In this era of texts and tweets, few of us can make the time (or brain space) to digest a 6-page story. So, to break down Tony Dokoupil’s exposé in Newsweek asking, “Is the Web Driving Us Mad?” we’ve “top-tenned” it for you.
- Americans spend at least 8 hours a day staring at our tech screens, (laptops, smartphones, iPads). That’s more time than we spend on anything else, including sleeping. A third of us check our smartphones before we get out of bed in the morning; 80% of vacationers bring along laptops or smartphones to check in with work.
- One of the early flags for addiction is spending more than 38 hours a week online. By that definition, we are “all addicts now, many of us by Wednesday afternoon, Tuesday if it’s a busy week”.
- Too much time online is making us more impulsive. There has been a 66% increases in OCD and ADHD in the last decade.
- Every ping we get signals a potential social, sexual, or professional opportunity, and “we get a mini-reward, a squirt of dopamine, for answering the bell”.
- Internet addiction leads to “structural abnormalities in gray matter” in the brain. There is a shrinkage of 10 to 20% in the area of the brain responsible for processing of speech, memory, motor control, emotion, sensory, and other information.
- The brains of Internet addicts look like the brains of drug and alcohol addicts. The computer is like “electronic cocaine,” fueling cycles of mania followed by depressive stretches.
- The average person, regardless of age, sends or receives about 400 texts a month. Some of us even report feeling our phone vibrate when in fact nothing is happening. Researchers call this “phantom-vibration syndrome.”
- Web use often displaces sleep, exercise, and face-to-face exchanges – all of which can lead to stress, depression and even suicide.
- The next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, to be published in 2013, will include “Internet Addiction Disorder” in its appendix, earmarked for further study.
- Jason Russell, the guy who launched the #StopKony campaign earlier this year, totally lost it after gaining insta-fame on the Internet. In fact, he was diagnosed with “reactive psychosis” as a direct result. His public breakdown was captured on YouTube.
