WIY –
I think that you people have no clue what addiction looks like and how a shmutz addiction totally destroys someone’s life be it a man woman child
Actually, I have a fairly good idea what addiction looks like, in fact I’m in the middle of an assignment about it for my psychology degree. As addiction is currently defined (which is fairly loosely actually), the internet is not addictive. Addictions are defined as having the following characteristics:
1. Excessive, disruptive, compulsive behaviour caused by the activity or substance. All these terms are, however, subjective.
2. Craving the activity or substance in its absence. Again, this is fairly subjective.
3. Tolerance – the amount of substance or performance of the activity needed to achieve the same level of ‘high’ increases over time. This is objective and observable.
4. Physical withdrawal symptoms. These are actual, physical symptoms such as headaches, nausea, vomiting, ‘the shakes’ etc. upon prolonged cessation of the substance or activity. Again, objective and observable.
The internet may, at the very most, qualify for two of the above. It certainly does not qualify by either of the objective, observable criteria. It doesn’t appear in the DSM as an addiction. I know you will google up some studies but the issue really is a lot more complex than a quick internet search. It may be that, in the fullness of time, as more research is conducted internet abuse may come to be classified as an addiction but at the moment it isn’t.
Furthermore, you fall foul of the self-selection bias when you ask us to
Read some real stories and then come back and post your naarishkiet.
The problem here is that you only ever hear stories of when things go wrong because things not going wrong is not a story. Nobody ever went to their rabbi completely broken at the fact that they got the internet and then nothing bad happened. Nobody ever sent a story into a magazine or newspaper which went “I got the internet and it was fine”. “Nothing happened” doesn’t sell. Sure, completely unfiltered internet is a dangerous thing but when it gets blown out of all proportion as in these ads then all that happens is that people get skeptical about the whole issue.