Internet Addiction and Depression: Which Comes First?
February 04, 2010
I spend a lot of time on the computer. Between the electronic medical record at work, researching and writing for MedPie.com, and an email obsession, I've started to wonder if all of this sitting around in front of computers might be making me sick. Or was it the other way around?
Luckily, it looks like I don't have an actual internet addiction.
Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as internet addiction.
What's more, British scientists have demonstrated a link between depression and internet addiction. What they don't know is what came first, the depression or the addiction.
Less than two percent of the persons in the study sample were addicted to the internet, according to the study by Morrison and Gore in the journal Psychopathology. Those who were addicted spent a disproportionate amount of time on sexually gratifying sites, online gaming sites, and online communities. For addicts, these type of sites serve as virtual substitutes for social activities that traditionally require a person's physical presence.
According to a study by Ko et al, adolescents who have attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, hostility, depression, and social phobia are most at risk of developing internet addiction.
Let's try something new. Let's try a Jeff Foxworthy-style set of comments about internet addiction. I'll go first:
If you post a comment on a website, and then wait to see who posts a comment in response, you might be an internet addict.
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