IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2020 - 62

draw lessons and examples from published research on
IA, gambling addiction, and substance abuse addiction.
We review existing statistics about the prevalence of SM
addiction as well as some of the solutions proposed or
piloted. None of the solutions has emerged as definitive.
In particular, although some voices advocate legislation to
curb the addictive nature of SM, legislative solutions have
significant limitations and raise multiple concerns. Ultimately, as with other forms of addiction, a holistic
approach including, but not limited to, legislative means
might be the best solution to the problem.

Evolution of the Addiction to
Internet and Social Media
Too much of a good thing can be bad for you, and the
Internet is no exception. Online tools enable people to
be more productive, to have more fun, to save more
money, and to connect with more fellow humans than
ever before, so people tend to spend more and more
time online. Research on the overuse of the Internet
started in the early days of the Internet opening for public
use. First reported in 1996 at the 104th annual meeting
of the American Psychological Association, in Toronto,
Canada, concerns about the overuse of the Internet were
then published two years later in the CyberPsychology
and Behavior journal [1]. At the time, IA was compared
with gambling, found to be most similar to the Pathological Gambling entry in the then-most current Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-IV, 1995.
Over the years, IA has morphed, from manifesting addictive behavior in diverse populations and in diverse activities, the earliest in simply wasting time online, then to
online gambling, online games (including multiplayer
first-person shooter), Internet pornography, and most
recently SM use. The latest DSM edition still does not list
IA or SM addiction as standalone entries, although it
does have an entry for Internet Gaming Disorder.
While some researchers view IA as a single affliction,
others see separate afflictions in the different types of
addiction. For example, is addiction to Internet gambling its own affliction, or is it a form of gambling addiction? Is addiction to Internet pornography just a form of
addiction to pornography, or a separate concern? While
addictions to gambling or pornography predate the
Internet, the increased volume of content and the
unique features of online media (interactivity, immediacy, and rich sensory experience) raise particular concerns for the addict. One medical professional makes
the distinction between addictions on the Internet (as a
channel) and addictions to the Internet (as the object of
the addiction) [2]. Among the various types of IA, addiction to SM has particularly insidious aspects that make
it stand out from the others, the most obvious being
that it can only happen online [2]. If there is a problem

with too much social interaction in real life, it has not
been reported as a form of addiction yet.
The term social media nowadays denotes a particular
type of interaction using rich media to establish one's
own online profile and to connect it to profiles of other
individuals. Even though SM is a relatively recent online
channel, most of the early Internet addictions were
already social in nature. In the first paper to mention IA,
addiction is not simply to reading static pages, but to
interacting with other users in chat rooms [1]. The addictive nature of all Internet activities be they gambling,
playing games, or pornography is greatly enhanced when
there is a social component to these activities [2]. Such
social components could include interactions with other
users or with a moderator, either via comments, via
exchanges of images and videos, or via ratings and
scoreboards that allow a user to compare in some way
with others on the site.
Although statistics on IA and its impacts are highly
variable from one source to another, the figures are
sobering. One study estimates the loss of productivity
due to Internet surfing at $54 billion per year in 2014 [3].
A mental health professional quoted in the article
recounts a tenfold increase in referrals and Internet
addiction patients over the previous twenty years.
According to the article, digital overuse affects 1.5-8.2%
of the population in the U.S. and EU. An older paper
cites a prevalence range from 0.8% in Italy to 26.7% in
Hong Kong [4]. Vondrackova et al. cites the same figures
for the extremes of the range for teenage users, and general IA prevalence of 1% in Germany in 2014 and 3.4%
in the Czech Republic in 2009 [5].
Not surprisingly, a Wall Street Journal article [6] finds
that most users have a love-hate relationship with SM.
While more than 70% of respondents use SM daily, more
than 60% distrust Facebook for protecting their personal
information and 54% favor increased regulation of the
company. Moreover, 90% of respondents want companies to seek permission from users before sharing or
using information collected, and to delete information
upon request, along the lines of what the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires.
While most Internet users are able to manage their
time online to maximize benefits while avoiding most
negative consequences, other users are unable to do so,
and they suffer extreme consequences. A well-publicized
story is that of a Korean baby that starved to death
because her parents were too focused on taking care of
a virtual baby online [7]. In South Korea, one of the
countries with high incidence of IA, high school students
spend an average of 23 hours per week in online games
[8]. Among many other cases of deaths and suicides due
to Internet gaming excesses reported in [7], one of the
most tragic is that of a South Korean player who died

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MARCH 2020

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2020

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