Add “Cyber-Addiction” to the list of Western Diseases

“I don’t have a problem. Seventeen hours a day online is fine.”
Lee Chang-Hoon, 15, at a camp for compulsive Internet users in South Korea.

Do you ever have trouble tearing yourself away from you computer screen? Do you find yourself incessantly checking your email? You may have a mental health issue. At least if you live in the USA or one of the other countries that have identified compulsive Internet use as an addiction and a mental health malady.

Westerners love having issues. That’s what wealth and health do to humankind. They allow him to sit back and wallow in his emotional and psychological issues. Ok, that’s a different post. Today, I want to allow for the possibility that Lee Chang-Hoon, the south Korean teenager quoted above, may in fact have a problem.

South Korea is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. According to a recent NY Times article, In Korea, A Boot Camp for Web Obsession, “Ninety % of homes connect to cheap, high-speed broadband, online gaming is a professional sport, and social life for the young revolves around the ‘PC bang,” dim internet parlors that sit on practically every street corner.” As a result of the universal access to the web, Internet usage has become a national issue in South Korea. Users have “dropped dead” after prolonged engagement with online games and students cut classes to stay online, very unusual behavior in this extremely competitive society.

According to child psychiatrist, Ahn Dong-hyun, up to 30% of South Koreans under age 18 are at risk of Internet addiction. What does an addict look like? They spend two hours or more per day online playing or chatting AND

1) cannot stop themselves from using the computer
2) develop higher and higher tolerance levels and thus require longer and longer online sessions
3) experience withdrawal symptoms like anger or cravings when not allowed access to the net.

To meet the challenge of this Cyber-Addiction the South Korean government launched this past summer the first ever Internet Rescue Camp. (Researchers have even developed a checklist with which to evaluate the severity of one’s I-addiction, This checklist is called the K list (”K” for Korea)). Young men like Lee can enroll at this tuition free boot camp and work through their addictions.

One of the counselors states that it’s important to expose the young women and men to a life without a computer. They don’t know what that’s like, he states.

That says a whole lot.

Here are some questions that come up. Eventually we will have ubiquitous connectivity. Our environment will be wired. What’s more, we may be wired ourselves. We will live in a state of perpetual connectivity. Is there a point at which our “being online” will no longer be perceived as something we do but something we are?

Personally, I get physically sick if I spend too much time in front of my computer. I’m not usually wasting time playing or chatting online. I’m usually working. I’m just wired the old way. For me, even a cell phone is way too much connectivity. Since I rarely answer it, my cell is a portable answering machine. But will the next generations be wired for connectivity without ceasing? Will not knowing what a disconnected world was like change this mental disease into a part of our mental landscape?

Will a concerned parent of the future ask a counselor about their son, “He can’t seem to stay online. We just don’t know what to do.”

This article spoke to me because sometimes I think that sometimes we’re too busy with our friends and family online to be engaged with our friends and family in the same room. It’s like being in the middle of a conversation with someone who gets a call on his cell. For some reason, the call takes priority over the face to face conversation. The next time that happens to me, I’m immediately taking out my cell and calling the person on his cell. That way we’ll be able to finish our chat looking at each other face to face but speaking together on the phone. Too often our technology dictates how we use our time. When that happens and we become slave to our technology rather than master, it may be time to look up the Internet Rescue Camp.

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