INTERNET ADDICTION

Internet Addiction

Internet Addiction

Introduction

The internet is a global communication network connecting millions of online users. The revolutionary technology began in 1960s as an experiment in the United States Department of Defense. Today's Internet is, without a doubt, a completely new and modern information and communication network popularly known as the cyberspace. In order to be familiar with the challenges and opportunities offered by the Internet, it is imperative to be familiar wit the origin of this revolutionary technology that completely transformed the way we work, communicate and perform our routine activities.

The origin of modern day 'network of networks' was named ARPANET, which was designed and developed to support military research into the area of computer communication. Since its inception, the development of ARPANET was mainly based on a key assumption that the computer network was unreliable and any traffic sent through this network was considered as 'best effort' delivery.

Definition

The Oxford Dictionary (April, 2010) defines the internet in the following word:

“A global computer network providing a variety of information and communication facilities, consisting of interconnected networks using standardized communication protocols.”

Despite the numerous benefits of the Internet, there are also some disadvantages associated with the technology. These disadvantages mainly emerged from the ways we use the Internet today. This paper aims at discussing what is popularly known as the “Internet addiction” and its effects on a person's health.

Discussion

Statistics released by The Office for National Statistics (ONS) in 2010 showed that more than 30 million adult residents of the United Kingdom (60 percent of the total population) accessed the Internet on almost daily basis. Continuing advances in the communication technology on a rapid scale allows more people than ever before to use the Internet more extensively for both work and social and personal purposes. Undertaking research and communication that has been a time consuming activity sometimes ago, now just take a fraction of the time that was usually taken by these endeavours before the Internet access was not limited.

The rapid increase in use of online social networking hubs such as Facebook, Myspace, etc. is growing in popularity with more than 40 percent of the total Internet users using these social networking websites, online chat rooms and posting on blogs. Research further reveals that majority of online users who perform this activity belong to the age group of 16 to 24.

As with almost everything we experience in our lives, there can not be only positive without the presence of negative. Same is the case with the Internet. Internet addiction disorder is the general term that is widely used to explain the excessive use of computer and the Interne, which, at some stage in one's life, starts interfering with and affecting his or her daily life. Although Internet addiction is, until now, not formally recognised as a disease or clinical disorder, an increasing body effort in terms of scientific research and scholarly studies attempt to establish Internet addiction as one of the public health concerns with large number of research scholars and health ...