Читать книгу Overcoming Internet Addiction For Dummies - David N. Greenfield - Страница 24

You cannot change anything in your life unless you have honest self-appraisal and feedback. The problem with addiction is that often, self cannot accurately see self, and people have a great capacity for denial and self-deception when engaging in addictive behaviors that impact their brain reward centers.

Recovery always begins with honest self-evaluation, often with some objective data to help you accurately see what you’re doing online. With substance as well as behavioral addiction, there are well-established methods for assessing overuse and life impacts from an addiction. However, there is no simple answer for how much is too much, nor is there an easy fix. As I note throughout this book, addiction is complex and involves mind, body, and spirit — impacting many aspects of your functioning; that said, everyone has a different bottom line where they can no longer ignore the fact that their screen addiction is hurting their life in some way. The following sections introduce two options for recovery: self-help and professional help.

One thing you do have with Internet addiction is a digital footprint; that is, everything you do online and on your smartphone can be tracked, and you can see how much time you spend, what websites and apps you use, and what content areas you seem to have a problem with. This feedback can be critical in helping you start the process of recovery by seeing what you’re doing, much like keeping a record of the foods you eat when attempting to eat better or lose weight. There are many aftermarket apps and programs that can record, track, block, and monitor your Internet and screen use. Most cellphone manufacturers and service providers have apps that offer a great deal of detailed information on your use. Several companies also produce software that you or an IT professional can install on all your screen devices that can give you accurate and detailed data, which provides you with total usage information and any problem content areas (see Chapter 11 for more options regarding self-help resources).

Don’t be surprised when you look at your usage information and find that it is much greater than you recall it being or that you were aware of. This is normal and is part of that dissociation and time distortion that I talk about earlier in this chapter. It’s essential that you get accurate feedback about your use; otherwise, you’ll be unable to take control of your screen time.