Does the presence of advance information technologies and internet leads some people to some kind of disorder or illness called Internet Addiction Disorder or Computer Addiction? Is it some kind of illness that recently discovered? Is it something that we could not find in the medical terms? Or it may be some kind of disorder that is originally inside someone''s mind, just like drug or alcohol addiction, but somehow caused by the internet and computers. Can internet and computers cause addiction? This is an aspect that should be taking care of seriously since there are researches and reports involving internet addiction, and proved that there are people with this kind of problem. Does internet addiction differ from other addiction such as drug, alcohol and smoking addiction? What are the effects of internet addiction? Bear in mind, studies shows that human being is the most vulnerable creature in the world towards getting addicted in life. At the same time, human does not want to be addicted to anything and afraid of it. There are many reasons contributing to addiction to food, shopping, reading and drinking. In fact, there are people with addiction to work! However, other people do the same thing, watching TV, reading, eating, drinking and working, but these people do not have addiction! The world of computer, internet and information technologies can surely cause addiction. Why? Because these technologies are like a good friend to some people, they give answers to their questions, they entertain people by giving up almost anything that they desire: mental, emotion, sexual, intellectual and more. Some people really think that these technologies as part of their life. They could not live a single day without internet! Thinking that they need to be with their “good friend” all the time! No “good friend” causes emotional problem throughout the whole day. Studies done by Netaddiction.com discovered that there are 5 main categories of the internet content considered as very risky in developing addiction to Internet and computer. Cyber Sex Addiction – Chatting about sex, downloading porno, surfing to pornography websites. Cyber Relationship Addiction – Strong feeling on finding friends through internet, communicating using e-mails, forums, chat space, discussion etc. Information Addiction – Influenced by websites on general knowledge, current issues, searching information and database. Computer Addiction – High level of interest to computer gadgets. Computer Game Addiction – Obsess to online games, non-online games. Actually, in order to identify whether the addiction caused by computer and internet, really depends on how an individual think and how he or she handles the true important needs of one’s life. Besides that, some important things should be seriously monitored and be given attention in order to see how much the technologies effected daily life: Spending more and longer time in front of a computer.
Exceeding normal timing. Spending more time surfing through internet and affecting your normal life as an individual, a student or a worker, besides affecting your working productivity and life. Feeling less confident on how to control you from the internet influences. Less attention to your own health and having difficulties with time management. Emotional problem, anger management problem directly caused by something from the internet or computer and starting to isolate yourself from the society. Extreme fear and bored of not being able to surf on the internet for some period. Extreme amount of internet usage can distract family members or friends, causing fights and brawl. In other words, internet addiction disorder can destroy your normal life! Therefore, to avoid this from happening, few things should be considered: Set up and identify your objectives and goals before you get connected to the internet. Make sure that your reasons are wise and positive! Set yourself to surf in certain websis only. Do not waste your me surfing into other website. Otherwise, you will be carried away easily. Set up fix time or limit your time for you to use the Internet. Manage properly your time between your real life and your cyber life. Try to balance up the time. Keep in mind that you use the internet because you want to know and you want to have positive knowledge only. This knowledge will help you to built up your positive personality and become a better person in life. Try it, and you will be sure that it works! As a conclusion, the advance technologies available nowadays pretty sure give a huge impact to our daily life. Modern technologies and life has a natural reaction between each other and the influences developed, works on both ways. Due to the closeness of the relationship between life and technologies, it is not impossible if it is harmful for some people, only for those who use the technologies for fun and self pleasuring only. Therefore, use the technologies wisely and keep the healthy reaction between life and modern technologies.