Omg, surely not !!! "Internet addiction 'disrupts brain'"

Apologies if this has already been posted, I did do a seach.

Apparently, extreme internet use can affect the adolescent mind.

Internet addiction disrupts nerve wiring in the brains of teenagers, a study has found.

The article goes further to say...

Similar effects have been seen in the brains of people exposed to alcohol, coc aine and cannabis. The discovery shows that being hooked on a behaviour can be just as physically damaging as addiction to drugs, scientists believe.

Full article here

Now it is obvious during puberty the brain is still under construction, and many systems are temporarily offline, but is it really possible for the internet to warp an individual to the effect of exhibiting damage like that seen in those addicted to alcohol, and other substances ?

Personally, although I spend a lot of time on the net, I don't think I have a problem (hmmmm denial perhaps ?! )
in the main I use the internet to further my knowledge, in current affairs, and areas of itnerest, sure I play the odd online game, but that's about it.

But I don't think my mind is suffereing in any way, having said that I am in my 30's.

So my question to everyone is what they see from this article ?

Is it valid ?

Is it just teens affected ?

Is a similar effect found in adults of any age ?

Is this a form of control, to prevent us for using the iternet to communicate for any length of time, so as to curb freedom of expression, and curtail the co-ordination of any specific group from taking action over perceived injustices undertaken by others (corporate, governmental, or otherwise) ?

For me it seems nothing is safe any longer, even using a computer as the article suggests, can be bad for your health !

Yea the internet is physically damaging because your learning the "truths" they don't what you to know.

What a croc of poo! Free information is only harmful to the ones controlling you.

Nice post, Thanks for sharing!

I use the internet every day and ive turned out fine. Must be just the kids that use it 10 hours at a time that get affected.

reply to post by mileslong54


I totally agree, what could they possibly dream up next, tv doccumentaries, can leave you cerebally challenged, and in turn lead to depression ?

For me this is one step too much !

reply to post by LonelyGuy


Or perhaps it is how the internet is used ?

Maybe these kids are solidly gaming, rather than using the internet to expand their minds ?

HI OP

im also in my 30s
my 1st computer was a zx spectrum then a comodore 64
ive loved the way the graphics have advanced in the yrs
but saying that, playability has always been the main focus

i remember wen sonic came out for the master system
and the graphics got realy fast from left to right
and actualy caused epilepsy in several kids
i was about 12 and tried to explain to my elders that it doesnt cause epilepsy
it merely brings it out, sort of triggers it off..they wouldnt listen and so i was limited to 2hrs a day lol
i wouldnt mind but a speccy took ages to load a game bk then...

sorry went of topic
bk to the 80s i went....

Originally posted by mileslong54
Yea the internet is physically damaging because your learning the "truths" they don't what you to know.

What a croc of poo! Free information is only harmful to the ones controlling you.

Nice post, Thanks for sharing!

edit on 11-1-2012 by mileslong54 because: (no reason given)

Lol omg... So sex addiction is only bad because they dont want you having so much sex? Maybe thats why the karma sutra is so shhhd about? ZOMG!

Internet addiction, is as tangible as any other addiction, if it disrupts your life and creates issues within your life, it is a problem.

However I'd not call it addiction.. You don't suffer physical withdrawal if you stop, it's more psychologically habitual. Just like cannabis.

Lifelong habits are learned as teenagers, so I'm very sure isn't quite as groundbreaking or scary as some would assume.

Next, they are going to come out with a study that shows teenagers who masturbate get addicted to it. Of course your brain is going to change a little when it finds something it likes.

This doesn't make any sense. For years, the standard line is that the real damage done by illegal drugs and alcohol is that it messes with the young brain with the chemicals involved in its makeup. I've never heard anything about the actual behavior addiction being what really shorts out those neurons and connections.

In short, it's a bunch of garbage done by some jerks that don't like or understand technology and want it labeled as bad, even dangerous.

I'm learning meditation to retrain my brain to recover from years of the computer

I honestly fell bad for the smart phones addicts. I had a blackberry for 2 years and I hated it, and that was around 2004, before you could timetravel with them

reply to post by davesmart


Ha, ha !

Love the moment of reminiscence (sorry late, spelling just gets worse, as the night rolls on lol), I had a spectrum, love Odd Jobb Eddie, and Disco Dan.

Know what you mean, of course all games consoles come with the epilepsy warning, and to take frequent breaks, of course a break is no bad thing, it wasn't long ago someone died because they gamed too much, and neglected to sleep or eat.

Don't know how they managed it mind, I find I eat more doing something whilst sat in front of technology

reply to post by solargeddon


ok so that's me done then...

I call BS on this. If this were the case, in repetitive behaviours being damaging to the wiring of the brain, then I suppose people that are addicted to extreme sports, or addicted to reading all the time, or people that make an effort to "be nice" as much as possible, have damaged brains?

Pathetic the kind of research they try to push on people nowadays. It is more likely that the s**t we have to eat, drink, breathe and wash with everyday has disrupted brain wiring, rather than addictive behaviours.

I personally think that most scientific research nowadays on human health is totally invalid, and that the only way it could be valid would be if there was a completely healthy way of living, with no pullutants in food, air, water, cleaning products, beauty products etc.

Originally posted by domasio
I call BS on this. If this were the case, in repetitive behaviours being damaging to the wiring of the brain, then I suppose people that are addicted to extreme sports, or addicted to reading all the time, or people that make an effort to "be nice" as much as possible, have damaged brains?

Pathetic the kind of research they try to push on people nowadays. It is more likely that the s**t we have to eat, drink, breathe and wash with everyday has disrupted brain wiring, rather than addictive behaviours.

I personally think that most scientific research nowadays on human health is totally invalid, and that the only way it could be valid would be if there was a completely healthy way of living, with no pullutants in food, air, water, cleaning products, beauty products etc.

newsweek had an article this week on ways to be smarter, and #4 was get rid of the smartphone. it really hampers concentration and focus. mutlitasking has been replaced by this weird quasi-attention thing where people just aren't dialed in, aren't focusing with what is at hand, they spend 20 seconds on something , than wham-o it's onto something else

that's disruption

Oh that is absurd... My brain has been disrupted long before the internet...
Its called public education syndrome...

Originally posted by syrinx high priest

Originally posted by domasio
I call BS on this. If this were the case, in repetitive behaviours being damaging to the wiring of the brain, then I suppose people that are addicted to extreme sports, or addicted to reading all the time, or people that make an effort to "be nice" as much as possible, have damaged brains?

Pathetic the kind of research they try to push on people nowadays. It is more likely that the s**t we have to eat, drink, breathe and wash with everyday has disrupted brain wiring, rather than addictive behaviours.

I personally think that most scientific research nowadays on human health is totally invalid, and that the only way it could be valid would be if there was a completely healthy way of living, with no pullutants in food, air, water, cleaning products, beauty products etc.

newsweek had an article this week on ways to be smarter, and #4 was get rid of the smartphone. it really hampers concentration and focus. mutlitasking has been replaced by this weird quasi-attention thing where people just aren't dialed in, aren't focusing with what is at hand, they spend 20 seconds on something , than wham-o it's onto something else

that's disruption

My post was on the validity of research stating that addictive behaviours create problems in brain development. Your reply was how getting rid of smartphones makes you smarter because "people just aren't dialed in, aren't focusing with what is at hand, they spend 20 seconds on something , than wham-o it's onto something else." The research stated that spending lots of time on certain things prevents proper brain development, yet you state that to become smarter you shouldn't use a smartphone because you don't spend a lot of time on things, you chop and change.

I'm not sure if the purpose of your reply was to agree with me or disagree. Confused now

reply to post by solargeddon


Hi everybody, I'm G146541 and I'm an internet addict and this is my first time sharing about my addiction.

Everybody says Hi G146541

I started using internet regular right about 1997, before that I tried BBS but the high just was not enough, I would spend hours at 1200 baud downloading a single gif for hours, or browsing shareware and freeware.
But I always had this insatiable itch I could never scratch.
Then I stumbled onto internet, all of a sudden I had 56K. Far superior to 1200baud.
I could download a gif in less than an hour, I was living the high life, but still I wanted more so I did internet with dsl.
What a turnoff that was, disconnections and hours off the web at a time.
I finally found a dealer that could supply me with cable internet and from there it was bliss!
No more measuring my internet usage by baud or kilobits, I had something more, heck I still don't know exactly how much I can download it is so fast!
I ended up having a "self intervention" when I found this article, For Junkies
Now after reading this article my life has changed, I understand that I am a junkie as some guy in a foreign country says so, he probably even wears a lab coat too, so you know he is smarter than you and me put together!
I imagine I could find out how bad the damage is that has been done to my brain if I could get many people together and have cat scans done on all of our brains but, that would be far to expensive to do.
I will just believe the man in the lab coat and know I truly dodged a bullet.
Next week I was gonna try TV, imagine what I might have done to my brain!


Really??
Friggin internet addiction???
CMON!

reply to post by g146541


Love it !

Very tounge in cheek

There is plenty of evidence that finding "new" stimulus spikes dopamine in the brain, so incessent browsing constantly looking for new things/information could activate these responses. Interent porn is the best example, as addicts are constantly searching for new and more extreme porn to get those dopamine spikes.

The explanation is that as we were evolving in a reasonably static environment new things would activate that heightened response in our brains as an enhanced survival mechanism. We havent evolved past that given the rapid pace of our development in the past couple of thousand years.