Possible Causes of Internet Addiction

In order to reflect the understanding over Internet addiction, we should shift our focus on understanding Cyberpsychology, which focuses integrally on understanding the behavior associated with cyber or virtual world. Until recently, an increasing number of psychologists, researchers and theorists put their best effort to propose different theoretical framework in order to explain various characteristics of Internet addiction disorder, its impact and probable causes that influence such behavior. These explanations may be derived on the basis of different perspective including psychodynamic, sociocultural, behavioral, biomedical, etc. Let us explore few of them.

Psychodynamic Perspective
In the psychodynamic perspective, the cause of addiction attributes to childhood unresolved traumatic experience, presence of particular personality traits as well as inherited vulnerability. A dispositional model referred to as diathesis-stress model of addiction can well explain the manifestation of Internet addiction in particular. According to this theoretical perspective, there are certain individuals, who due to their inherited predisposition develop vulnerability towards addictive behavior ranging from substance abuse to Internet addiction. However, it is not mandatory or it can be ascertained that these individuals must develop addiction. It may be possible that they do not develop any sort of addiction even throughout their entire lifespan. But, if in any case, a particular type of stressor, or cluster of stressors, affects the individual at a critical period of time, the individual is then at high risk for developing addiction by that period of time. For example, if the vulnerable individual starts using Internet, but prolongs the usage at an increasing rate, he is at high risk for developing dependency over Internet. The theory emphasizes on the perfect combination of time, event and subject in question.

Sociocultural Perspective
There are huge numbers of theory that ensure addiction is dependent on a wide variety of factors including age, sex, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, religion, and location. For example, alcoholism is a specific problem for middle-aged people in most of the cases, while drug addiction is a typical problem of youngsters. However, more researches are needed to identify the particular group of individuals mostly affected by the problem of Internet addiction, but it is crucially difficult due to the diversified range of Internet users.

Behavioral Perspective
Theories of Internet addiction based on behavioral perspective largely depend on B. F. Skinner's theory of operant conditioning and the notion of reward and reinforcement. Since, Cybersex, virtual relationship, online gambling, Internet browsing, shopping comprise of several awards in terms of psychological comfort, affection, excitement and moreover, a sense of escape from hard reality itself. An imaginative and insecure one may perceive these factors as rewards and may turn out to Internet whenever he or she feels distressed. Once again it soothes the individual in his or her hard time and the vicious cycle continues.

Biomedical Perspective
Theories of Internet addiction based on biomedical perspective focus hereditary and innate factors including a thorough understanding of chemical imbalance occurring in the brain and the dysfunctional neurotransmitters. Various theories have been developed. Their primary focus may vary from hormones to nervous system. However, these theories are great to explain substance abusive disorder and alcoholism, but more researches are needed to in order to ascertain the possibility of Internet addiction from this particular perspective.