Is Internet Addiction Destroying Children’s Brains?

Release date: August 20, 2024

Is Internet Addiction Destroying Children’s Brains?

Movieguide® Contributor

The PLOS Mental Health Journal published a review on Internet addiction that parents need to know about.

“Behavioral addictions caused by excessive internet use have become a growing concern over the past decade,” the report authors said.

Children and adolescents aged 10 to 19 who are diagnosed with internet addiction have disrupted working memory and impaired function between the parts of the brain that communicate to control attention, according to a neuroimaging study of hundreds of children and adolescents.

The study’s criteria for internet addiction are “persistent online preoccupation, withdrawal symptoms when away from the internet, and sacrificing relationships in exchange for time spent online over an extended period of time (e.g., 12 months),” Max Chang, lead study author and outreach case manager at Peninsula Family Services, a San Francisco nonprofit, told CNN. “This pattern of behavior causes significant impairment and distress in the individual’s life.”

“When subjects with clinically diagnosed internet addiction engaged in activities controlled by the brain’s executive function network — behaviors that require attention, planning, decision-making and impulse control — those brain regions showed significant impairments in their ability to collaborate, compared with peers without internet addiction,” CNN reported. “These changes in signaling may suggest that these behaviors will become more challenging, with potential developmental and health implications, the authors suggest.”

Dr David Ellis, a behavioural scientist at the University of Bath’s Institute of Digital Security and Behaviour, said the study had several limitations.

“Causal inferences cannot be drawn from these studies,” Ellis says. “Second, the focus on functional connectivity comes at the expense of a criticism of an important measure of interest: specifically, Internet ‘addiction,’ a term first coined as a joke by psychiatrist Ivan K. Goldberg in 1995.”

“Currently, the conceptualization and measurement of Internet ‘addiction’ is not universally accepted, and it is certainly not possible to diagnose it using the survey instruments used in the studies included as part of the review,” Ellis continued. “Similarly, the sheer number of activities that the Internet instantly enables makes this definition somewhat redundant.”

China was the first to declare internet addiction a public health crisis, and in the United States, internet addiction is not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, but internet gaming disorder is.

Dr. Caglar Yildirim, an associate professor of computer science at Northeastern University’s Khoury School of Computer Science, said the young man’s behavioral patterns are identical to those of a drug addict.

“Overall, the mechanisms underlying Internet addiction are more of an emerging pattern than a finished picture,” says Chan. “Many of the causal relationships between what happens in the brain and what manifests in behavior remain to be elucidated. For now, observations using biomarkers such as functional connectivity are helping to fill in the gaps.”

“Like drug and gambling disorders, internet addiction rewires the brain, making it harder to resist internet-related stimuli,” Chan said. “But unlike gambling or drug use, the internet is an important part of our lives. Balancing the benefits and dangers of the internet is a critical area of future adolescent development.”

Disengagement from relationships is a warning sign of internet addiction, Chan says.

“Technology addiction is so prevalent that the American Psychiatric Association is including it on its agenda for the 2023-2024 presidential election,” CNN reported Dr. Smita Das, former chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Addiction, as saying.

Dr David Anderson, a clinical psychologist at the Child Mind Institute, believes there are often other factors at play when it comes to why kids and teens spend so much time online.

He said, “Your child may be… socially anxious. Maybe he’s depressed. Maybe he has a learning disability.”

A study of 250 university students in Iran found that “excessive internet use can increase levels of psychological arousal, lead to lack of sleep, long-term poor diet, and limited physical activity, which can lead to physical and mental health problems such as depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, deterioration of family relationships, and anxiety.”

Internet addiction may be associated with “subjective distress” and functional impairments associated with other mental disorders, such as depression, anxiety, loneliness, and self-efficacy.

In an Iranian study, depression was the most commonly reported symptom among internet addicts.

Movieguide® recently reported that more parents are concerned about their children’s screen addiction than substance abuse.

[A] A study published in JAMA Network Open explored parents’ views on their children’s technology use. While the majority of parents surveyed felt their children “can use the internet responsibly” and were comfortable “determining appropriate amounts of screen time,” they also expressed concerns about the impact technology has on their children.

More than 50% of all participants said they were worried their children would become addicted to technology, compared with about 40% of parents who were worried about drug addiction.

“Our findings serve as a reminder that any discussion of the impact of internet technologies on young people is incomplete without considering both positive and negative effects and acknowledging how experiences may differ across families,” study author Michael Milham, M.D., Ph.D., told Fox News Digital.