Problems of Internet Addiction

kin to other addiction problems, Internet Addiction causes problems in our personal area, familial area, academic area, financial area, and occupational area. Excessive Internet usage ensures a sharp decline in other activities and an impairment of real life relationships. Those who are Internet addicts spend less time with real people as incorporated in their lives, while spending more time in private isolation in the virtual world. Internet addicts tend to spend an increasing amount of time Internet, which inevitably causes distrust and trouble in the quality of the relationships once established in stable form. Financial problem is one of the most remarkable problems of Internet addiction as resulted from the Internet usage and service provider's charges, if not used in any fixed-amount scheme. Other financial burdens may include compulsive spending or shopping. Internet addicts may become tend over online buying or using their credit cards online, which may cause high bill, in turn. In addition, the addiction may lead to using online gambling or casino as well.

	Impairment Level
Impairment	None	Mild	Moderate	Severe
Academic	0%	2%	40%	58%
Relationship	0%	2%	45%	52%
Financial	0%	10%	38%	53%
Occupational	0%	15%	34%	51%
Physical	75%	15%	10%	0%

Table: Comparison of type of impairment to severity level indicated
Source: Young, K.S. (1996). INTERNET ADDICTION: THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW CLINICAL DISORDER; Published in CyberPsychology and Behavior, Vol. 1 No. 3., pages 237-244

Although Internet is the most valuable research tool used for the purpose of academic accomplishment, students experience major academic problems due to their tendency to browse irrelevant websites, being active participant in chat room gossiping, to play interactive online games while sacrificing productivity. In addition, students may encounter difficulty while preparing for exams or assignments, getting adequate sleep in order to wake up early for morning classes simply because of their excessive Internet usages. More frequently, they simply failed to control their own compulsive behavior to use Internet for such a prolonged period of time, the result then inevitably lead in poor gradation, academic probation and even in some case eviction from the university itself.

Not only the academic performance but the marital and close interpersonal relationships, parent-child relationships are also increasingly disrupted due to excessive usage of Internet. While at the initial days, the Internet addicts or dependants tend to use the Internet as a pretext in order to refrain from essential but reluctantly performed daily tasks such as daily shopping from grocery or house cleaning, later it includes much more important responsibilities like caring for children. Examples may include forgetting important tasks such as picking up child from school or prepare dinner, simply because the mind is fully preoccupied with Internet usage.

In close interpersonal relationships, the obsessive behavior towards Internet usage is first rationalized in terms of a 'specific phase' with an expectation of its possible termination of this abnormal attraction. However, with the increase in the amount of Internet usage, the dependent interacts with the loved ones with more aggressive fashion and continues his or her argument while increasing the amount of time and energy over Internet usage. Another important symptom is that the dependents react with anger and strong denial and they bring several points to justify their activities concerning excess Internet usage. Their actions may comprise of full resentment and they feel irritation towards the people whom they find trying to seize their time from Internet usage. This mode of defense may usually create critical problem between marital relationships and may turn it to its worst. At the final point, similar to alcohol or other type of addiction, Internet addicts try their best to hide their Internet usage from others such as hiding bills, etc. This significantly harms the structure of the relationships once established as stable.

The marital and interpersonal close relationships get severely affected when the Internet dependents form new relationships in his or her virtual world. Interactions in virtual world seem to be more exciting and in most of the cases, it eventually leads towards forming romantic relationships and Cybersex. The increasing interest in Cybersex and virtual romantic relationships affirm the fact that people perceive it relatively harmless since there is no point in getting physically close to each other, unless met at the real world. However, the Internet addicts spend more time with their virtual loved ones, while neglecting their family and marital life. At the end, the Internet dependents show their complete emotional and social withdrawals from their marital and familial life, while discovering the charm of recently explored virtual space and friends belonging to that space.

Financial problem can be a greater issue of concern. In most of the cases it is found that the Internet usage bill exceeds all the other bills of required services. The dependents, instead of curtailing their Internet usage, prefer to go even beyond their credit card capacity, while suffering for their other financial burden and justifying that burden as an unavoidable issue. However, few service providers like American Online now offer their service in flat-fee, which raises another concern promoting Internet users to stay online longer, leading to encourage the addictive behavior in general.

Similar to other areas in life, excessive Internet dependency creates problem in professional life as well. Many Internet dependents experience difficulty in their attempt to use employee online access for their personal usages. The modern equipment facilitates the employers to track down all the Internet usages. In addition, there are many techno companies for traffic tracking and those companies tracked down that only 23% of Internet usage in the professional world is actually business related. The potential advantage of Internet usage concerning employee assistance including market research to communication actually outweighs the adverse effects of Internet usage for any given company, however, the interruption in work and working abilities is certainly an issue of concern in the perspective of professionalism. The over-usage of Internet at workplace can be a definite problem while sacrificing the quality time that should be employed for positive contribution for the company. Concerning the Internet misuse problem, many professional hazards like warning, suspensions or terminations had been occurred, while the root cause of Internet addiction was overlooked in most of the cases.

Although the physical risk factors are not so remarkable at the initial stages of Internet addiction, it has all the possibilities to develop critical problem later on time. Typically, the Internet dependents use Internet more than 28 hours per week, while a particular session may even exceed over 15 hours. In order to facilitate such an excessive usage, the dependents sacrifice many of their daily duties such as sleeping on time and having adequate sleep. The sleep deprivation results in poor academic performance; impaired occupational functioning and weakened immune system. Excessive Internet usage promotes sedentary behavior, which eventually results in backache, eye strain, carpal tunnel syndrome, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and many others.