Overcoming Internet Addiction For Dummies. David N. Greenfield

I have come to believe that it is anything but benign. It eats up your attention and can rob you of the most important resource in your life — your time — without your even knowing it.

      People constantly embrace new technology: faster smartphones (companies are now rolling out 5G), faster processors, bigger and better screens, more apps, and more devices connected to the cloud and running their daily lives. This in some ways represents progress, but in many ways, it is a setback. All this technology requires more and more time and attention to manage, maintain, and learn how to use. I cannot tell you how many times I have had to troubleshoot a problem with some digital device, install a new app, or just change my password for the millionth time. All of this takes time. All of this takes energy. All of this takes attention from other, perhaps more meaningful and satisfying parts of your life. All of this attention to our tech adds up.

Sure, all this convenience is wonderful, but is it really making life happier and satisfying? I’m not so sure. Has all your screen and Internet use really added quality to your life? Just because you can hook everything in your life up to the Internet does not literally mean it will improve the quality of your life; you always must ask yourself the question “Will the cost (time) really be worth the ultimate benefit?”

      Chapter 14 has details on finding balance in screen use. Chapter 16 warns you of how the Internet is only going to become more addictive.

Understanding the End of Privacy as You Knew It

      The following sections cover a few of the features of the Internet that many of you may experience as inherent strengths of being online, but many are an illusion when looked at more closely.

      Recognizing the myth of anonymity on the Internet

      Anonymity is a myth on the Internet as there is no such thing as real privacy online. When we conducted our original research in the late 1990s, several items stood out. Not surprisingly, perceived anonymity was a significant factor in contributing to the appeal of the Internet. It seems there was a perception that the Internet and all things communicated online felt like they were anonymous. But nothing could be further from the truth.

      Virtually everything you do and say, type, text, post, search, and scroll online is trackable, traceable, and in some cases recorded and reproducible. That is not to say that everyone is reading and listening to what you do online, but rather to demonstrate that there is a footprint of what you do and say online. In general, you should remember that online communications are anything but anonymous. There are countless cases where users are startled to find out that what they do and say online can be accessed by others, and this record appears to be rather permanent. All this is said not to make you paranoid, but rather to be mindful that privacy online is complicated and it’s best to remember that.

      

Nothing online, and I mean nothing, is private.

      Understanding the disinhibition phenomenon

      Another important phenomenon is disinhibition. We do not entirely know why people often feel disinhibited or freer to express thoughts and feelings online. Sometimes that can be a good thing, but at times you can say things that might be better left unsaid. When on social media or other communication apps, it’s important to remember that the act of communicating online via text seems to bypass some neurological processing that might act as a buffer in verbal interactions; this may be due to differences in processing and less use of the frontal part of the brain that manages impulsivity, although this has not been formally established.

      The disinhibition you feel when communicating online can also impact your perception of intimacy; we found that when users communicate online, they can feel more connected and intimate with those they communicate with. However, this level of intimacy does not seem to reflect the same types of intimacy that occur through other modes of communication and connection. Although online communication is useful for work and social connection, it can lack some of the cues, boundaries, depth, nuance, and markers that allow real-time connection to establish deeper aspects of relatedness. The ironic fact is that people often feel more intimate more rapidly online, even though it is questionable whether this is analogous to real-time social connection. I have many patients who reported feeling almost instant closeness online only to find it didn’t cross over well in person.

      Cybersecurity, cyberstalking, and cyberbullying

      

Unfortunately, because everything online is vulnerable to hacking, there is a risk that sensitive information such as finances or other personal data can be hacked into, stolen, ransomed, or corrupted. Nothing is fully safe and secure online, and care must be taken to protect sensitive and private information, including, but not limited to, financial data.

The openness and easy accessibility of the Internet, along with the proliferation of social media, have created a firestorm of problems with cyberstalking and cyberbullying, as it is easy to troll someone online and track their digital and social footprint. Even more damaging, however, is the ease and relative frequency with which cyberbullying can occur. When someone says something about someone online, it’s difficult to erase the sting and stain of what is said. Perhaps the worst part is that a powerful feature of the Internet is its broadcast capability — and this makes cyberstalking and cyberbullying that much easier. Anyone can say anything online, and short of overt hate speech, and sometimes including it, it’s easy to get away with saying some psychologically damaging things about someone. This is an all-too-common occurrence for children, tweens, and teens, and there have been numerous cases where significant emotional damage was done and that, in some cases, resulted in suicides.

      

The Internet is powerful and can be used to communicate with others, but care must be taken to remember that everything said online is amplified and potentially broadcast to the world.

Chapter 2

      Studying the Biology of Addiction

      IN THIS CHAPTER

      

Finding out how addiction is linked to evolutionary survival

      

Discovering how the brain is susceptible to addiction

      

Checking out the parts of the brain involved in addiction

      Addiction can produce numerous negative psychological and behavioral effects. A large part of the addiction process is directly connected to the neurobiology of the brain — the topic of this chapter.

Understanding the Evolutionary Biology of Addiction

      The biological factors relating to addiction are primarily associated with the limbic system of the brain. The limbic area is found in the middle of the brain, and it sits on top of the brain stem and lower brain structures (sometimes called the old or reptilian brain) and just under the neocortex (the wrinkled, gray part of the brain — the one you think of when you picture a human brain). Neo refers to the newer section of the brain (newer in the sense