Internet addiction

In recent years, the issue of the Internet has been very hot, and many people are very worried about some phenomena that appear on the Internet, especially the behavior of spending a lot of time online, and these behaviors seem to lead to changes in traditional life. Deep fear, of which "Internet addiction" is the most widely discussed topic. In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially listed Internet gaming addiction (Gaming Disorder) as a mental disorder. Although the psychiatric community has not yet reached a conclusion, the American Psychiatric Association has also listed Internet addiction as a "research diagnosis". Clinicians are aware of the global phenomenon of the prevalence of 3Cs. As a psychiatrist, I want to start from a psychiatric point of view, try to look at the phenomenon of the Internet from a psychodynamic point of view, and finally make recommendations from a social aspect.

addiction

From a medical point of view, addiction refers to a person's dependence on the sensation (usually pleasure) produced by a physical or psychological stimulus, the need to continuously increase the stimulus to obtain the same feeling, or in When the stimulation is suddenly lost, a psychological or physical discomfort (withdrawal) occurs, and then the source of stimulation is frantically sought, resulting in a "craving" behavior.

Why is this so? Under normal circumstances, people will "adapt" to repeated stimuli, which is a protective measure to prevent people from being exposed to too much information and unable to process them and collapse. For example, when people are in a noisy environment, after a period of time, they will gradually adapt to the noise, ignore them, and then focus on what we want to do. Basically, this is a normal reaction of a person's body or psychology. One of the psychopathologies of schizophrenia patients (formerly known as schizophrenia) is the inability to produce the above adaptations, resulting in mental illness.

How does addiction develop? First, it has a lot to do with the nature of the stimulus. Not all stimuli are addictive, and addictive stimuli often have several properties. The first is that the pleasure produced by the stimulus is stronger than the usual feeling; the second is that the duration of the feeling is relatively short; the third is that the stimulus source is easy to operate repeatedly. A strong sense of pleasure will make people want to get it constantly, while the short duration and easy acquisition make it easy to stimulate repeatedly. Because the stimulation is repeated for a short period of time, the body will activate the adaptive function to reduce the response to the stimulation. In order to get the same pleasure, you need to strengthen the stimulation to get the same effect, so the stimulation intensity keeps increasing, and addiction occurs. Addictive drugs are the most obvious example, because they act directly on the brain and produce strong sensations; most of them are short-acting, so they need to be reused soon; and because they are easy to operate (just eat, smoke, or inject) ), will be administered in large quantities in a short period of time. So very quickly, the body adapts to them, and then the dose needs to be constantly increased, which is the process of addiction.

So it's not that stimuli that produce pleasure are addictive. For example, exercise can also produce pleasure, but it is not as strong as drugs, and it lasts for a long time; exercise requires physical strength and time, because physical strength is limited and cannot be repeated many times in a short period of time, so exercise will not cause pathological addiction. . For example, when I ride a bicycle on Wuling, which is 3,275 meters above sea level, the joy of reaching the top is very refreshing, and the joy will even last for a few days (it’s cool to show it off after I have nothing to do); but I don’t spend hours every day. Cavalry Wuling, because it is too tiring and physically unable to bear, so it cannot be repeated in a short time. Generally speaking, a large part of happiness comes from working hard, so you feel great joy when you finish it; in addition to the joy when you finish, it can also bring a sense of self-worth, such as A healthy body, a strong willpower, a sense of achievement in completing difficult challenges, and more. The pleasure of the brain itself does not bring value and achievement, but to achieve the goal through the process of hard work will bring the sense of achievement. If you use medicine to get happiness, after the effect of the medicine, there will only be emptiness, and you will soon want to take medicine to fill it up; but when you take it again soon, it will not be the same level of happiness, and you can only continue to increase the dose and use. frequency.

In addition to considering the characteristics of the stimulus, addiction also has personal and environmental factors. When it is not easy for a person to achieve success in the environment he is in, resulting in a lack of happiness, it is easy to be attached to certain ways to obtain happiness, which in turn promotes the emergence of addictive behaviors. This is related to the individual's characteristics, abilities and the overall social environment.

Internet addiction

At present, there are two major types of Internet addiction, one is online games and the other is social networking.

online game

Online games were originally designed using the principle of addiction, and manufacturers need you to constantly want to play them to survive. Judging from the characteristics of the addictive stimuli mentioned above: the sensual and visual stimuli designed by the game are usually very strong, the difficulty gradually increases (because it is too difficult, I don’t want to play), or there are easier ways to solve the difficulty of the game ( For example, spending money to buy props, which is the designer's scheming), makes you want to keep playing; the physical exertion is not too much, you can play for a long time without getting tired; you can also stimulate repeatedly in a short time, as long as you have time For money, you can play over and over again, with no limit.

So addiction is the essence of online games, but online games and drugs are still somewhat different. As mentioned earlier, if it can bring a sense of achievement, it is not just the pursuit of pure "brain" happiness, and the addictive behavior is less likely to get out of control. Although online games have a lot of fantasy in nature, after all, they still require a lot of operations and efforts, and are technically difficult; many games require a team to pass the level together, not just by you alone. These can still provide a considerable sense of achievement. .

Social network

Due to the characteristics of the current fast transmission of social networks, a PO article on FB can be liked by dozens or hundreds of people within an hour; uploading a YouTube video can get tens of thousands or even millions of views. ; The intensity of this kind of social feedback is by no means what previous social methods can provide. Once you try it, it's easy to get hooked on the feeling and keep you wanting to get it. Especially now that smartphones and mobile networks are commonplace, people can be in the network almost all the time, with almost no restrictions. In order to continuously get more "likes" and "views", the content of posts and videos needs to continuously increase the intensity of stimulation, and it takes more time to produce and ignore other life; and when they are because of their ability Or because of the limitations of objective conditions, when there is no more attractive content, in order to satisfy the sense of satisfaction, strange and exaggerated content begins to appear, and they will do anything to get the attention of others. If this situation develops, it will easily affect other lives and cause problems.

From the above analysis, it can be found that online games and social networks do have some characteristics that are easy to lead to addiction, but because of a certain social interaction and a sense of achievement, their risk of addiction is reduced. Many friends around me also play online games, and there are countless people on social networks, but most people's lives can still go on normally, which is why the psychiatric community has not officially listed them as mental illnesses (Mental Disorders).

The key to addiction and the way out

This brings us to the aforementioned personal and environmental factors of addiction.

It is human nature to want to be happy and satisfied. But if there are multiple ways to obtain satisfaction, and there are enough ways and means to obtain it, we will not be attached to the same way to obtain satisfaction. Therefore, most of the addiction cases we often see are due to the narrowing of values, resulting in too few sources of satisfaction; or the poor ability to tolerate setbacks and limitations in ability, unable to obtain sufficient feedback on other aspects of life. .

Students who are addicted to online games are usually unable to gain a sense of achievement in their studies, nor to gain recognition and appreciation in other fields. Fascinated by online social networks, real-life networking is often difficult and lackluster.

Behind the over-indulgence is actually the relative lack of other aspects of life.

For a long time, I have always felt that Taiwanese society has a serious problem of "lack of value". Especially in the pre-university stage, only good academic performance is the only value that is affirmed; and for the so-called "fairness", "scores" are used as the only tool to measure the value of students. Others, such as "creativity", "art", "sports", "skills", cannot bring a sense of achievement and development because they are not valued. This situation has caused students to fail to obtain sufficient value recognition at this important stage of growth. I think this is an important social factor that causes "scarcity".

In the face of addictive behaviors, what you need to do is not just to remove the addictive behavior or substance, which often leads to strong rebound and crazy craving behavior. Feelings of psychological and life deprivation must be confronted with them in order to free them from addiction. No one likes addiction. The feeling of addiction is actually very frustrating. They are subject to those addictive behaviors that they cannot resist. They often feel remorse and helplessness. Unfortunately, there is no other way to get out. They can only continue to use them. Addictive behavior to eliminate unmanageable regret and helplessness.

"Deficiency" plays a key role in the development of addictive behaviors, and is even more important in the overall psychological growth. Facing and dealing with "scarcity" properly can solve many major personal and social problems at the root.

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