Apparently I Have a Mental Illness, Do You?

Do you text message multiple times throughout the day?
Do you feel uneasy when you haven't checked your email in a few hours?
Do you spend your free time playing video games online?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you too may suffer from a possible new mental illness called Internet Addiction.


This morning I read an article from Switched.com called "Internet Addiction Could Be Classified As Mental Illness." Basically, to sum it up, "this month's issue of American Journal of Psychiatry says Internet addiction -- which includes 'excessive gaming, sexual pre-occupations and e-mail/text messaging' -- is a common compulsive-impulsive disorder."

Well why didn't they say that before I got addicted to the Internet? Thanks a lot, psychiatrists.

I'm one of those people that never turns off their computer. You know, the kind whose away message on AIM at 4AM reads "sleeping." I go online as soon as I wake up, right before I go to bed, and all that time in between. I bring my laptop to three out of my five classes and surf the web while I work for three hours four days a week. Clearly, I have an addiction.

But really, who in my generation doesn't? We've become accustomed to going online for everything from news to recipes to movie times. We know best that any information we could ever want can be found on the Internet. And what's wrong with that?

Like I've said before, I keep hearing about how great online journalism is and how much potential there will be in the future for these new media. Not only do I agree 100%, but I also enjoy this new media far more than I've ever enjoyed traditional media, both as a receiver and a communicator. But here we have this group of psychiatrists telling us that too much Internet could be a bad thing. And one could easily argue that online journalists should receive the most blame for this "Internet addiction."

If those who suffer will require hospitalization, as the article suggests, it looks like all of us will be spending some time in the ol' psychiatric ward. If that doesn't sound like something you're interested in, you should probably get off my blog and go read a book.