[Newsweek/The Daily Beast] Is the Web Driving Us Mad? - Page 3

I disagree with a lot of this. The article is heavy handed and doesn't provide a lot of details. This guys needs to differentiate between addictive personality people with no control over themselves and the average person. I spend a lot of time online, reading a lot of material, educating myself and learning about the world. I could easily be put into the "addictive" personality category and I don't use text messages, I don't spend all my life online clicking links rapidly until I go insane. The wholesale availability of information is, to me, a boon.

Also, differentiate between using the internet and abusing the internet. People who spend 24 hours on their iPhone (as an example from the article) aren't suffering because of the internet, they are suffering because of their psychology, and in extreme manners.

Here are some of my favorites:

First, staring at a screen is NOT using the internet, and I don't know many people that spend 8 hours a day online outside of work.

Undergrads deprived of technology, bastions of unbiased truth into their own perceptions. "MY LIFE IS A UNIQUE HELL!"

You don't say.

Nice one sentence quote from MIT that amounts to nothing - then the author spins a bunch of inferences without quoting the source.

Wow 24 people with strict delineations like "newbie" - I didn't read the study (nor did I see it linked) but the sentiment echos the article's whole

Addicts look like addicts - no freaking way!

This is the worst. Please, statements like this make me roll my eyes so far back they reel forward like cartoon slot machines.
Edited by _02 - 7/11/12 at 4:59am

I suppose all the online education I am currently studying is going to permanently drive me mad with all the knowledge I am currently consuming. Maybe I will become smarter than the dumbest human which will enable me to exist happily with no discomfort.

Although I agree that the internet changes your brain I really don't agree with any of this article. I mean anyone who has been using the internet for any length of time knows you have to distance yourself, stop replying to the moron who is arguing with you or give someone some time before raging at them for not responding to your text message.

If people are lonely then they are lonely before the internet, I seriously doubt the internet is the cause. It's just a mechanism that enables the expression of such feelings.

A far as not being able to focus thought the entire 5 page article, well I couldn't focus simply because its a really boring article that doesn't get to the point. I have similar feelings when reading bad philosophy books.

After sleeping on my previous statement, not literally of course, i've come to the conclusion that I don't care.

I may not like my phone being silent for long periods of time, but that's because I like talking to people who live too far away from me to visit. Or i'm too lazy to bother.

Actually scratch that first comment, lazy.

I agree with you _02 and your view on the article.

But I think one point that he does hit on whether it be subjective because of his article or objective from actual studies - is that more and more people are continually 'plugged in' or 'constantly connected' and I think this can be a problem and is a problem for some people. The real curiosity will be when tech migrates to new mediums where many more things are constantly connected, in ways now that we only are realizing as possibilities (homes, cars, tables, walls, buildings, sidewalks, etc).

I am much like you - I continually try to read up on current world-wide news, continue to read up on scientific advances, learn new things (currently learning new things thanks to CodeAcademy), and so on. And I too don't text (ohk - I do on rare occasions when I'm trying to reach one specific person who doesn't answer his phone), nor do I spend my every waking minute in front of my computer. But I do rely on being connected for business - 50% of my yearly income results from online sales via eBay (and looking to move to Amazon and other places soon too).

That all being said I think these problems or possibilities of problems resulting from 'always-on' or 'constantly connected' will probably prove more real for people who were born in the mid to late 1990's, people who have never known a world not connected.
Edited by GanjaSMK - 7/11/12 at 7:10am

... 24 people in a study isn't a study. 24 people isn't enough to amount to anything if they did this with over 1,000 people I would be surprised if the results were the same.

I agree with alot of the article. I felt like it was very repetitive and I dont know that it really required the 5 pages to get the point across but I know I am somewhat addicted to the internet/media.

Every morning I wake up, check facebook, check twitter, then check the news. 90% of the time before I do anything else while Im still under the covers. I definitely suffer from the whole "fear of missing out" thing as that is my #1 reason for not deleting my facebook. In a sense I guess I am more addicted to my smart phone than I am my actual computer. This previous week I went 3 days without logging on to my desktop at all and that was simply because I was busy. I didnt suffer any withdrawals or anything like that but I was happy to finally be able to sit down and use my computer again.

As someone said though, its like everything. You have to have a happy medium. I edit videos so I am always at a computer at work, I come home and I am connected to the internet in some form via my phone,desktop,or laptop but there comes a time when you have to get out of the house and do stuff. My gf and I have started riding bikes and we regularly look for something to do to get out and about.

This is something I can't ignore, and may be a blind spot in my perception, because I'm almost 31. I had a pager and have never had a smartphone. However I've experienced all the nasty types of obsessive compulsive psychotic types of behavior they attribute to internet usage and I've learned about myself and these behaviors in nauseating detail. Sans formative internet exposure - so where did I (and many other people) pick up these neurotic impulsive behaviors?

The internet may facilitate it, and I guess the article is at its root just bringing up the issues with the internet, but the insistence that the internet will "make you crazy" misses the point. In my opinion, anything in life can facilitate your craziness if you don't understand your own psychology. So we shouldn't talk so much about the internet being a danger, as much as understanding why we are a danger to ourselves, and why the internet seems to bring it out so clearly in some people.

Maybe I missed the point. But I'm by many solid measures sane, and I use the crap out of the internet.

I'm with you all the way - completely. I'm right around your age and I too had a pager and also one of the early Nokia or similar type cell phones in/around 1999/2000. I have an addictive personality as well but I find myself diluted in alcohol (previously cigarettes as well from age 9 til about 22 then on/off for several years at a time), other stuff I'm not supposed to mention but breath the essence of my 'handle', and a few games back in the day (CS junkie for a long time as a late beta {6.9} player, still am to some extent).

But yeah - the addictions are more to do with vices, inhibitions, and psyche than the 'internet'. Plus you and I and those older than us know what a world without the 'Internet' was like - a big portion of the world doesn't!

And the writer falls short on the associations between the inter-connected models (new to the world until Facebook became mainstream enough to go IPO.......) of things like Facebook, LinkedIn, business, social family and friend/acquaintance, and news/media. He relies to much on the 'internet' rather than the 'networking' of these models, platforms and their respective 'communities' or otherwise. At least in my opinion.