It’s not unusual to be online all day. Many aspects of our daily lives—from communication, shopping, and signing contracts to entertainment and gathering information—naturally take place on the internet, often even on a single device: the smartphone, which seems to combine an endless array of applications and possibilities. We’ve grown accustomed to the constant availability of digital services, and if they’re unexpectedly unavailable, it can be frustrating and trigger stress, discomfort, or nervousness—and in the case of so-called “Internet use disorders,” even genuine withdrawal symptoms in some people. There are apparently elements of the digital world that can be addictive, much like we know it to be with substances. But not every teenager who spends hours scrolling through social media, and not every adult who regularly spends the entire weekend playing online games, has a problem severe enough to be classified as a disorder—even if some studies or newspaper reports seem to conflate excessive internet use with addictive behavior. There is a normal level of constant internet use that, at least from an addiction perspective, isn’t problematic: The significant amount of time we sometimes spend online for work, school, college, or vocational training isn’t even taken into account when answering the question of whether we are “internet-addicted”. So what do experts look for when assessing an internet use disorder? What are the warning signs that an addiction might be developing? And how can online addictions be treated, given that abstinence “from the internet” is no longer an option in our digital society?
Dr. Anja Bischof is a health scientist and works at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the University of Lübeck in the “Addiction” research group, where her work focuses, among other things, on behavioral addictions. As a member of the executive board of the German Society for Addiction Research and Therapy (DG-Sucht), she was involved in developing guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of internet use disorders. In this Digitalgespräch, the expert explains when an addiction is present, how to identify it, and why it is important to develop clear criteria for this. She describes how addictive behavior arises in the digital realm, what risk factors exist, and what precautions can be taken to protect oneself or one’s loved ones. Together with hosts Marlene Görger and Petra Gehring, Bischof discusses where responsibilities lie—particularly regarding the protection of children and adolescents—whether we run the risk, in the case of internet use disorders, of pathologizing new norms or normalizing harmful behavior—and what research can do to help avoid both.
Further Information:
Link to the S1 Guideline “Diagnostik und Therapie von Internetnutzungsstörungen”: https://register.awmf.org/de/leitlinien/detail/076-011
Link to the website „Erste Hilfe Internetsucht“: https://www.erstehilfe-internetsucht.de/
Link to the website „Diagnostik von Internetnutzungsstörungen. Tools und Tipps zu Screening, Diagnostik & Intervention“: http://dia-net.com/
all episodes of Digitalgespräch
The podcast is in German. At the moment there is no English version or transcript available.
