INTERNET ADDICTION
INTERNET ADDICTION
Many children and teenagers spend a lot of time on social media, video games, and other activities on screens. But internet addiction is not a clinical mental health diagnosis. That’s because screens don’t affect kids’ brains the same way that drugs or alcohol would. They may feel like they can’t stop using the internet, but they’re not chemically dependent in the same way.
Still, spending a lot of time online becomes a problem when it interferes with a child’s ability to have a normal life. Social media and games are very stimulating to kids’ brains. That can make it hard for them to take breaks and focus on other things. Technology negatively impacts kids if they spend so much time on screens that they skimp on eating, sleeping, doing their homework, or spending time with friends and families. Research suggests that heavy social media use can also be a risk factor for anxiety and depression in teenagers.
At the same time, it’s important to remember that a lot of what kids do online is age-appropriate and healthy. Using tech to talk to friends, listen to music, explore interests, and play games isn’t a problem in moderation. If your child still has enough time for all the other important activities in their life, then you probably don’t need to worry about their screen use.
If you do think that your child is spending too much time on activities like video games, the real issue might be an underlying mental health problem. Anxiety, depression, ADHD, and learning disorders can all lead kids to take refuge in online activities. Once their underlying issue is treated, they may feel more able to engage with offline friendships and activities.
internet addiction. Phone addiction. Technology addiction. Whatever you call it, a lot of parents are expressing worries that their children are addicted to their devices.
Is the behavior that parents are concerned about really addiction?
What parents are alarmed about is usually two things: the sheer amount of time their kids spend on screens, and their kids’ resistance to cutting back on that screen time. Getting them to put away their devices and come to dinner, engage in other activities, go outside or do their homework (without also checking social media and streaming TV shows) seems to be an increasingly uphill battle.
Kids sometimes use the word “addiction” to describe their own behavior, too. In a 2016 survey by Common Sense Media, half of teenagers said they “feel” they’re addicted to their mobile device. Three quarters of them said they felt compelled to immediately respond to texts, social media posts and other notifications.
“More often than not, when people say that someone is addicted to the internet or addicted to their phone, they’re using it colloquially,” notes David Anderson, PhD, a clinicalpsychologist at the Child Mind Institute. By calling it addiction, parents are often communicating their concern that so much screen time is unhealthy, as well as their feeling that they’re powerless to stop it.
Are kids addicted?
While the comparison tosubstance abuse is tempting, because devices are stimulating to the same reward centers of the brain, experts point out crucial differences.
“Addiction doesn’t really capture the behavior we’rre seeing,” says Matthew Cruger, PhD, a neuropsychologist and the director of the Learning and Development Center at the Child Mind Insititute. “With addiction you have a chemical that changes the way we respond, that leads us to be reliant on it for our level of functioning. That’s not what ‘s happening here. We don’t develop higher levels of tolerance. We don’t need more and more screen time in order to be able to function.”
There is, technically, no such thing as internet or phone addiction. Some in the psychiatric community have proposed a new disorder called internet gaming disorder, to recognize unhealthy patterns of game-playing. But to rise to the level of a disorder, Dr. Anderson notes, the behavior would would be very extreme, and seriously impairing to a child’s life.
That would mean an amount of screen time that’s not only more than parents feel comfortable with, but that crowds out other age-appropriate activities, like socializing, sports, school work — even hygiene and sleep. “We would be looking at adolescents who are pushing everything else out of their lives,” explains Dr. Anderson. “They are not having friendships, not engaging socially — at least offline — and they may be failing in school.”
Some parents may see addict-like behavior, Dr. Anderson adds, when kids get angry if they’re required to stop, insist on more and more screen time, spend a lot of offline time thinking about how and when they will get back online. But these kind of behaviors can be prompted by many pleasurable activities, and don’t constitute an addiction. “More often than not, what I see are parents who are concerned about their teenager’s behavior around screens use the word addiction when it doesn’t really fit.”
One reason to be cautious about using the term, he added, “is that we have a tendency right now within the zeitgeist to pathologize normal adolescent behavior.”
What are kids doing online?
The amount of time teenagers typically spend on phones and other devices can be misleading as a measure of whether they are unhealthily engaged. That’s because many of the things kids do on those devices are age-appropriate activities that in the past have been done offline: socializing with peers, exploring personal interests, shopping, listening to music, doing schoolwork, watching movies or TV.
Texting and use of social media sites, for instance, have become important channels for adolescents connecting to others and being validated. Role-playing games allow kids to interact not only with friends, but to people around the world. A 2016 report by Common Sense Media concluded: “What looks like excessive use and distraction is actually a reflection of new ways of maintaining peer relations and engaging in communities that are relevant to them.”
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