An Unhealthy Attachment & Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD)

Addiction as defined by the Psychology Today (Kelly, 2018) states that it is an engagement to a substance or action that provides an instant gratification whilst also compelling repeated practice that normally leads to a detrimental effect. With the growing impetus of social media such as Instagram, Facebook and Titter to name a few, many young people are continuously getting dependent to these services without being aware. The resultant effect would be an unhealthy attachment to an indulgence which becomes virtually impossible to detach oneself from these social contracts.

Although this is not formally defined as a clinical or pathological disorder, internet addiction disorder (IAD) is now regarded as a public health problem with individuals experiencing the same form of high as those abusing pharmacological substances which have a direct effect on the nervous system (Rassool, 2011). This essay will discuss the negative impact that social media might have on those who are now unknowingly addicted to it, looking at public health issues such as mental health and also offer an insight into the mechanism that might warrant it becoming classified as a disease.

To begin, all forms of substances or behavior that lead to addictiveness are an indicator of poor health (Institute of Medicine, 2011), with individuals involved often having excessive use of social media associated with an inability to track time or even ignoring their basic human drives, experiencing withdrawal symptoms that includes anger, sadness or tension when their internet connectable devices as inaccessible, building tolerance which is exhibited by the constant need to upgrade to better equipment or more software updates and finally showing a change in behavior with poor achievement, lying, engaging in arguments and social isolation (Kelly, 2018).

The addictive part of the process stems from the constant release of dopamine by engaging on social media; receiving ‘likes’ and ‘retweets’ which acts as a reinforcement for repeated behavior where this neurotransmitter ‘causes a cessation of normal behavior (exploration and grooming), and the appearance of repeated stereotyped behavior (rearing, gnawing and so on) unrelated to external stimuli’ (Rang, et al., 2007, p497). Additionally, on the negative end of the spectrum, an individual not receiving a positive response while engaged, can become depressed and display emtotional symptoms such as misery, apathy, low self-esteem and including biological symptoms for instance retardation of thought and action, sleep disturbance and loss of appetite.

Additionally, suicide is directly associated with media use with the deaths of teens mostly blamed on social media posts of individuals potraying perfect lives thereby having a cost on the mental health of teenagers (Associated Press, 2017). Furthermore, depression has been highly linked to social media use as terms such as social comparison where used, where individuals compared their lives to those on these media platforms and this can only be made worse when a person habitually uses social media limiting their involvement with the real world (Rettner, 2018).

According to a study by (Anand, et al., 2008) they discovered that among students that used internet the most as compared to their counterparts, there was a higher incidence in those individual possesing pyschological distress especially depressive symptomes. In another study done by (Van Der Eijnden, et al., 2018) to find out the impact of substantial amount of gaming and social media use among teenagers found out that symptoms of disordered use of these internet based activities predictated a downward trend in pyschosocial well-being and contributions in school further adding that it met one of the core criteria of behavioral addictions.