t’s hard to remember life before smartphones and tablets, and with WI-FI and 4G the internet is everywhere. Technology is embedded in our work and play, and has become the essential part of our lives. But as this 60 Minutes report discovers, you can have too much of a good thing. What's being called “Internet Addiction Disorder” is ruining lives and even changing the way our brains process information. Worse still, experts are seeing dangerous signs in toddlers.
Watch the 60 Minutes segment on Youtube.
In the past few years internet addiction (IA) and internet gaming disorder (IGD) have become very frequent, leading to many personality and psychiatric disorders including low self-esteem, impulsivity, poor sleep quality, mood disorder, and suicide. IA has been included in Appendix III of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-5) as IGD. In addition, IA leads to many neuroanatomical and neurochemical alterations including cortical thinning of various components of the brain and altered dopaminergic reward circuitry.
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The relationship between social media use and life satisfaction changes across adolescent development. Our analyses of two UK datasets comprising 84,011 participants (10–80 years old) find that the cross-sectional relationship between self-reported estimates of social media use and life satisfaction ratings is most negative in younger adolescents.
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New Zealand should copy the Australian ban on social media for children under 16, a public health researcher says. The Australian government said it would pass a law banning social media for children under 16. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced yesterday that a bill will be introduced to parliament within weeks.
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