Internet Addiction Essay.

DO WE HAVE IT BAD? INTERNET ADDICTION.

A snazzy restaurant. Great food. Lively conversation. Then, mid-sentence, you catch him steal a quick glance at his iPhone. Of course you're annoyed, what is he doing on facebook right now when he could be talking to you? What's so great about social networking anyway? And then you might think, hey, for some the internet really is an addiction.

While not being ruled as a technical psychological disorder as yet as said by Burnsten and Dombeck (2004), scientists are arguing whether or not to make internet addiction as such. Some psychologists, notably Kimberly Young, Ph.D and David Greenfield, Ph.D argue that internet addiction is a serious problem that needs to be dealt with. Others, John Grohol Psy.D, amongst others believe that it is neither an addiction nor a specific disorder and shouldn't be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), where all mental disorders are listed for future reference and general knowledge (APA 2000 and Grohol 2005). Some psychologists believe that there is nothing to worry about. There have however been some startling cases popping up where internet addiction has caused detrimental effects to individuals and their families that should be made note of and perhaps should lead scientists in another direction. After all, with the way society and its love of cyberspace is going, could the internet be classed as an "addictive agent" too?

Addiction, as said by Elizabeth Henderson in her book "Understanding Addiction" (2000) is said to be similar to the 'dependence' definition in the DSM-IV, in respect that due to the substance (this substance being the internet and its content) there is change in the way the brain operates. It is also confirmed by the development of tolerance and withdraw symptoms when going without the substance the victim craves, and a loss of control when going without what they desire for too long.

Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD), according to its lead expert Dr. Kimberly Young, who has also ironically created the website netaddiction.com, has placed internet addiction under a certain criteria. Those who feel that they meet the majority of these criteria are likely to suffer from an addiction of the cyberspace kind:

1. Do you feel preoccupied with the Internet (think about previous online activity or anticipate next online session)?
2. Do you feel the need to use the Internet with increasing amounts of time in order to achieve satisfaction?
3. Have you repeatedly made unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back, or stop Internet use?
4. Do you feel restless, moody, depressed, or irritable when attempting to cut down or stop Internet use?
5. Do you stay online longer than originally intended?
6. Have you jeopardised or risked the loss of significant relationship, job, educational or career opportunity because of the Internet?
7. Have you lied to family members, therapist, or others to conceal the extent of involvement with the Internet?
8. Do you use the Internet as a way of escaping from problems or of relieving a dysphoric mood (e.g., feelings of helplessness, guilt, anxiety, depression)?

However, while these guidelines seem to be somewhat agreed upon by those who agree that there is such a thing as internet addiction, these criteria have not yet unanimously been voted as such and cannot be outlined as true criteria. For this essay however, they will be ruled as such.

One such example of internet addiction that has met the criteria outlined by Dr. Young was the story of Floridan Pam Albridge in 1997. The Umatilla woman apparently grew so addicted to being online that she forgot to pay for the bills and neglected to feed and care for her two young children. When her husband Kevin gave her the ultimatum that she choose either her family or the internet, Albridge chose the internet instead, ultimately losing custody of her children as well (Weekly World News 1998). This example holds true to Kimberly Young's study "internet addiction: the emergence of a new clinical disorder" in 1996, where it states that similar to any drug, alcohol or gambling addiction, internet addiction can in fact result in academic failure, reduced work performance, marital discord and separation, which occured in the Albridge case.

The Albridge case however is not alone and is not quite as severe as the Hacker case, also in 1997. Sandra Hacker's addiction to the internet was one of the worst recorded and probably one of the most well known. While online Hacker would allegedly lock her three children in what she called the "playroom", a room full of broken glass, debris and walls smeared with faeces. Police were horrified by their findings and were stunned for find that though the house was in disrepair, Hacker's computer area was completely immaculate and perfectly clean. (Bricking, 1997) This case too is also respective of Young's 1996 findings regarding significant impairment to family life outlined in "Psychology of computer use: XL. Addictive use of the internet: a case that breaks the stereotype".

While not quite to the extent of the previous examples, this next example of internet addiction goes to show that its not just the regular public that is suffering but celebrities as well. Diddy in February 2009 seemingly posted several "tweets" on his twitter webpage regarding details of a group orgy he was participating in for thirty-six hours (Hudson 2009). Though Diddy bowed out before completing his task, the fact that Diddy paused in his activities to post information on his twitter is indicative of the need to use the internet more to achieve satisfaction and also to the detriment of his "real life", as said on the netaddiction.com website and in O'Reilly's report "Internet addiction: a new disorder enters the medical lexicon" written in 1996.

Adolescents too are suffering the effects of internet addiction. The following flim clip is a video taken of a teenaged boy whose addiction to the online MMORPG game World of Warcraft (WoW) gives us an example of a violent reaction when the young man's subscription to the game is cancelled.

The clearly violent reaction to the cancellation of the game is a classic reaction similar to that of people addicted to various substances when they are not provided with the item they need, also said by Henderson. Addiction sufferers tend to lash out in fits of rage and/or violence at themselves and/or other people, though in this particular case the boy just harmed himself.

While this essay has only provided four empirical examples of internet addiction, it can be seen that issues like this are becoming more common as society spends more time online, as suggested by Mark Griffiths (2004). Like any addiction if given enough time to develop, internet addiction in this case can and has had negative effects on both the victim and the victim's families, families breaking up due to the strain and parents worrying immensely for their children. Despite what scientists argue, internet addiction is prominent in today's society, and if proper investigations were put forth in the near future scientists could develop a greater understanding of this condition that is plaguing modern society.

REFERENCES:

American Psychiatric Association, American Psychiatric Association. Task Force on DSM-IV (2000). "Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders". American Psychiatric Association, 2000. University of Michigan.

Bricking, Tanya (1997). "Internet blamed for neglect". Sourced at: http://www.enquirer.com/editions/1997/06/16/loc_hacker.html Date accessed: 19/10/09.

Bursten, Julia & Dombeck, Mark (2005). "Introduction to net addiction". sourced at: http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=3830&cn=66internet addiction date accessed: 19/10/09

Griffiths, Mark (2004). "Does internet and computer "addiction" exist? Some case study evidence." sourced from: http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089%2F109493100316067 date accessed: 22/10/09/

Grohol, John (2005). "Internet Addiction Guide". Sourced at: http://psychcentral.com/netaddiction/ Date accessed: 18/10/09

Henderson, E. (2000). "Understanding addiction". Illustrated edition. University Press of Mississippi, 2000.

Hudson, Polly (2009) "P. Diddy shares FAR too much information on Twitter" sourced from: http://www.mirror.co.uk/celebs/columnists/polly/2009/03/12/p-diddy-shares-far-too-much-information-on-twitter-115875-21192259/ date sourced: 18/10/09

Mat (2009). "Greatest Freakout Over World of Warcraft :: Mom Cancels Crazy Kid's WoW Account" sourced from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jM2BMW_WVo date sourced: 20/10/09

O'Reilly, Michael (1996). "Internet addiction: a new disorder enters the medical lexicon". Canada Medical Association Journal. June 15, 1996; 154.

Reed, Lori (2002). "Computer addiction as a gendered phenomenon". Sourced at: http://englishmatters.gmu.edu/issue6/reed/reed-body.htm. Date accessed: 20/10/09

Weekly World News (1998). "Hooked on the internet: nerdy mom loses custody of her children!" sourced from: http://books.google.com/books?id=PPEDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=Pam+Albridge&source=bl&ots=iZkrRy4xqe&sig=

thAfpWmRo1tuef0cyje9x397GA8&hl=en&ei=263eSuWrIoXl8Qbj3dly&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CBcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=Pam%20Albridge&f=false date accessed: 19/10/09.

Young, Kimberly S. (1996a) "Internet addiction: The emergence of a new clinical disorder." University of Pittsburg. Bradford.

Young, Kimberly S. (1996b). Psychology of Computer Use: XL. Addictive Use of the Internet: A case that breaks the stereotype. Univeristy of Pittsburg. Bradford.

Young, Kimberly. (2009) Net addiction sourced from: http://www.netaddiction.com/ Date accessed: 18/10/09/

I'll Never Be An Artist, But This --

Like my title for this blog suggests, I'm not much of an artist. Sure, I can draw spirals, hearts, flowers and stars like any normal teenaged girl--not to mention the symbols for my favourite hidden ninja villages, but when it comes to the truly spiffy stuff, I fail more than my friend Maryanne does at being straight. Which is epically. (Love you, Maryman!! :D)

But yes, so my sister and I were fooling around on photobooth (a photo application on mac, just to clarify) and I decided to post one of the more stupid shots on here and then have a fiddle with an application I downloaded from apple called GIMP. It wasn't smooth sailing, let me tell you. And even then, the only thing I worked out how to do after half an hour was smudge some stuff. =_=;

Anyway.

Before -- Note the manky school uniform worn by my sister on the right.

After -- Note that my sister is no longer wearing her uniform, and the photo looks almost like a crappy painting. With a shoddy love heart on there--coz I love my sister. ;)

Yeah. My blog doesn't shine. You don't have to tell me.

This Is The Only Time I'll Be Annoyed With Apple.

I suppose this is really annoying because I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do. So I'm apparently supposed to download some freeware applications from the website that was mentioned in the lecture ages ago in Week 7, but here's my problem: I'm not sure if they'll work. I'm apple all the way here at home (not a PC in sight), so given portableapps.com/ is for PCs, and I only have apple computers in my house I should've known I'd hit a slight snag.

So what I did instead was download some Widgets, which I suppose is the apple equivalent to some applications that you could find for the PC and yeah, I tried them out and here's my views:

Facebook: Meeh, not bad. It gives you little alerts every 30 seconds according to my little index thingy, and it tells you if you've got any friend alerts, wallpost alerts, messages, nudges, event alerts, that kind of thing. I suppose it would be useful if I were really facebook savvy.

ILoveLamp: If you like pretty colours, then you're gonna love this. A pretty stupid application if you ask me--all it is is a lava lamp. You can though, pick the colours. Orange is my favourite colour, hence why that's my new lamp.

Horoscope: So I can see how my lucky stars are going today. So today I need to watch my diet. ...The horoscope is calling me fat? :o

Clickomania: If you're ever bored, yup, I think you should get this. Your task is to get rid of all the tiles and stuff, making sure you don't leave any behind. Think it's simple? Its not. Not at all.

But yeah, I never realised just how much CRAP is online--theres stuff from art tools, to currency exchange, to font finders and even silly little lava lamps. Do we really need all this stuff?

Oh, Baby Give Me One More Chance -- To Play With Your Kids.

So ladies and germs (oh how old is that saying? Jeez.), the task for week 5 was to create a googlemap, have some fun on the site sketchcast.com and then do something on the personas website.

Now, surprisingly enough, I kind of enjoyed myself doing these little tasks. Well, maybe the first one. The other two got annoying. Fast.

Googlemap:

Now, when a girl is bored on a Friday night with only her pet pug as company and listening to Michael Jackson music on itunes, she tends to come up with stupid ideas. So naturally, my googlemap was of "Michael Jackson Sightings". Take a gander:

View Wacko Jacko Sightings. in a larger map :]

Sketchcast:

Not all that fun when you make one stupid mistake and then have to delete the whole thing and start again. What makes it worse? My stupid mistakes kept showing up again--even though I deleted them. Heh. Of course.

But here's my final cut.

FML.

Personas:

The personas website. I'm actually a little cut.

Apparently "Danielle Storey" had "no digital traces found".

You'd think a name as common as "Danielle Storey" would bring up a shitload of different queries, right? Come on, I looked my name up on facebook and apparently there's forty-frickin'-eight of me all over the world--you'd think at least one of us would achieve something worthwhile in their miserable lives, right?!

Well apparently not.

I'm kinda embarrassed to be me right now. >_<

So, Your Student's a Retard.

" procrastinate |prəˈkrastəˌnāt; prō-|

verb [ intrans. ]

delay or postpone action; put off doing something : it won't be this price for long, so don't procrastinate. "

That definition right there in awesome orange?

That's me.

Surprising stuff, right?

No. Not really. :]

...There's really no need for that look, you know. I know I'm not alone in the world.

There are lots of frickin' idiots out there like me.

But yes, instead of doing all this stuff weeks ago to prevent it building up and biting me in the ass like it has right now (by being a good studious student really--I make it look harder than it actually is, eh), I instead chose to waste away my evenings reading Japanese comics, chatting to friends on facebook (ugh--I don't even know why I bother) / msn, and reading fanfiction than doing my schoolwork. (Would you call it schoolwork? Or uniwork? Heh, schoolwork sounds better.) Tsk, tsk, I'm an awful student.

But!

I am here right now...so I think I'm making up for my stupidity by totally wasting away my Friday night. Like a good idiot. ...Not that I'll learn my lesson, because I wouldn't be all that surprised if I did it again.... -cough-

Anyway, so the next few blogs will be "what Danielle should've done forever ago if she wasn't a complete retard". (Even though said blogs will be above this post...unless you also start to read this from the bottom? Heh.)

Enjoy.

x.

Runners, Toads && TV Stars-- This Is What Politics Is About.

This tute was once again kinda like a treasure hunt, so here I am to tick off all the crap I was 'sposed to do today. :)

- sign an e-petition

So I signed a petition for Ya Mum jokes on petitionspot.com. I hate haters. Ya Mum jokes are great...when used appropriately of course. ;)

- what is barak obama up to today?

Naturally, I twittered it. Only the cool politicians have a twitter--and Obama doesn't look like the Milky Bar Kid like our beloved prime minister.

So, like Simon Says, Barak says today that everybody can help the Yanks out by helping to pass a health reform during our lunch break. Too bad it's past lunch now and too bad I'm Australian or I might've bothered to help him out....oh, such a shame. Really.

- find out who the local, state and federal representatives are:

Now, I hate politicians. I hate voting. It's a huge waste of my day (or it will be, when I eventually have to vote for something), I already know the government's going down the toilet and I honestly don't give a rat's ass--though, I'm somewhat smart enough to know that who is running our country is somewhat important. And do you have any idea how frickin' vague that question is? So I'm just gonna go for our most obvious answers:

Local: Ron Clarkie is the dude who (literally) runs our coast. Did you know he was an Olympic Runner once? Naturally I laughed my ass off. Here he is, looking funky fresh~~

State: With the evil looking eyebrows and the face that reminds me of a toad, Anna Bligh. Here she is wearing a cowboy hat.

Federal: The Milky Bar Kid himself: Kevin'07Rudd. Seriously, doesn't he look just like him??

Gosh, he was a spaceman, a cowboy, sheriff--I'm a proud Australian today. :)

- respond to a professional blogger at a major news site.

Now, define "major news". Because I can't be bothered to find some real, hard hitting news (that crap's depressing, yo!), I thought I'd see what the goss was instead on perezhilton.com~~because really, what news is greater than celebrity news?

So after creating an account (oh, what I do for this class--I'm show.me.the.stars btw, how about you? XD) the first newsline I saw was about Madonna's new song. Yes, this is important news. Did you see Madonna on the VMAs this week? Michael Jackson is DEAD--I don't care about your life growing up in a family of eight living out in the ghettos like some white trailer trash!! Gosh! Even still, the song isn't that bad...I guess. If you're into Britney Spears, old hags and all that general crap.

So here's what I said: "eh, she sounds like britney, but knowing her this'll probably be a hit in the clubs." An amazing comment, right? But hey, I wasn't hating on her! I'm a good person. Somewhat. ... But apparently you can find my comment in about an hour or so...so find me there? I hope.

- look up the queensland or australian hansard to find the last time your local member spoke in parliament:

So I did and like four files came up on the Queensland Legislative Assembly website which is found here and I came up with...diddly squat. The files that did come up only have him mentioned briefly and the bloke didn't talk at all!! ...And this guy's our representative?? I think we need a new mayor~~

- let your local member know what you think about their last speech:

And because I couldn't find a speech with Ronnie talking I couldn't do this task. Oh no!

And finally, the last task of this tutorial is as follows:

- read the lecture and the readings, pursue a couple of the topics you find most interesting and then post your blog with your well-considered thoughts about the theory and practice of politics.

Now, as I said already, I hate politics. I don't find it interesting and this country's almost down the toilet anyway--we're run by the frickin' Milky Bar Kid for chrissakes!! Sure, he encourages morbid obesity and all the unfortunate perks of being fat and all that jazz, but yeah, I really don't care. (I'm not fat, thanks.) ...But I do thank him immensely for that government bonus early this year, it bought me my beloved laptop.

Thank you, MBK, thank you.

As for "Clean Feed"--honestly, I'm not so sure. Like, it's great that you can get rid of all that monkey porn, vids of animals being stomped with high heels and stuff away from innocent little children's eyes but for the sake of our internet speed...? I'm selfish. I dunno what to say.

But when one really thinks about it--who really has the right to say what's appropriate and what isn't? I'm pretty sure Australia is a democracy, and Hell, if people start telling us what we can and can't do we'll be like China or something. Screw that!

So no, I don't really agree with it--if you really wanna monitor what your kids are looking at online, well watch them while they're on the computer, stupid!

The Three Wise Men. . .Films

Sooooo, the task for week 5/6 was to find three internet delivered short films (max 10mins) and imbed or upload into a new post. And "just providing the link wont suffice." Oh ho.

Hmmm, so naturally, this required a lot of thought.

And racking my brains, the first thought that came to mind was for some reason the Harry Potter series. If you don't know who Harry Potter is, well...I honestly have no idea what to say other than "where the hell have you been for the past ten years? Jesus Christ.". But anyway, the Harry Potter series has spurned a whole crap load of merchandise from the pointy hats from the $2 store to games on your PS3, has years worth of horrific fanfiction that you'd rather gouge your own eyes out with a spork than read and of course some truly disturbing and epic short films. So, when I thought of Harry Potter I thought of the classic Potter Puppet Pals series.

"Wizard Swears" arguably the most popular episode of the Potter Puppet Pals series and has had over 14 million hits on youtube, has spurned its own t-shirt line, cups and backpacks, has won several comedic awards and is naturally one of the greatest Harry Potter spoofs ever created. It's funny what a little jab at a can do, huh?

The Potter Puppet Pals creator Neil Cicierega has also due to the series "invented" the term "animutation" which of course is a web-based computer animation, typically created in Adobe Flash that is made of unpredictable montages of pop-culture references set to music and in a language foreign to the intended viewers, at least according to wikipedia, our favourite encyclopedia website. :)

And so wracking my brains again, and for some reason feeling rather geeky, I came up with the classic Twilight With Cheeseburgers. Anything that mocks the worst book series that somehow made it in the bestsellers in my eyes deserves a medal. Seriously.

Now, while this was professionally made as it featured on the monthly sketch show called "The Midnight Show", if not for youtube I never would've heard of this clip and it wouldn't have ever likely to have been as famous as it has been, it too thanks to youtube being viewed millions upon millions of times.

...And watching this clip makes me rather hungry... Goddammit.

Randomly deciding on my final "film", though this is more of a mockumetary, is the dude MyChonny on youtube, which goes to show that random films about nothing in particular can get you famous.

Now, once again, without youtube, MyChonny would probably never be as well-recognised as he is today--which goes to show that the internet has most definitely changed the world.

...Ohh, what a sappy way to end this post.

I deserve to be shot.