Defining Internet addiction is no simple thing. At what point does regular use go beyond habitual and into addiction? Who gets to define this issue? After all, we don’t want to pathologize behavior that everyone we know, including ourselves, engages in to some degree. And yet, we’re seeing signs of serious Internet addiction across all sectors of our society. There are accounts of children dying because their parents were so immersed in online gaming that they neglected to give them proper care. There are cases in which people are so addicted to staying on the Internet that they stop eating, bathing, or even going to the restroom normally—instead wearing adult diapers so that they don’t ever have to leave the screen. Prolonged, nonstop online activity has led some people into full-blown psychosis, in which they develop paranoid thinking along with auditory and visual hallucinations that require inpatient treatment for weeks, or even months, to resolve. Clearly, there is such a thing as Internet addiction that goes beyond the regular person’s tendency to perhaps watch one too many Netflix shows in a row or get lost in the rabbit hole of social media for longer than they prefer. So how do we define that addiction?
Let’s look first at what it means to have an addiction at all. In general, addiction is defined as engaging in the compulsive use of a substance or behavior in spite of negative life consequences (which may include, but are not limited to, a negative impact on health, relationships, and finances). Addiction also has signs of withdrawal, cravings, and increased tolerance. Let’s consider alcohol addiction, for example. Many people drink beer or wine on a regular basis. Historically, it was very common for people to have a “cocktail hour” each day after work. That’s ongoing, regular, repetitive behavior. However, that alone doesn’t mean that the person has an addiction. If the person can’t stop themselves from compulsively drinking alcohol on a daily basis, then there’s a big red flag that this might be addiction. If drinking every day impacts their life in a negative way, and they still can’t or won’t quit, then it’s almost certainly addiction. If they do try to quit and experience the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal, then there’s addiction at play.
As you can see, addiction exists on a spectrum. With alcohol, some people drink regularly, but it doesn’t negatively impact their lives in any significant way. They can stop if they choose to do so. Sure, there might be a little bit of withdrawal symptoms, but they can manage and get through it. That’s not addiction, although it clearly exists somewhere on a spectrum from “no problem” to “addicted.” When the addiction begins to cause repercussions and the person is mentally or physically unable to stop consuming the alcohol, it’s addiction. That framework helps us better understand what it means to have an addiction in general, which makes it easier to get a sense of what Internet addiction might be.
Internet addiction is a term for compulsive Internet use that causes some kind of hindrance to life but the person continues the behavior in spite of the negative consequences. If they do try to stop, they experience withdrawal symptoms.
It is a behavioral addiction, which is in contrast to a substance addiction. Other behavioral addictions include gambling, shopping, and overeating. To reiterate then, Internet addiction has three key components:
This latter part of the definition is the key thing to pay attention to when trying to determine if someone has an Internet addiction. Frequent use of the Internet may not itself be a problem for some people. It becomes an addiction when the person is unable to reduce or stop usage despite consequences to key areas of the person’s life. It is even more clearly an addiction when the person’s tolerance goes up (so they need a bigger “hit” of the Internet experience to get the same “high”) and/or they have cravings and withdrawal as a result of trying to reduce Internet use.
For example, a teenager might enjoy online gaming so much that they do it every single day after school. While it might frustrate parents, it’s not necessarily a problem. If they attend school, get decent grades, and have some friends outside of the online world, then there’s not necessarily an addiction. Kids like video games, and that’s not necessarily a sign of addiction in and of itself. But if they are staying up so late that they can’t get to school, their grades are dropping, their only social life is through the game, and they refuse to eat or exercise because they don’t want to get offline, then there’s likely an issue. If parents take away the Internet and the child reacts with aggression or depression, which can both be reactions to withdrawal symptoms, then there’s likely an addiction at play.
As you can see, addiction, including Internet addiction, isn’t a clear-cut thing. Nevertheless, we can start to define it at a basic level when we look at the following criteria:
Although this basic definition is the most important part of a diagnosis, it’s worth taking a look at the history of Internet addiction to get a better sense of how to define it. It’s also important to consider how the mental health and medical communities define the condition according to various diagnostic criteria.
Children growing up today can’t even imagine a world without the Internet. In fact, I recently went to a lecture attended by multiple generations interested in learning about the impact of the Stonewall riots on gay/trans history. There were people there (baby boomers) who were immersed in activist culture in the 1960s, and they shared their anecdotes with Gen Xers, millennials, and the Gen Z attendees of the talk. This talk took place in San Francisco, so a key part of the talk was exploring how the event, which happened on the East Coast, impacted activism on the West Coast. People from these older generations shared that although they had heard of Stonewall at the time of the event, it wasn’t something that made a lot of waves right away in California. That’s certainly not because people in California weren’t touched by the issue. Gay rights was a huge issue here. Instead, it was because, frankly, it took a long time for news to make its way from one coast to the other. It took time to interview people who were there (often by very expensive phone calls or travel), write up those stories, publish them in newspapers, and then share those news stories with people across the nation. The riots happened in June, and it wasn’t until October that California newspapers really seemed to make mention of them.
The millennials and Gen Zers in the audience seemed baffled by this time lag in communication. If you grew up after the Internet was a regular part of life, it’s hard to understand how long it would take for news to reach people. It’s challenging to think about how few places published information about an event like Stonewall, how difficult it was to access those resources, and how unlikely it was to be able to find widely differing opinions about such an event. If Stonewall happened today, it would instantly be announced on Twitter, we would see images of the event unfolding in real time on Instagram, and every news outlet, from niche bloggers to big media, would quickly be there to report on the event. In fact, it would be a completely different experience for everyone involved, and it’s important to highlight that even people on the opposite coast might feel “involved” because of the ability to participate to such a high degree thanks to the Internet.
All of this is to say that the Internet has changed our world in ways both tiny and immense. Even those of us who grew up without access to the Internet tend to take it for granted that it’s at our fingertips today. Most of us have some sense of what Internet addiction is, if only because our own online behavior has grown increasingly compulsive, and sometimes problematic, over time. There’s a tendency then to think of Internet addiction as always kind of being a problem for some people. We may know that cell phones weren’t available during the Stonewall riots, but when we picture it, we still kind of mentally think of time moving at the same pace as it did then. We know the Internet wasn’t always there, but we behave and tend to think like it was. But when we look back at the history of the technology, and how it has impacted our mental health, we realize that this is really a twenty-first-century problem.
The term “Internet addiction” did begin making its way into society at the very end of the twentieth century. One of the earliest professional studies of the condition began in 1994 when Kimberly Young of the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford used anecdotal evidence of clients to gain more information about the issue. This was a three-year-long study that was eventually published in a book called Caught in the Net. This period, right at the end of the 1990s, marked an increase in awareness about how the Internet was more and more prevalent and might be more and more of a problem for some people.
In March 1995, a New York Times article appeared called “The Lure and Addiction of Life OnLine.” This may be the first time in history that the term “Internet addiction disorder” was used in a major publication. The article quoted specialists in addiction and compared the issue to other behavioral addictions, including compulsive gambling, shopping, and exercise. There were not any professional criteria for diagnosing the condition. There was simply growing awareness of the fact that people were engaging in Internet behavior in increasingly addictive ways. Our best option was to look at other forms of addiction to see how Internet behavior compared to those established issues so that we could begin to understand what it might mean to be addicted to the Internet.
It’s an interesting sidenote that you can quickly and effortlessly pull this article up online today. When you do, you’ll see that it begins with a note or disclaimer that reads, “This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996.” Even as people were beginning to define the problem of Internet addiction, such an established publication hadn’t yet begun to offer an online version of their work. The world was changing quickly, and we were really only starting to guess at what it might mean for each of us, particularly those people prone to addictive behavior.
During this same time period, scientists began working to find a definition for Internet addiction using measurable criteria. As mentioned, they used working models of addiction already accepted in the community. They looked at both substance and behavioral addiction, because the two forms of addiction do have many similarities. They drew more heavily on information about behavioral addiction, because engaging with the Internet is a behavior (although, as we will see in Chapter 3, behavioral addiction can actually trigger chemicals in the brain in such a way that it mirrors substance addiction). Based on the criteria for addiction in general, scientists in the late 1990s determined that identifying Internet or technology addicts required the following traits:
In other words, a person with an Internet addiction feels compelled to frequent and increasing use of the technology despite the fact that it’s causing problems in one or more areas of their life. They go online “too much,” and they can’t stop even though their health or relationships suffer as a direct result of the behavior. That basic definition is the definition that we’ve been working with since the 1990s, and it’s a good working definition of what Internet addiction is. However, over the years, professionals from various fields have adapted and supplemented this definition with a more refined understanding of the condition.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (known more commonly as the DSM) is a guide used by psychologists and other health-care professionals in the United States to officially diagnose all mental disorders. The book, which is written by a panel of psychiatrists, is reviewed regularly, and conditions may be added or removed based on scientific evaluation and the industry’s evolving understanding of humanity. The first edition was published by the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1952; it has grown about tenfold in length since then.
There are certainly pros and cons to the DSM. People have a lot of concerns about labeling individuals with certain conditions. One of the most well-known examples of how a DSM diagnosis can be pathologizing and problematic is the fact that in early editions of the book, homosexuality was considered a mental disorder, which of course today we find appalling. This reflects how the standards of psychiatry, and thus the DSM diagnostic labels, are naturally directly impacted by social, cultural, and medical beliefs prevalent in society at the time of the writing. In fact, it took several changes to the DSM to remove the entry “homosexuality” entirely. In the first edition, it was its own “disorder.” Then the label was changed to “ego-dystonic homosexuality,” meaning essentially that it was only a disorder if the person felt like it was a problem. A later edition subsumed homosexuality as a “problem” quietly under the larger term “sexual orientation disturbance.” It wasn’t until the 1980s that it was entirely removed from the DSM as professionals and laypeople alike began to recognize that being gay isn’t a mental health problem at all.
This is all to say that the DSM is flawed and has been rightly criticized, but it’s also the standard that mental health professionals adhere to when giving a clinical diagnosis—which may be solely for insurance purposes but can also be a means to guide treatment. So, regardless of what you think of the DSM and its many flaws, it’s important to realize that the way we diagnose mental health disorders in America today relies heavily on the DSM. Moreover, each edition of the DSM does reflect a wide swath of the current understanding and research related to conditions impacting people in society today. Therefore, the DSM editions of the past clearly wouldn’t have included issues of Internet addiction since the Internet wasn’t even around in those early days, but as the Internet has grown in prevalence and more and more issues with it have emerged, the psychiatrists on the deciding panel of the DSM have had to consider whether or not the problem rises to the level of a mental health disorder.
The current edition of the DSM, the DSM-5, does not have a diagnosis specific to Internet addiction. In fact, the only behavioral addiction that is found in the DSM is for gambling. This shows us that what general society recognizes as a problematic behavior—such as compulsive shopping or overeating—hasn’t necessarily made it into the DSM, yet, because there is a stringent process for editing the DSM in each new version and that process hasn’t always caught up with the realities of the modern world. This isn’t necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. It’s good that it takes a long time for psychiatrists to assess a problem to determine what it really means and what the criteria would be to diagnose it. It’s a good thing that we don’t immediately pathologize problematic behaviors by giving them a diagnostic label.
On the other hand, a lot of the treatment options in our society require a mental health diagnosis. If there is no diagnosis for “overeating” or “Internet addiction,” then it can be much harder for people facing those challenges to find affordable care to help in dealing with the reality of those issues. So, there are some good reasons for labeling a problem as a disorder in the DSM, but there is also a lot of caution around adding new terms.
It is worth noting that Internet addiction has sometimes been viewed as an impulse control disorder. The DSM-3 was the first edition of the manual that included disorders of impulse control. Those disorders included kleptomania and pyromania. The defining feature of those disorders is that there is an impulse and the person fails to resist that impulse, despite the fact that it harms self or others. The individual struggling with impulse control will feel tension before giving into the impulse, relief while completing the act, guilt after the act, and withdrawal until the tension builds, and the cycle starts over again. People attempting to quit Internet addiction may experience this same cycle of feelings. While the Internet didn’t widely exist during the time of the DSM-3, if it had, then it might have fallen under the “impulse control disorder” category. That category still exists today. Therefore, a person seeking treatment might be able to work with professionals using that definition of Internet addiction even though the specific disorder of Internet addiction isn’t listed in the DSM.
Internet addiction is a relatively new thing in our society. It has evolved rapidly with the rise and change of technology including not only computers but also smartphones and other widely accessible devices from tablets to cloud-based technologies and voice-activated personal assistants like Alexa. It’s no surprise that Internet addiction as a whole is not represented in the DSM, yet. It’s just too new an issue for us to really know how to address it. That said, there is one aspect of Internet addiction that is mentioned in the DSM-5, in a section recommending further study. That aspect is Internet gaming disorder.
One of the things that has to happen in order for people to widely accept a specific diagnosis with detailed criteria is that studies have to take place to determine what it means to have this illness. It takes time for those studies to occur. In terms of the Internet, some behaviors are older than others. Internet gaming and online pornography are two of the oldest, most prevalent, most addictive Internet behaviors. Therefore, they are the most widely studied. It’s no surprise that online gaming was the first form of the condition to receive official DSM attention. It has enough of a history—and the studies to support the claims—to suggest it’s an issue.
Recent editions of the DSM, in particular, recognize the flaws inherent in this system of diagnosis. That’s why the book has become increasingly broader, sometimes opting not to define a condition as a disorder but instead to recommend more study for future editions. This lends credibility to the issue as a potential problem, gives professionals some ideas of what to look for in assessing people for the problem, and lends legitimacy to additional studies into the issue. That’s where we are currently at with Internet gaming disorder in the DSM. It’s not an official diagnosis, but it’s emerging as enough of a problem that the authors recommend further study.
The DSM is the “gold standard” of diagnosis in the United States. However, people around the world are equally or more likely to turn to a similar tool: the International Classification of Diseases or ICD. This is a system maintained by the World Health Organization (WHO) to classify all different types of health issues, including those related to mental health. It’s very common for DSM diagnoses and ICD diagnoses to look similar, but there are also differences between the two. If you want to fully understand a mental health issue, a good place to start is to look at the similarities and differences between how it is defined by the DSM and the ICD.
The WHO has been working with the ICD-10 edition since 1992. Since there weren’t even studies of Internet addiction at the time, it’s no surprise that it’s not mentioned in that edition. The WHO does publish minor updates annually, but there hasn’t been a big edition change since that time, until recently. The WHO officially accepted ICD-11 in May 2019, and this new edition’s guidelines will go into full effect in 2022. This new edition, like the newest version of the DSM, includes the online gaming aspect of Internet addiction. Unlike the DSM, it’s not “recommended for further study” but is officially included as a diagnosis.
The ICD says that gaming disorder is a pattern of digital or video gaming (which these days basically always takes place online) with the following problematic criteria:
ICD-11 is conservative in its diagnosis in that it requires symptoms to be present for at least one year. Some would suggest that six months of nonstop gaming with continued use despite problems in multiple areas of life could be considered an addiction. However, the official diagnosis suggests observation of what happens over the course of a full year before giving someone this label.
Although the DSM-5 doesn’t have an official diagnosis for Internet addiction and only includes a recommendation for further study of Internet gaming specifically, it is widely recognized in the medical community and the society at large that there are many people who are struggling with compulsive Internet behavior. Likewise, ICD-11 does have an official diagnosis, but it’s limited to online gaming and doesn’t include other addictive online behaviors (yet), but this WHO change is a significant indicator of increasing global awareness about problematic Internet use.
The DSM is used primarily in the United States and the Western world. The ICD is used more widely, but it’s not the standard everywhere. It certainly isn’t the only way that professionals in the mental health field deal with the realities of problems presented by their patients. In fact, professionals throughout the world see Internet addiction as a growing problem. And in some parts of the world, professionals do consider Internet addiction disorder to be a real (and serious) problem. China, for example, has identified Internet addiction disorder as its number one health crisis. One tool used to measure Internet addiction in Chinese adolescents is called the Chen Internet Addiction Scale (CIAS). It measures compulsive use, withdrawal, and tolerance as well as problems with time management, health, and relationships. These are all the same indicators that we would use to address behavioral addiction in the United States or Europe, but they’re applied specifically to concern about Internet use (and although that includes gaming as a primary focus, it’s not just about online gaming).
Kimberly Young, the psychologist who did the first major study of Internet addiction beginning in 1994, used a screening tool that asks about different criteria including being preoccupied with the Internet. It covers many of the same questions as the CIAS model, including staying on the Internet longer than planned, trying to quit Internet use, growing tolerance, and negative impacts on jobs and relationships. In addition, there are questions about mood changes, lying to others about usage, and using the Internet as a means of escape. All of these criteria are things that professionals in the mental health field may look to in order to diagnose Internet addiction problems among clients.
There are also specific tests for certain types of Internet addiction. For example, World of Warcraft is one of the most widely cited games related to Internet gaming addiction, and there is a free online test to check for addiction to that game specifically. The popular version of this test, available at Wowaholics.com, is adapted from the CAGE questionnaire for identifying alcohol addiction. It asks four questions, and people who have more than two “yes” answers are considered addicted. The four questions are whether you have ever (1) felt that you should cut down use, (2) been annoyed by people criticizing your game play, (3) felt bad or guilty about playing, and (4) felt like you have to play first thing in the morning to steady yourself? Arguably, this is a really limited and perhaps unscientific approach to diagnosing a World of Warcraft addiction. It may still be a good starting point for figuring out if you have a possible problem.
An individual does not have to be officially diagnosed with a behavioral addiction to suffer the consequences of that addiction. Many people today recognize that their Internet use is problematic for them and would like to change their behavior. Whether that use rises to the level of addiction or not is less important than the desire to change.
While plenty of individuals see a potential problem, addiction is often something that people in a person’s life will point out to them. Parents, spouses, and bosses may make comments about the person’s frequent use. They may do so in jest, but if it happens often enough, it might be a sign that something could be wrong. If someone expresses direct and clear concern or frustration, it’s at least worth taking a look at to determine whether or not there’s a problem.
If you are concerned that you or someone you care about might have a problem with Internet addiction, then Kevin Roberts might be a good resource to help you identify whether or not there is an issue. Roberts is a recovering video game addict and a nationally recognized expert and author on the issue of online gaming addiction. He runs support groups to help others. According to him, someone with four or more of the following traits may have a problem with Internet addiction. This list is specifically for Internet gaming issues, but it can be used to consider whether any Internet use is becoming problematic. The traits are as follows:
Roberts also notes that people vulnerable to addiction experience “normal” Internet usage as all encompassing. Whereas most of us feel a little boost of energy when we check social media, a person with an addiction to it will become so focused on social media that they fail to engage with important people and activities in order to attend to their online interaction. They stop thinking about other things in life because they’re obsessed with the Internet. They justify their Internet use when it’s obvious to others that they are making excuses for behavior that has started to cause real problems in their lives.
Roberts’s list of criteria is one of the best starting places for self-identification of a problem. You can also draw from the descriptions in the DSM and ICD for some guidance. Ultimately, though, the very best place to check is your own gut. Deep inside, we always know when there is a problem. We certainly have a lot of defense mechanisms in place that allow us to hide addiction from ourselves, but somewhere inside us the compass is pointing to our true north, and if we can tap into it, then we can get a sense when things just aren’t right. The ironic thing about Internet addiction is that it does a great job of distracting us and numbing us to our internal compass, so it becomes easy to avoid sensing that there’s a problem. The addiction itself takes over our attention. That’s why it helps to get an outside opinion, whether from a friend or from a professional, and to use that opinion to check in with yourself about whether or not there might be an issue.
One of the questions that come up, particularly when people self-evaluate for Internet addiction, is whether the behavior is a true addiction or merely a habit. The best way to think of this is that the behavior exists on a spectrum. A habit, when performed often enough, mindlessly, and to the detriment of the individual, is an addiction. At the opposite end of the spectrum is a habit that someone is aware of and chooses mindfully as a desired behavior. For example, brushing your teeth is a habit that most people have. Someone who brushes their teeth compulsively, fifty or more times per day, has a problem that might be called an addiction (or an impulse control disorder or an obsessive compulsive behavior). Most habits lie somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, with many behaviors leaning toward addictive in the sense that they create some kind of discomfort or problem for the individual struggling with the issue.
Related to this issue is the issue of cravings and withdrawal. There is a spectrum to consider in this area as well. Desire and wanting to engage with the Internet lie at the habit side of the spectrum. When you began to feel a need to engage, or a deeper craving, then you’re moving toward addiction. When you have a craving, it feels like your survival depends on responding to the craving. This is related to withdrawal in addiction, where not using the Internet leads to deep, intensifying cravings to use.
The world is definitely changing regarding what constitutes acceptable habitual behavior with the Internet. Look at books from 2010 and earlier, and you’ll see many references to the rarity of staying up all night online or checking email during a business meeting. At the time, these were not common behaviors and were warning signs of addiction. Now everyone has their phone out all of the time; it is not at all unusual for phones to be in use during meetings and dinner dates. Many people keep their phones by their bedside and not only check them first thing in the morning but also check them if they wake up in the night. In some cases, this is a habit, and it’s supported by our society. In other cases, the use can become problematic, and it moves toward the addiction end of the spectrum.
It can be hard to tell when a habit has started to control us to the point that it becomes an addiction. However, you can choose to change your behavior regardless of where it lies on the spectrum. If you have a habit that you don’t think is serving you, it’s worth considering ways to change it. If that habit is increasingly causing you problems in work, time management, relationships, physical heath, and/or mental health and you find yourself unable to reduce usage in spite of these problems, then you are leaning more and more toward addiction. People with bad habits may be able to reduce use on their own, while people with more severe addictions may seek help for the problem.
One of the things that make it really difficult to define Internet addiction today is the fact that there is a blurring of lines between all of our different forms of technology. Is it still “Internet addiction” if what you’re doing compulsively is texting on your cell phone without logging on to the Internet? What if what you’re addicted to is your Fitbit that tracks health and exercise information? As fast as we can study one form of “Internet” addiction, some new potentially addictive technology pops up, and we have to figure out whether it even falls into the same category.
Historically, cell phone addiction was studied separately from Internet addiction. Today, most cell phones do connect to the Internet. In fact, these days everything from our cars to our refrigerators are high tech, and many of them are connected online. The technology is changing faster that we can account for as we study Internet addiction.
Mark Griffiths of Nottingham Trent University prefers the term “technology addiction.” He defines this as a behavioral addiction (meaning a nonsubstance addiction) that involves interaction between a human and a machine. Some people will say that this definition is too broad. Others may say that in a world where artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly an everyday reality, it may become too difficult to even define the difference between a human and a machine. So, technology addiction may be too broad a word or it may be too narrow, but it gives us one way of encompassing the many different devices that now relate to some degree to Internet addiction.
Another phrase has been coined by Dr. Larry Rosen, a research psychologist and expert in the psychology of technology. He’s the author of a book titled iDisorder, which is a term he uses to define an enmeshed relationship with technology. He says that user-friendly technologies create a sense of dependence, obsession, and stress that simultaneously encourages our overreliance on them while causing problems for our mental health. He specifically explores how daily use of media and technology leads to changes in the human brain’s ability to process information and relate to others in the world. He considers both gadgets and websites to be culprits in an iDisorder. So, “iDisorder” is another term that we could use in place of Internet addiction to define the addiction to changing technologies related to the Internet.
“Cyberaddiction” is yet another term that is commonly used instead of “Internet addiction.” This term gives many people the sense that the issue isn’t limited to the Internet, per se, but instead to the behaviors associated with using cell phones, computers, and other related technologies. “Cyber” is loosely defined as things that relate to computers, virtual reality, and information technology. Therefore, it encompasses “the Internet” but it’s not limited to it, making it a broader definition than Internet addiction alone.
We could debate for hours (and some people have) about the correct name for the addiction to these different devices and activities. In this book, we use the term “Internet addiction” to describe more than just addiction to the Internet but also to other technology-based activities such as Fitbit monitoring and text messaging.
Not only has technology changed a lot in recent years, but it also keeps changing more and more frequently. Looking back across time, we can see that it took about two decades after the invention of the telephone for a majority of society to start using the device. In contrast, cell phones were introduced in 1985 and became popular ten years later (although it took another ten years for the number of cell phones to surpass the number of landlines in the United States).
Cell phone adoption was faster than that of landlines but not nearly as fast as the technologies to come. Both the World Wide Web and instant messaging needed only four years for widespread adoption and blogging about three; it took even less than that for social media to take hold. Things are changing quickly, becoming more readily available to each of us, and we may not know how to integrate the technology into our lives in a healthy way.
A few key things have changed in technology that make it potentially more addictive than ever before. We can gain some perspective on these features by looking at the evolution of video games. Think back to the first interactive home video game systems, such as Atari. Kids would gather together around the machine, and they may get very immersed in it for a time, but the activity was self-limiting. There were only a handful of games. The games were limited to a maximum of two players at a time. The goal was to “beat the game,” and once you completed all of the levels of the game, it wasn’t very fun to keep on playing it. In other words, kids would naturally lose interest, and because they were in a room together, they would eventually stop playing the games to do other things with each other such as kick a ball around outside.
When gaming systems went online, it was a completely different story. Computers could connect to one another, meaning that kids could sit in their own rooms, in separate homes, and compete. They would go head to head, which meant that they were competing against each other, instead of trying to “beat the game.” It was no longer just “you take a turn, then I take a turn.” This increased interactivity created new options for game play that pumped up adrenaline and prolonged the amount of time people would play any given game.
With the creation of massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), the changes were magnified. You can play with many people, at any hour of the day or night, working with teammates to compete against others. You can constantly level up; there is no “beating the game” because there is always something more to do in the fantasy world created there. This evolution from Atari is a terrific example of how our technology has gotten faster, more interactive, and more pervasive. The games are more realistic, they happen in real time, and they are much more immersive. It is much easier to lose ourselves in a twenty-first-century game than in Atari’s Donkey Kong or Frogger.
We see this same trend with other devices. Social media, for example, connects us to constantly changing information from people we know and strangers all around the world. We could never have looked at a pager every few minutes throughout the day because there simply wasn’t anything there to engage with, but it is not uncommon for people to check their social media accounts or look for new text messages on their phones many, many times throughout an hour.
It is almost impossible to keep up with what it means to be overusing technology to the point of addiction when the technology itself is changing so much. The 1994 Internet addiction study by Kimberly Young (who founded the Center for Internet Addiction the following year) found that people engaged in “interactive applications” were most prone to addiction. At that time, interactive meant participating in chat rooms and news groups. Engaging with other people in this way was found to be more addictive than simply “surfing the web.” In the twenty-first century, the number of opportunities for interactive communication has increased dramatically. It follows that the potential for addiction has also increased.
This has developed alongside the changes in mobile technology. At one time in recent history, much attention was given to the addictive potential of computers, without as much focus on that of cell phones. The content itself was what was viewed as addictive, and the limited technology of older cell phones limited that content. Smartphones today are capable of accessing all of the content—and more, and more quickly—as twentieth-century computers. As such, studying cell phone addiction and computer addiction separately no longer makes much sense.
The advances in mobile technology also mean a change in addictive potential. When accessing the Internet meant that you had to sit at a desktop computer, you were naturally limited in how much time you could spend online. (That’s not even to mention the fact that you used to have to pay per minute for Internet use, so you were financially restricted as well.) Eventually, you had to get up from the desktop and go out into the world. (This was well before the days when Amazon delivery could instantly bring almost anything that you needed right to your doorstep.) Even when cell phones first began connecting to the Internet, they were somewhat self-limiting. The service wasn’t great, so you couldn’t connect everywhere, and you often paid exorbitant fees for Internet usage. Now that Internet-connected cell phones work so well, so quickly, so affordably, almost everywhere, we can easily spend all of our waking hours online.