A recent study suggests that American college students are suffering from an Internet / technology addiction. Researchers at the University of Maryland conducted the study in which they asked 200 students to give up all media including Internet and cellphones for a day. The researchers found that after 24 hours, several students showed signs of withdrawal, craving and anxiety, and were unable to function well without their media. Many students confessed being addicted to the Internet and mostly missed using text and instant messaging, emailing and Facebook, without which they felt secluded.
The study also reported a few students watching TV news or reading a newspaper but with no loyalty towards a particular news personality, program or news outlet, maintaining a “casual” relationship with news brands.
The American Psychiatric Association does not recognize Internet addiction as a disorder yet; however, there are private centers such as “Restart” which runs Internet addiction recovery programs for treating those who are obsessed with Internet, gaming and texting.
This is a perfect example that can be seen not just in US students, but students all around the world.
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I agree with the previous comment that student (even our students at MCAST) are addicted to internet. In my area (programming) interned is an essential tool since documentation of a number of API's are available online. Also a there are a number of forums where different problems regarding coding are discussed.
ReplyDeleteThis type of use of internet is very good. Unfortunately, new technologies are making our students lazy.
In a Home assignment I gave to the student some weeks ago, the students had to research a number of applications and list the minimum hardware requirements of each. In my opinion this was quite an easy task as the student had to go to the application's site and check the minimum hardware requirements. Instead of doing so, one of my student just googled "System requirements GIMP" (where Gimp is one of the applications they had to research) and the student copied what was found in the first link without even reading it which was wrong and had nothing to do with GIMP.
Not just students. I think that slowly all the world will become more and more addicted to the Internet. This phenomenon is most apparent in students due to the relatively young age of the world wide web, and the even younger age of Web 2.0
ReplyDeleteI also consider myself as an Internet addict, in the sense that my daily routines are centred around it.
Daily Newspapers? Who needs them when I've got access to hundreds of online news websites.
Encyclopedias? Are they still being used when the Internet provides access to tons of material for free?
Books? Still very important in my opinion. Pity there are e-books which are easier to buy, store, and also look for material in them.
Telephone? Never heard of Skype or Google Talk or Live Messenger?
Snail Mail? I think that I have used a maximum of 3 stamps in the last year. And that's because some Maltese government departments still live in the 20th century.
Studies? I am currently reading a Masters in IT & Management through distance learning. Internet to the rescue again.
Social gatherings? Ahhh, here's one worth keeping traditional. I have no Facebook, no Hi5, and no other social networking stuff. I still prefer the old and traditional face-to-face chat.
Internet 6 Old Stuff 1
I think that pretty much sums up the very interesting findings of the University of Maryland.
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Christian Calleja
IICT Lecturer
As with any new development, people's first reaction is the challange it, look at it in a strange suspicious way. We have a tendency to resisty change as what we are used to feels safe. One should not let this feeling of safety with influence the wat we look at new technologies.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I know [apart from environmentalists] nobody thinks of us as being addictd to elecrcity or to cars [dependent yes but not addicted]. The same thing goes for the internet. Most poeople ar not addicted but dependent on it as Christian very well pointed out.
It can very well be that somee epoeple might be addicted to certain features such as facebook for example, but that does not make one addicted to the internet per se. Due to the way that most web sites work, in the way they try to attract traffic and make poeple stay longer on their sites, it is bound that more and more sited have addictive powers.
As alrerady mentioned however, one should not confuse the individual sites for the internat as a whole.
It is not to be excluded that even MCAST students are addicts to the Internet and even to mobiles if I may add. As regards mobiles, our students just simply cannot part with these toys. In our institute, even though they are obliged to switch their mobile off, they just turn it to silent and place it in their pencil case or in their trouser pocket. Sometimes I tend to think that they are more attentive to what is happening to their mobile than to what is being discussed in class.
ReplyDeleteAs for Internet, the students spend a lot of time socialising but nothing else. I am pretty convinced of this because as soon as they have to carry out research for some assignment, their work clearly shows that they just copied material from the first site that came up usually Wikipedia.
Obviously we cannot generalise since there are students who are diligent and who do good research work. I feel that it is our duty to educate the others and try to convince them to dedicate at least a small amount of time to researching.
What I believe is that technology has become a commodity, something which has pervasively made its way through our lives. As with all commodities, it has become something which we don't like to part with, just as much as we hate parting with electricity. Whereas before one would have commented that electricity's a basic necessity, in this case technology has reached the basic necessity stage. Parents give mobile phones to their children just to keep their minds at rest, that should something happen, then their children would be able to do the most basic of necessities, communicate; call for help. And communication, which is one of the distinguishing elements within human beings, and which happens to be considered as a basic need within society, is one of the primary reasons why the Internet has made its way pervasively in our society. So yes, we might say that our students, are Internet-dependent, because it satisfies the basic need of communication, which other tools haven't satisfied yet.
ReplyDeleteHi James, I don't think the new technologies are necessarily making students lazier, or that older generations of students were more critical or inductrious. I believe it is more an issue of learning that information needs to be researched and processed, especially in an age of information overload. Are our students taught research methods? Are they taught how to critically analyze information they find? There may be a couple of learning steps being skipped on the process - and it is not just vocational education, but in college and university as well. It is just assumed they 'know how' to read and write. Students are just expected to adapt to doing things - whether with or without technology - without being shown HOW they are to do it, or experiencing HOW it is done. That is one reason why we have plagiarism, or other problems, because students were never explicitly taught how to do adapt their thinking and writing skills. It is a whole different world to what they are familiar with in their everyday life. It is a particular skill which our students do not encounter outside the college environment, and therefore this type of practice is alien to them - Yes, even after 11+ years of compulsory education.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to the core content, I think our courses should have research methods, critical thinking courses, study skills courses, literacy for academic purposes courses, etc, to better equip our students, in helping them make the transition more effectively.
Is it right to say we are addicts of Internet in the life we live today? I would ask the same question for our students. We surf Internet everyday. God help us if the system is down and there is no Internet. Why? Simply because we are using it as a tool to communicate. It is our letter box. It is our diary. It is also our phone. It is also our conference room. So I would be a bit cautious to say that we are addicted to Internet. We daily ask our students to search information on Internet. If the find the right information or if they manage to interpret and understand that information is another thing. Unfortunately many students when they write the information in their own words fail miserably to explain the concept of the information they would have found.
ReplyDeleteI would not say that our students are addicted to the internet, as if we're talking about a bad thing - since today it's close to impossible for our students to live without the internet ... it is more the case of using the internet wisely, since the problem is not the amount of time spent using the internet but how that time is spent .....
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion I agree that students are addicted to internet and computers. Most of the students acts different and being dishonest when you say time up and stop using the computer . Other negative consequences experienced by the use of internet is the amount of time that teenagers spent on the computer.
ReplyDeleteDoctors found out that students might feel of euphoria, combined with feelings of guilt brought on by either the inordinate amount of time spent on the computer or the abnormal behavior acted out while using the computer. Feelings of depression or anxiety when a parent shortens the time or interrupts the teenager’s plans to use the computer.
Another fact is that teenage students experiencing financial concerns or problems in their life as a result of money being spent on computer hardware, computer on-line charges, or any other costs associated with computers.
I do not find it a problem that students use the internet too often. After all we are also spending a lot of time on the internet!
ReplyDeleteChristian Calleja explained what he does today using the internet. If the internet did not exist today he would still be doing the same things, but in a different way.
We are living in a world were we feel the need to communicate continuously. What is wrong with that? In the past when Maltese travelled to Australia, Canada, USA or UK to settle there it was not possible to communicate on a daily basis. Thanks to the internet this is now possible and can also be done for free. Who doesn't like this?
The same has happened when other technologies advanced such as when the private car became available to several millions of people. Can we say that we are addicted to cars? I don't think so! We are just using the cars to live a comfortable life.
It seems that this topic has raised a number of reactions. In my opinion Vee mentioned a key word, a need. Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs starts with biological needs, continue with safety needs, love and belonging, esteem needs and finish with self actualization. Communication as such is not mentioned as a need. I understand that communication goes through all these needs as basic prerequisite, to satisfy above mentioned needs. As for myself, I would divide all needs in two groups, basic and artificial ones. Obviously that all Maslow’s needs are basic, but which needs are artificial? As someone already mentioned in some previous blog ( I cannot recall, who and where), something like, that the art of the sale is to persuade a buyer that goods or commodity or service, whatever is on sale, is actually his/her need and he/she comes back for it. Economists know that the economics’ wheel of this world is turning on humans needs and if basic needs are satisfied then let’s invent the artificial one. Now, I am talking about “consumer culture” that has to be maintained at any cost. Recall how many times you bought something just for the sake of buying it. At hour homes we are full of technological items like TV, satellite, dream boxes, cables, internet, laptops, mobiles, i-pods, probably I skipped something. While seeing what is going on in the World, we do not have time to see what’s going on in our own home, not say in the bedroom. Why? Absurdly, due to the lack of communication. Sorry, if I went out of the subject.
ReplyDeleteRemember the incident of the young married couple from Seoul, South Korea, who was charged with starving their baby to death? It has been reported that the couple spent an average of ten hours a day playing at Internet cafes and only fed their flesh and blood once a day!
ReplyDeleteAccording to The Guardian, South Korea has the greatest use of broadband globally. People who remain seated at their monitor for excessively long periods of time run a higher risk of developing blood clots. Other studies show that citizens (or netizens) are dropping out of school or even quitting their jobs in order to satisfy their craze or fad.
The American Psychiatric Association may not recognize internet addiction as a disorder yet; however, the death of that innocent baby was definitely one too many.
Bibliography
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/23/news.internet
Block, Dr. J. J. (2008). Issues for DSM-V: Internet Addiction. American Journal of Psychiatry. 165: pp.306-307
I am not sure if 'internet addiction' is fair as a term. I was thinking that there are so many things we are addicted to then, namely electricity. People have always had the need to communicate and the internet is a means to facilitate this need. However, on a funny level, I remember when internet still had a modem which you would turn off and many sites would describe this act as 'turning off the life support of a loved one'.
ReplyDeleteConsider all the things we do on the internet now and how easy it makes life and that is probably why people seem 'addicted' to it.
I also agree that it should not be referred to addiction but rather, dependence. In the same manner that we do not do trans Atlantic travelling by boat taking months, but do it by air within hours(although it it ironically the privilege of the few nowadays to have the time and the money to do so!!), we definitely find the internet a much more efficient way of communication.
ReplyDeleteWe are dependent on many things which we take for granted, eg I remember inserting a little sheet of tippex to correct a mistake which I would have previously typed. So does using the back space make anyone an addict?? It is merely making one more efficient. What I think is important for us and our young is to not lose the ability to be able to use these little perhaps forgotten skills and common sense when they are needed.
Rather than addiction I think that if the internet should be blamed for anything it is laziness and a readiness to take short cuts in order to be more efficient.
px the last thing I did before I posted this post was to copy it on to word to spell check it!!! :))
pss...I meant ps not px :)
ReplyDeleteI tend to agree with Christian. It's not just the students who are addicted to the Internet. While I don't consider myself an Internet addict, as David suggested, I certainly have developed a dependency on the Internet. Given that this way of operating is available and I can see advantages to it, why not use it? I constantly search for and read information online and some of this material such as newspapers are not available from the library. For instance, one of my favourite websites is www.ft.com. I think that the quality of the articles written by the Financial Times exceeds those of most other business newspapers. For me it's also an excellent way to keep in touch with current news, jargon and developments in the industry.
ReplyDeleteI know people in their thirties who watch popular quiz shows on TV such as 'Who wants to be a millionaire' with their mobile close by. Coupled with a Wifi connection around the house, this device enables these people to quickly look up and read about the question posed by the host before the participant even attempts an answer. For such people, the Internet has become part and parcel of their lives. To link back to one of last week’s posts, although these people were not born to the digital world, their 'immigrant accent' has been toned down to an extent that it's difficult to label them 'digital immigrants'.
I wish our students could also sit down in front of the TV and look up different terms that appear on such quiz shows. I wouldn't nag about them being Internet addicts because I am sure that they would learn something. At the end of the day, people don't go around questioning where or how you got to know about something. Often I feel that it is general knowledge that discriminates between one student and another. Usually the students with more general knowledge can argue better, but of course, this might simply be my biased impression.
I agree with Shaz, maybe it should be referred to as a dependence, not an addiction to the internet. For instance, I have been shadowing for a couple of degree dissertations this year, and as time pressed and the deadline got nearer, and the student's load got heavier they depended on the internet for questions and quick tutorials. They had no time to come in to college at times, and an email had to substitute a face to face session. Also coming to think of it, the only way these students communicated with their main tutor was through the net, as they were all foreign professors! The only way of conversing with them was through email or through skype.
ReplyDeleteI think it all depends on what we mean by "addiction". According to Merriam-Webster dictionary addiction is "persistent compulsive use of a substance known by the user to be harmful". Lately this definition is being applied to areas other than medicine, hence he term internet addiction, or compulsive computer use.
ReplyDeleteUsing this definition as a basis of our discussion, using the internet for long to do necessary work such as following news, managing time, and work duties would not be considered as addiction and there is nothing less than beneficial in doing it.
The problem is when the time spent on the computer/internet is negatively affecting the user and most of the time he/she knows about it. For example staying awake late at nigh to play an online game when it would be more beneficial to sleep to recover for the next day. Another example would be having an online chat client open while doing an assignment. Chat buddies will disturb all the time and the student may become less productive in the allocation time.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/addiction