Internet addiction - the plague of the 21st century

Official medicine has not yet included the Internet addiction in the list of mental disorders. The statistics, however, is depressing: the number of Internet-dependent people is growing in proportion to the appearance of new users of the Network, and to date, about 10% of people who have access to the Internet experience this problem.

Conventionally, Internet addictive people can be divided into two groups: information dependent and socially dependent. The first group painfully tends to get all new and new information from various resources, and the second group - to endless communication in social networks.

Currently, psychologists identify the following subspecies of addiction based on the Internet resources that generated it:

1. Addicted to virtual sex and viewing porn sites.

2. Addicted to virtual acquaintances and communication through social networks and services.

3. Addiction to online trading on the exchange and gambling (poker, virtual casinos).

4. Addiction to the search for new information and reading news resources, all kinds of databases.

5. Game addiction, i.e. Addiction to online games.

The main symptom of any of these types of dependence is in the sterility to spend all your free time at the computer. A person gets used to constantly stay in a virtual world, but in real life begins to feel uncomfortable, anxious, uncomfortable. It gradually turns into depression, to be saved from which it turns out only on the Internet. So virtuality is more and more addictive, Internet addiction is exacerbated.

When there is no possibility to connect to the Network, the addictive person feels an acute dissatisfaction, boredom, emptiness. He is quickened and cheerful only when he is at the computer, in his virtual world. Prolonged pastime in the World Wide Web is guaranteed to result in social isolation, loss of family, problems with communicability, narrowing of horizons, disorders in the sexual sphere, outbursts of irritability and anger.

Internet addiction deforms the structure and integrity of the personality like narcotic or alcoholic addictions. But to realize the fact of Internet addiction is sometimes very difficult, because it does not lead to obvious physical consequences.

The problem is aggravated by the fact that the World Wide Web has a number of useful properties that provide modern society with a more comfortable life.

In the risk group are primarily teenagers, whose mentality has not yet recovered, strong-willed qualities due to age are reduced, but there is a strong desire for entertainment and new impressions.

How to treat computer addiction?

1. Limit traffic and time sitting at the computer, so that there is no physical possibility to spend a few extra hours in the virtual world.

2. Actively involve the person, suffering dependence, in economic affairs. Do not expect that it will please and inspire him, so encourage positive actions with gratitude and small pleasant gifts. Be patient with his irritability and bouts of anger.

3. Create situations of communication in real life - gather companies of friends, go to a cafe or a movie so that the sufferer of the Internet addiction feels a taste for living communication.

4. Organize a long vacation, hike in the mountains, in the wild.

5. Involve the addict in a new hobby, passion, in order to create alternative life goals and interests.

6. Load it as much as possible physically - garden and country work, fitness room, swimming pool, long walks.

7. Contact a qualified psychologist who specializes in dealing with addictions. Internet addiction is a new direction, but it is treated similarly.

By all means try to unobtrusively distract the dependent person from the computer and to form at it rational mechanisms of using the global network.