Wednesday, March 26, 2008
“‘Addiction to internet ‘is an illness’ | The Observer Yes. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. I predict with confidence that within five years this will be a major epidemic among American kids. It’s already a significant problem, but soon it will be an unavoidable nationwide mental health concern. This notion was reinforced over the weekend when I was biking through the wooded bike paths on Hilton Head Island and saw a group of 12-14 year old girls pass by, all of them browsing the web on their phones with one hand while steering with the other. Being born in 1980, I consider myself an early test case for the “always on generation.” I’ve had an addiction to being “connected” for the past eight years or so and I’ve been seeing it more and more in people my age. When a new condo went up across the street from my old apartment, I suddenly had a Gursky-esque view into the personal habits of dozens of young New Yorkers. My biggest observation was that when people weren’t sleeping, they were on their computers. Even when they were eating or watching TV, they were still on their computers. Lately I’ve been questioning whether being “always on” makes us enjoy life just a bit less. How can we be stopping to smell the roses when we’re looking at our iPhones every few minutes to see if we’ve got a new email? Would I get more satisfaction digesting a well-written novel opposed to spending that time keeping up with every forgettable tidbit to come over my RSS feeds? Are we forgetting to appreciate time spent in the presence of people we’re actually with when we’re texting with people we’re not? While it would be silly to dispute the usefulness of the Internet and the improvements it’s brought to our daily lives, it might be time to start questioning when we’ve reached a point of diminishing returns and some temperance needs to kick in. But let’s do that later. I’m gonna go reload my Tumblr dashboard for the next six hours until it’s time to go to bed. BRB.” Ricky Van Veen’s GET EXCITED
Posted at 4:59 PM

Notes