Is Internet Addiction Destroying Your Kid’s Brain?
By Movieguide® Contributor
The PLOS Mental Health Journal just released a review on internet addiction that parents may want to know about.
“The behavioural addiction brought on by excessive internet use has become a rising source of concern since the last decade,” the review authors said.
The review found that kids and teens ages 10 to 19 who were diagnosed with internet addiction had disrupted working memory and impaired function between parts of the brain that communicate to control attention. The results were taken from neuroimaging studies of a few hundred kids and teens.
The criteria set forth for internet addiction in the study were “one’s persistent preoccupation with the internet, withdrawal symptoms when away from the internet, and sacrificing relationships (for) time to spend on the internet over an extended period of time (e.g., 12 months),” Max Chang, first author of the study and outreach case manager at the non-profit Peninsula Family Service in San Francisco, told CNN. “The pattern of behaviour results in significant impairment or distress in the individual’s life.”
“When participants clinically diagnosed with internet addiction engaged in activities governed by the brain’s executive function network — behaviors requiring attention, planning, decision-making and impulse control — those brain regions showed substantial disruption in their ability to work together, compared to those in peers without internet addiction,” CNN reported. “The authors think such signaling changes could suggest these behaviors can become more difficult to perform, potentially influencing development and well-being.”
Dr. David Ellis, a behavioral scientist at the University of Bath’s Institute for Digital Security and Behaviour, said that the study has some limitations.
“Cause and effect cannot be drawn from these studies,” said Ellis. “Second, the focus on functional connectivity comes at the expense of any critique about the key measure of interest. Specifically, internet ‘addiction,’ which was initially conjured up by (psychiatrist) Ivan K. Goldberg in 1995 as a joke.”
“Today, the conceptualisation and measurement of internet ‘addiction’ is neither universally accepted and certainly not diagnosable using the survey instruments used in the studies included as part of the review,” Ellis continued. “Similarly, the enormity of activities that the internet allows for immediately makes this definition somewhat redundant.”
China first declared that internet addiction was a public health crisis. America does not have internet addiction listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. But it does have internet gaming disorder listed.
Dr. Caglar Yildirim, an associate teaching professor of computer science at the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University, said the adolescent’s patterns are identical to those who are addicted to substances.
“Overall, the mechanisms underlying internet addiction are more like an emerging pattern than a finished picture,” Chang said. “A lot of causality between what happens in the brain and what is displayed through behavior is still being understood. As of now, observation using biomarkers such as functional connectivity helps bridge that gap.”
“Similar to substance and gambling disorders, internet addiction rewires the brain, making it harder to resist internet related stimuli,” Chang said. “However, unlike gambling or substance usage, the internet is an important part of our lives. Balancing the usefulness and dangers of the internet is a field that is very crucial going forward in adolescent development.”
Withdrawal from relationships is a red flag for internet addiction, Chang says.
CNN said, “Technology addictions have become prevalent enough for the American Psychiatric Association to include it as a topic in its presidential initiative for 2023 to 2024,” said Dr. Smita Das, immediate past-chair of the APA’s council on addictions.
Dr. David Anderson, a clinical psychologist at the Child Mind Institute, believes that other factors are usually the reason why children and teens spend a lot of time online.
He said it may be that “your kid is… socially anxious. It may be that he is depressed. It may be that he has a learning disorder. ”
An Iranian study conducted on 250 college students found that “Excessive Internet use may create a heightened level of psychological arousal, resulting in little sleep, failure to eat for long periods, and limited physical activity, possibly leading to the user experiencing physical and mental health problems such as depression, OCD, low family relationships and anxiety.”
Internet addiction may be linked to “subjective distress” and functional impairment related to other mental health disorders, such as depression, anxiety, loneliness and self-efficacy.
Depression was the most reported symptom among those who were addicted to the internet in the Iranian study.
Movieguide® recently reported that more parents are concerned with children’s screen addiction than substance abuse:
[A] study, published on JAMA Network Open, revealed parents’ views on their children’s use of technology. While a majority of parents participating in the study felt their kids could “use the internet responsibly” and felt comfortable “gauging appropriate durations of screen time,” they also expressed concerns about technology’s impact on their children.
Over 50% of all participants said they worry about their kids developing an addiction to technology, compared to roughly 40% of parents who worry about substance addiction.
“Our results remind us that no conversation about the impact of internet technologies on our youth is complete without consideration of both the positive and negative impacts, and acknowledgement of how experiences may differ among families,” study author Michael Milham, M.D., Ph.D., told Fox News Digital.
