Читать книгу Overcoming Internet Addiction For Dummies - David N. Greenfield - Страница 72

IN THIS CHAPTER

Recognizing how the Internet is easy to access and readily available

Seeing that screen content has many addictive features

Understanding how the Internet is both a destination and a tool

Discovering how the Internet can be an addictive digital drug

The Internet is no longer new. When I started researching and treating Internet addiction, it was the mid- to late 1990s and the Internet was still the digital Wild West. Twenty-five years ago, few understood that this new, miraculous modality of communication and commerce could be addictive, but we did understand that it was very appealing.

My clinical and academic medical background is in addiction medicine; I was trained in the diagnosis and treatment of addiction, and I’ve also developed an expertise in sexual medicine and human sexuality — including compulsive sexual behavior. As the Internet burst across the globe, I began seeing patients who appeared to be having some difficulty with various aspects of their Internet use. Because the Internet was so new (and Wall Street was in love with its financial promise), most people did not see that all was not perfect in cyberspace.

In the early to mid-1990s, we were still using dial-up Internet that worked at a snail’s pace, but I still recall getting my first decent computer hooked up to the Internet and the welcome allure of those beeps and buzzes it made as our modem connected to the World Wide Web. I felt as if I were taking a trip somewhere and connecting to faraway people and places. It was exciting. Back then, online shopping and commerce were barely in their infancy; these were pre-Amazon days (if you can imagine that), and there wasn’t a lot happening online back then. But even before social media, Wi-Fi, smartphones, and high-speed Internet, you could feel how captivating this technology was.

In this chapter, you discover the common features and factors that make this technology so addictive. Although this problem is now largely accepted in the medical field, I want to offer what I’ve learned over the last 25 years of researching and treating it.