and seemed to be taken as fact here. Regardless, I can conclude that I do not entirely agree with Winston Ross. I do not believe his brother is homeless solely because of internet addiction. However, I am sure Andrew should be further evaluated and treated for his mentioned compulsive