I have been thinking about this issue for a while. I am 27 years old now, and I have been an internet junkie for almost 10 years. Somehow, 'online' became default every time I was on my own.
I have heard about terms and theories like "the refresh syndrome"and "infosnacking" and identified myself completely. Recently, I came across a TedTalk called The Great Porn Experiment, and I'd like to quote it:
I have heard about terms and theories like "the refresh syndrome"and "infosnacking" and identified myself completely. Recently, I came across a TedTalk called The Great Porn Experiment, and I'd like to quote it:
I can't emphasize this enough: all addictions share these same brain changes and the same. [...] So far, all brain research points to one direction: constant novelty at a click can cause addiction. Now we know this because when scientists examine former internet addicts, they found that these brain changes were reversing themselves.I have personally been trying to cut down on my internet usage for years, but with no real success. I may keep it up for a week or two, but then I indulge again into click-click-click-ing. Here are a few reasons why I feel like it would be a gain to reduce the time that I spend online:
- I have very low attention span, if a video is longer than two minutes, I start getting anxious. This means that I also can not concentrate too long for something that I am working on. If a task requires some thought, my natural tendency is to switch to Facebook.
- Spending much of my time in front of a screen, mezmerized, taking in information, an enormous amount of information, I somehow don't leave any space for myself. For my own thoughts, my own ideas, my own creativity. In a world where entertainment is always one click away, you fill in all the blank spaces, all the emptyness. Not having one moment of boredom, or one moment of silence, you live in a constant noise of ouside information, which suffocate any personal expression of creativity or inner self. What does this result in? You become a consumer. You are never a generator, a producer, you never emit. Because what would you have there to emit? You are at most a reactor to things you see. Generally, meaningless things, because you don't have the attention span for complex themes.
- I feel bombarded by the information coming my way, and especially about how random it is. I will look right now at my Facebook feed and exemplify: personal information about a friend losing his phone, must see things on a 48 hour stay in Amsterdam, two pictures of friends, an article about Conneticut becoming the first state to enact GMO labeling law, a picture+quote of Marilyn Monroe, "to all the girls that think you're fat because you're not a size zero, you're the beautiful one in a society who's ugly', a video with a campaign for terminally ill cancer patients, etc., etc., etc. I could spend hours, days, years reading and seeing everything that's on there.
Internet addiction resembles in many ways food addiction. While alcohol or drugs or cigarettes you can cut out of your life completely, with food and with internet it's not the same. Because you can't live without food, and nowadays, you can't live without the internet. Just as food is nutritional, the internet is educational, and learning to balance an addiction is harder than stopping it altogether.
Just today I saw another beautiful TED talk where the speaker talks about why he stopped watching porn, and the effects of porn on society. While the whole talk is interesting and relevant, touching delicate subjects such as violence, male domination and gender inequality, what I would like emphasize his point on how vulnerable and suscceptible human beings are to outside information. Ran Gavrieli says:
So I stopped watching porn for my personal well being, my intimate communication, my private erotic life, reclaiming control and responsibility over my mind.
This is what I want to work on, this is what I want to achieve. Where I use the internet as a tool, but don't get sucked into it. I will write another post with how I plan to do this. I will keep track daily of my internet usage and my experience with this. I will set rules and adjust them as I find necessary. I'm open to suggestions and feedback. There are so many resources online about how to heal internet addiction that you can spend hours, days, years, just documenting yourself on the subject.
But I guess the real change begins with admitting: I'm Laura and I'm an addict. And then logging off.
