Three years ago, Andrew Macdonald was so addicted to online gaming he was spending 64 of every 72 hours in front of a screen. The other eight hours, he explained, were spent collapsed on his keyboard.
It might be hard for some to comprehend days of sleep deprivation, take-out food, and insular activity, but for the 25-year-old Vancouver resident, being online offered relief from the real world.
“I hadn’t gone to college, I didn’t have too many friends, and didn’t find myself all that encouraging of a person,” he said. “I didn’t feel like I had anything in real life that made me want to spend time in it, so I decided my digital life was more important and better. It was a place where I was recognized for skills and talents I had taught myself.”
Ever since the term “Internet addiction” was coined in 1995, however, debate over problematic Internet use has raged on. Is spending too much time online a widespread and harmful disorder, experts ask, or simply a bad habit among a predisposed few? Is it a unique condition, or the symptom of another underlying mental illness? While psychologists and psychiatrists discuss these ideas in scholarly journals, Internet addiction has become something that you, your child, or even your parents are struggling with.
The most recent survey from Insights West found that one in five smartphone users in B.C. described themselves as “addicted” to their device, with more than half (56 per cent) reporting that they check their device at least once an hour. Broader studies show as many as one in 10 users of digital media will develop an addiction.
It wasn’t until he lost his job and a relationship in rapid succession that Macdonald realized he needed to make a lifestyle change.
“I realized that everything around me was passing me by and I had done nothing to become a part or have a story in it. And that’s when I went, ‘F*** it,’ I’m getting a life.”
To do so, he sought the help of Benjamin Wong, a counsellor with Richmond Addiction Services — one of the few publicly-funded agencies in B.C. that deal with this kind of addiction.
For therapists such as Wong, Internet addiction is very real.
“Within the addictions community, it’s not even controversial anymore,” he said.
Wong said his clinic sees 20 to 30 new families every year struggling with the repercussions of digital addiction — everything from video gaming to online gambling, pornography to social media.
As streaming technology improves, Wong says he is also seeing a spike in issues related to binge watching — with children now going so far as to sneak their smartphones into class to watch TV shows.
To assess whether a person has a digital addiction, Wong says his clinic looks at three main areas: control, compulsion and consequences.
To read the full story in our sister publication the Westender click here.
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