Caught in the Web?

Hacking it in a big city isn't always easy. Luckily for expats who arrive on UAE shores alone, websites like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo can ease the initial strain.

You're only a mouse click away from chatting to your old friends, catching up on the latest news and browsing through photos of all the madness you're missing.

But when Sunday rolls around and you find you've spent the last 48 hours in the exclusive company of your laptop for the fifth weekend running, it may be time to reassess your lifestyle.

Staging an inter(net)vention

There's a growing call among psychiatrists for the recognition of internet addiction as a clinical disorder. Leading that call is psychiatrist Dr Jerald Block of the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, USA.

In a March 2008 report in the American Journal of Psychiatry, Dr Block argues that internet addiction should be included in an upcoming update of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders (a handbook referred to by mental health professionals in diagnoses).

"Some of the most interesting research on internet addiction has been published in South Korea," says Dr Block in his article. "After a series of 10 ardiopulmonary-related deaths in internet cafés and a game-related murder, South Korea considers internet addiction one of its most serious public health issues.

"Using data from 2006, the South Korean government estimates that approximately 210,000 South Korean children (2.1 per cent, ages 6–19) are afflicted and require treatment.

"About 80 per cent of those needing treatment may need psychotropic medications, and perhaps 20 to 24 per cent require hospitalisation."

Isolating the cause

According to worldstats.com, internet usage in the UAE has increased by 132 per cent in the last seven years. In real terms, that means there are 2.3 million people with easy access to the Web.

The Middle East as a whole has seen a whopping 1,176.8 per cent increase in internet users in the last eight years, making it the fastest growing online community in the world.

In Friday's e-mail survey, 80 per cent of expats interviewed said they had access to the internet at home and the average user said that they spent between two and four hours (outside of work) online every day.

When we asked our test group to choose between chatting online to a best friend back home and answering a call from a new friend here in the UAE, 60 per cent of the respondents said they would ignore the ringing phone and continue online.

At face value, you might find that response perfectly acceptable. But by choosing to maintain a virtual relationship at the expense of answering your phone and arranging to meet your new mate for coffee, you're isolating yourself from real human contact.

Psychologist Dr Raymond H. Hamden of the Human Relations Institute in Dubai Knowledge Village warns that the isolating effect of too much time spent online could
be dangerously harmful.

"Isolation is an aspect of several psychoses – schizophrenia, paranoia, personality disorders…" he says. "If a person suffers from a covert psychological disorder, any amount of time spent in isolation can exacerbate uncovered symptoms.
"For those who do not have covert psychological disorders it's still unhealthy to spend excessive amounts of time on anything, be it reading, watching TV or working."

Diagnosis, IAD

The move to have the internet recognised as addictive is nothing new. In 1997, Dr Ivan K. Goldberg posted the symptoms of what he called "Internet Addictive Disorder" (IAD) on a psychologist's online bulletin board – as a joke.

Dr Goldberg described withdrawal symptoms as including "psychomotor agitation, anxiety, obsessive thinking about what is happening on the internet, fantasies or dreams about the internet, and voluntary or involuntary typing movements of the fingers".

Much to his chagrin, Dr Goldberg received e-mails from people who had read the post and were writing, in
all seriousness, to seek help for their disorder.

The New Yorker magazine later described Dr Goldberg as "the first in his field to gain notoriety for naming a disease that he says does not exist".

But it's no joke to Dr Block, who lists the four signs of internet addiction as excessive use (associated with a loss of sense of time), withdrawal (including feelings of anger and tension when the computer is inaccessible), tolerance (the need for better computer equipment and more hours of use) and, finally, negative repercussions (including arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation and fatigue).

Speaking to Friday, Dr Block explains, "We're in the midst of an electronics revolution – much like the industrial revolution – and it affects how we relate to each other every day. Some of these changes are for the better, some are for the worse, and some are simply different."

Wired for contact

One could argue that because you are maintaining human relationships online, there's no cause for alarm. How can I be isolating myself if I'm talking to my friends back home?
"People need people," explains Dr Hamden. "We're genetically hardwired this way.

The problem with saying that you're getting interaction through the internet is that words only account for seven per cent of communication. Voice tone makes up 38 per cent and 55 per cent is body language."

"Humans are hardwired to be social animals," agrees Dr Block. "As such, we instinctually know to monitor other people for various signals, such as acceptance or threat. Unconsciously, we weigh every conversation: how are they reacting to us? Are they smiling? Are they interested?

"Many of these signals act to reduce or limit interaction between people. But technology allows people to communicate much more freely without as much concern about the other person's reaction or consequences. Moreover, it allows one to imagine how the other person is reacting and to think the best [or worst] of them."

"An actual face-to-face conversation entails relating to another person more fully," Dr Block continues,
"not in a way where you can imagine them to be reacting in such-and-such a manner but, rather, as they are actually reacting. That slows things down, so real life meetings tend to be less emotionally intense at first.

By contrast, virtual relationships tend to rapidly develop a form of intimacy. Over time, however, the depth of the real relationship may become more fulfilling than the imagined, virtual one.

"Of course, there is also our broader sensorium – touch, smell, sight, voice – that real conversations encompass, but which the virtual can only provide crude facsimiles of."

Picking up good vibrations?

"Even if the internet were able to provide voice tone and body language, studies into the importance of human proximity indicate that this still wouldn't be enough," adds Dr Hamden. "The studies, part of neuropsychological research, show that we emit certain vibrations and that there's chemistry involved in proximity.

"There was a study done during the Second World War in which newborn babies were separated into two groups. One set of babies was given nurses who held them and fed them. The other set was isolated in cribs, fed mechanically and their diapers were changed by nurses wearing gloves.

"Both groups grew physically, but around the age of seven the isolated group began to die. There was no medical reason. They died due to a lack of human thriving."

"I find that people who use the internet for most of their human contact initially find it very gratifying and may form many intense virtual relationships," concedes Dr Block. "If, however, the relationships remain solely virtual, they often later feel betrayed by the false promises of the technology… and lonely."

It can't all be bad

"Too much canvas to a boat, too much nutriment to a body, too much authority to a soul: the consequence is always shipwreck," warns the Greek philosopher in The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Were he alive, Plato might have added that spending too much time online will end in shipwreck.

Then again, you'd still be able to use the internet to Google construction plans for a new boat, order the building supplies and then blog about sailing across the Seven Seas in it.
As in most things, the answer is in finding a happy medium.
Dr Block agrees.

"Old barriers such as one's 'authority' or 'accessibility' have been removed by Web access, text messaging, and e-mail, and people are feeling more empowered.

Out of that sense of empowerment, are we more apt to challenge and question authority within families, colleges, medical centres, corporations, or governments?

Arguments could be made that this is good, bad, or both. What is clear is that it is a dramatic change in how we function as a human species."