Need A Fix?
Prevalent devices and changing society
make Internet addiction no joke.
By Harry Kirsbaum
11
eet Cathy Cruz Mar-
rero, the woman now
known as "Fountain
Lady" because a mall
security camera caught
her falling into a
fountain in 2011 while
she was texting and
walking. The video went "viral," and
she became a reluctant YouTube
sensation.
Meet Emily Seebohm, the Aus-
tralian swimmer who was heavily
favored for a gold medal in the
100m backstroke in the London
2012 Olympics. She came in second
to relatively unknown American
Missy Franklin because she spent
the entire night before the race on
Facebook and Twitter and lost her
focus.
Technology has given us the
power to be connected at all times,
but what happens when you become
addicted to the connection?
According to the Consumer Prod-
uct Safety Commission, 1,152 people
were treated in emergency rooms in
our wonderfully distracted country
in 2011 for — ahem — distracted
walking, and that's a low-ball es-
timate because most people won't
admit that they actually fell into a
fountain, or off a subway platform
or stepped into oncoming traffic un-
less it was caught on tape.
Beyond the daily annoyances of
seeing a group of kids at the food
court in the mall texting each other
at the table instead of talking to
each other, or the guy screeching
into his cell phone while in line at
Starbucks, lies the true Internet ad-
dict — the kid who locks himself in
his room to play World of Warcraft
for days at a time, or the person who
has lost a relationship, job, educa-
tional or career opportunity because
of Internet addiction.
Tzipora Kinney, 22, of Clawson,
grew up in the Internet age and has
been forced into her "addiction"
through illness.
"I went through all the social
media trends of the last decade or
so: Livejournal, MySpace, Facebook,
Twitter, Pinterest," said Kinney, who
is disabled with gastroparesis, a rare
disease that keeps her in bed on IV
nutrition or in the hospital. "I find
myself checking my email probably
20 times a day," Kinney said. "The
last thing I do before going to bed
and the first thing I do before even
getting out of bed in the morning is
to check my email and/or Facebook.
"I can make it a day without it. I
have many times on Shabbat, but
even when doing so, it's the last
thing I do before lighting Shabbat
36 September 2012
I RED TI PAID
candles, and the first thing I do at
the end of Shabbat," she said.
Kinney said she has more online
friends than real ones, but some of
the reason is based on her illness.
"Even before I got sick a few years
ago, you pretty much had to be on
Facebook if you wanted to even
know what was going on in friends'
lives or get invited to parties and
events," she said. "From a Jewish
perspective, the only way to keep
track of Federation-sponsored
young adult events is through email
and Facebook."
The Internet has helped her
meet others with the same disease.
"Long-term treatment on W nutri-
tion is very rare," she said. "Without
the Internet, I'd feel a lot more
isolated and I wouldn't know other
people going though the health
things I am."
If she were healthier, she would
cut back on Internet use, but "every-
one on any college campus is con-
stantly online, even during classes,
and so many people are online,
often unproductively, during their
jobs. So I'm not even sure that being
disabled changes anything."
Kinney said she does not get out
much, and the only people she talks
to in person most of the time are
doctors and nurses.
"I can't even imagine how much
scarier and lonelier and perhaps
all-out terrifying it would be to be
this sick and without the Internet,"
she said. "I can't imagine my life
without it."
On the other side of the coin is
Adam Helfman, 44, who jokes that
he is not an Internet addict, even
though he can usu-
N, ally be found two
hours every morning
7 planning his day at
a table at Ellen's in
Sylvan Lake with a
laptop, an iPad and
an iPhone at the
ready. His voicemail
Adam Helfman
is always full because
he'd rather text. He boasts of more
than 5,000 Facebook friends, and
he needs to stay connected for his
business, Hireitdone.com, a home
improvement referral service.
"My drug of choice is Facebook,"
he said, but he also tweets and uses
Instagram, the photography web-
site.
"I'm a food addict; I used to be
obese, 300 lbs.," he said.
With 5,000 Facebook friends,
he said, "My sphere of influence is
pretty big. I don't cook. I eat out all
the time, and I make good choices. I
take pictures of my food, and Insta-
gram makes food look better."
He said he spends about four
hours a day on the Internet but is
always connected to his friends, "a
whole gang of eaters." I get people
messaging me all the time with new
restaurant recommendations. We go
to all the new spots."
BEING REALISTIC
yet a disorder diagnosed by the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
(DSM) of the American Psychiatric
Association, but it is being recom-
mended for further research."
She said it is no different than
any other addiction and is linked
to addictive syndromes similar to
Impulse Control Disorders.
"The essential features are an in-
ability to resist an impulse, temp-
tation to engage in action that is
harmful to themselves or others,
feelings of increased sense of ten-
sion or anxiety before engaging in
the act and, subsequently, the expe-
rience of pleasure, gratification and
relief," she said. "Many individuals
are isolated, depressed, anxious and
become very aggressive if their In-
ternet activity is being interrupted."
According to a recent story in
Scientific American, "very specific
patterns of Internet use are reliably
related to depressive tendencies."
"Peer-to-peer file sharing, heavy
emailing and chatting online, and a
tendency to quickly switch between
multiple websites and other online
resources all predict a greater pro-
pensity to experience symptoms of
depression," the story said. "Quickly
switching between websites may
reflect anhedonia (a decreased
ability to experience emotions) as
people desperately seek emotional
stimulation:'
No matter the level of use, from
dabbler to addict, unless you live in
a cave without Wi-Fi, your Inter-
net isn't going away, and it's going
to change the way people relate to
each other. The cat's out of the bag,
the horse is out of the barn, and the
cow's jumped over the moon.
The next time you see a group of
people gathered around swapping
jokes, listen closely.
Are they saying, "Did you hear
the one about the guy who walked
into a bar?" or "Did you see the one
about the woman who walked into
the fountain?" RT
Rabbi Jason Miller of Farming-
ton Hills, a blogger who does social
media marketing for a number of
clients, calls the Internet "a multi-
tasker's dream, but it can also be a
nightmare for people who forget to
get back into the real world."
Miller, who has more than 4,000
Facebook friends and spends a lot of
time on the Internet, said he makes
it a point to get out and exercise.
"I'm very conscious how sitting
in front of a computer
and surfing the Web
can lead to an addic-
tion," he said. "I believe
I'm more efficient on
the Internet, but it
becomes very easy to
become sidetracked."
Dr. Vera Sekulov
is a Southfield-based
psychologist who has
specialized in clinical
and neuropsychology
1.057950
for more than 30 years.
She said, "Internet
More than 1 million people have watched this woman fall into
Use Disorder is not
a fountain while texting on YouTube.
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