We all use the Internet to a greater or lesser degree, depending on our work requirements, connection with remote family or friends, or physical limitations that keep us isolated at home.
The unlimited options of the Internet can distract you from loneliness, sadness, stress, or daily troubles. Besides, it can also just be a pleasure – niggling questions answered, new information you never thought to learn, funny kitten videos, news of the world, advice and sympathy from strangers who share a similar problem. One site leads to another and another until hours have passed unnoticed.
And that may be fine. An Internet addiction isn’t determined so much by how much time you spend online but by how it affects your real life – your relationships, your job, your schooling, your health, your finances.
You may be addicted if you:
- would rather spend time with virtual friends than actual people
- forget simple tasks – doing the laundry, shopping for groceries, picking up your children, visiting a sick friend
- can’t seem to stop online gambling or playing online games
- constantly check in for email messages, tweets, IMs, text messages, news updates, or message board postings on your devices
- damage your intimate relationships by compulsively seeking out online pornography or hang out in sex chat rooms
- endanger your job by spending work time pursuing your own interests on the Internet or unnecessarily over-researching work-related topics
- spend more time on the Internet than you really want to
- feel threatened if someone (even you) suggests you unplug
- take one or more of your devices to bed with you
- threaten your financial health by overspending on online purchases
- create and embrace a fantasy persona online in which you are smarter, thinner, younger, more athletic, richer, more popular, or more attractive than you are in real life
You may also suffer physical symptoms of overuse: eye strain, changes in weight, sleeplessness, back or neck aches, pain in your hands and wrists, or headaches.
Like addiction to alcohol or drugs, you’ll need outside support to help you manage your addiction. There are support groups for Internet addiction in it’s many forms (you may find them online, but please interact in person).
An individual therapist can help you uncover any underlying problems that contribute to your overuse of the Internet. You may realize that you are trying to ease depression or anxiety or fight off an addiction to alcohol or drugs. Therapy can lead to a resolution of these disguised issues and free you to choose how much Internet use is healthy for you.
There are many steps you can take to help the process along:
- Build human relationships. Spend more time with your family, reconnect with old friends, or make new ones. A 2010 survey by Brigham Young University researchers found isolation has as big an impact on lifespan as alcoholism or smoking.
- Take up new activities. Take a class (in a classroom). Join a soccer team or bowling league. Visit a park and draw what you see. Volunteer at an animal shelter. Move, interact, laugh, give of yourself.
- Relax. Yoga, tai chi, or meditation can all ease the worries you may be trying to escape online. Simply deep breathing or tensing and relaxing your muscles, group by group, can also help.
- Make your devices inconvenient. If your laptop or tablet or phone are in the laundry room charging, you’ll have to consciously choose to go get one of them. Require passwords to access each of them. Set the screens to go black after a short time; a blackened screen is less enticing than one that’s lit up.
- Take a regular break. Make a rule for yourself that you’ll unplug for at least 15 minutes every hour; set a timer if you need to. Go do something enjoyable and you may find yourself lost in life instead of on the Internet.
