Are You Addicted

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,” begins Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl, a beatnik rant that opens with people “dragging themselves” at dawn, searching for an “angry fix” of heroin.  

A new incredibly scary article in the Daily Beast lays out the research behind the idea that we have reached that point in society again, only now, instead of heroin, we are reaching for our IPhones.  The author, Tony Dokoupil,  is a senior writer at Newsweek and The Daily Beast. The article discusses the mountingly overwhelming research data that implies that internet use can lead to depression, anxiety,  and cognitive dysfunction.   

Peter Whybrow, the director of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, argues that “the computer is like electronic cocaine,” fueling cycles of mania followed by depressive stretches. The Internet “leads to behavior that people are conscious is not in their best interest and does leave them anxious and does make them act compulsively,” says Nicholas Carr, whose book The Shallows, about the Web’s effect on cognition, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. It “fosters our obsessions, dependence, and stress reactions,” adds Larry Rosen, a California psychologist who has researched the Net’s effect for decades. It “encourages—and even promotes—insanity.”  

The brains of Internet addicts, it turns out, look like the brains of drug and alcohol addicts. In a study published in January, Chinese researchers found results that link Internet addiction to “structural abnormalities in gray matter,” namely shrinkage of 10 to 20 percent in the area of the brain responsible for processing of speech, memory, motor control, emotion, sensory, and other information. And worse, the shrinkage never stopped: the more time online, the more the brain showed signs of “atrophy.”   

The article stresses the impact that the use of computers, IPhones, and IPads have on teens. FOMO, the "fear of missing out", drives teens to respond constantly to text messages, facebook posts, and e-mails. Teens average 7 hours a day of screen time on school days, much more on weekends and holidays, and walk away from the experience with more stress and lowered self-esteem.   

I think the depressing thing for me in reading this article is the way it points out that the various social media have made us less connected to the people we are with, not more connected.  I watched a young mother walking hand in hand with her four or five year old daughter the other day. I was behind them for quite a while, watching the mom talk on her phone. In the six or seven minutes I was walking along behind her, she never once interacted with her child. She was connected, but not to the little girl she was with. They passed by interesting store windows, passed a dog that the little girl watched closely for a time, and had lots of chances to talk about things that happened around them. There was not a word of acknowledgement from the mother. They were going somewhere together, but the mom communicated pretty clearly that she would rather be with someone other than her daughter. It did not seem like "Mom" behavior to me. I know there are rules now for talking on cell phones while passing by schools and texting while driving your car, but it seems that a more important rule would be that when you are with your children, the phone is always turned off. If not, then "parent" may not be the best word to describe your relationship with your kids. Maybe "escort" would be a better description.