Is Internet a Drug? Aiart’s Report On Internet Addiction Presented in Rome

Imagine women who are alone and divorced, depressed by their loss of work,
that spend their days in front of the computer, teenagers lost for hours
behind their game consoles, and out of class university students who are
seeking a thrill from the risks offered by online poker.

Think also of dynamic managers who can’t manage to detach themselves, even
for a moment, from their Blackberry, and of young people whose frenzy to
immortalize themselves on social media with their latest selfie from the
living room is completely out of control. Raise your hand, whoever has
never seen a table of teenagers at a local venue become prisoners to their
smartphones, anxious every minute to monitor the arrival of news on
Facebook and Whatsapp. Their eyes and hands move in unison in the frenzy of
waiting for the arrival of a new message.

No, this isn’t a crazy and surreal plot for the next Christmas movie, but
rather the troubling picture that emerges from the latest report given by Aiart—the Italian Association of Radio and Television
Consumers—that recently performed a study to determine Italy’s dependence
on the internet. Sure enough, as may be expected, it sounded the bell of
social alarm, perhaps louder and more strident than ever.

Beyond individual cases of people who are emotionally fragile or in social
difficulty, the data emerging shows an exponential growth, at the
statistical level, of the pathological use of the internet, even among
so-called normal people, or to be clear, people who have not suffered
particularly devastating life traumas. This alarming phenomenon, which is
most evident among young people, is characterized by addiction and
behavioral problems.

The survey examined 61 cases in 34 Italian provinces. Statistically
speaking, these are not huge numbers. They are large enough to raise an
alarm for this new pathology however, called Internet Addiction Disorder,
which is unknown to most people today. As we have seen, it shows itself in
varied ways: from poker dependency to the compulsive and anxious checking
of e-mail, messages, and chats. The problem deepens since often people are
not aware of being internet-dependent. Of course there is no need to throw
a dark and apocalyptic light on the web and new technology in general,
since it brings so many good and useful things to our society. Defeatist or
catastrophic attitudes concerning social media or virtual relationships
would be neither fair nor desirable. They would instead represent an
attempt to return to the Stone Age. Surely a greater control of this means
is a far more forward-looking attitude to adopt.

What is worth reminding ourselves is that the web should be at our service,
and not the other way around. Otherwise we risk losing control of our
reason and emotions and become overwhelmed. For this reason, as Aiart
shows, the dangers of Internet should not be overlooked. In the
presentation of their report, which was held in Rome on November 6,
Vincenzo Lorenzo Pascali, a teacher at the Catholic University of the
Sacred Heart, affirmed that behavioral addictions have effects that are
very similar to those caused by drugs. Both are characterized by a
dissociative experience. Just like every situation involving strong
addiction, it would be desirable for Internet addiction to be treated as a
real illness by the national health care system, even though there is not
yet a cultural awareness of the problem or specialists who can treat it.

As Luca Borgomeo, President of Aiart, declared in his presentation, we are
finding ourselves confronted with new difficulties, before which—we must
admit—we are not yet prepared to face. Schools, which have the duty of
educating children in the use of media, are essential in fighting against
this addiction’s danger. This report stressed the need to form a culture of media education, beginning with schools, children and teenagers.
This way we can form people who are more aware, and less vulnerable, to
certain siren songs. Let us hope that Aiart’s study may have sewn a
seed—and that this seed will not be lost in the dry desert sand.