The Internet might be making us all a little nuts

Newsweek and The Daily Beast report that, "In less than the span of a single childhood, Americans have merged with their machines, staring at a screen for at least eight hours a day, more time than we spend on any other activity including sleeping."  The effect is not positive.

Newsweek writes that it's "not the technology itself or the content," but that electronic media has become an addition,  fueling cycles of mania followed by depressive stretches.

Studies found abnormal white patterns in the brains of excessive Internet users, the article reports, and that "the brains of Internet addicts look like the brains of drug and alcohol addicts."


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D. Beeksma

One of the growing crowd of American "nones" herself, Deborah is a prolific writer who finds religion, spirituality and the impact of belief (and non-belief) on culture inspiring, fascinating and at times, disturbing. She hosts the God Discussion show and handles the site's technical work. Her education and background is in business, ecommerce and law.

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  • http://www.houseofbetazed.com Mriana

    I only have a working cell phone when I travel and even then I hardly use it. I also hate texting. I still had a ton of minutes left after my last trip and the company took them all away from me at the end of the month. *rolling eyes* I really don't like cell phones. However, I do wish I received a lot less email than I do.

    However, I seriously doubt the thing about brains of "internet addicts" looking like alcoholics. I've taken such things as this with a grain of salt. Then again, I'm not always at my computer, either. I'm at it a lot when I'm home, but I also don't have a laptop to take the net with me, although, sometimes I wish I did, esp when I'm on a long trip.

  • http://www.houseofbetazed.com Mriana

    Text is overlapping with live feed and blogtalkradio. Anyway, I wanted to add that they said similar about people watching TV for decades. I think we only switch the media during our free time. Instead of TV, it's now the internet.