Monday, June 23, 2008

Brit shrinks, meanwhile, have previously claimed "between five and 10 per cent of online users are internet addicts".

A US psychiatrist has declared internet addiction a "clinical disorder" with some sufferers so hooked on cyberspace they "required medication or even hospital treatment to curb the time they spent on the web".

Dr Jerald Block, of the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, describes in an editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry the four symptoms of hopeless addiction: victims "forget to eat and sleep"; they crave more advanced tech and more time online as they're numbed by "resistance" to the kicks they get from their current system; prising them away from their computer results in "genuine withdrawal symptoms"; and they begin to become more argumentative, more fatigued, more isolated from society, and perform worse in tests.

Article here.

I can quit anytime. I swear. =o)

(serious time now) I am doing what I call "Internet Fasts." John Wesley would ask us to attend to the ordinances of God and to attend first to our journey toward perfection -- to seek to live a Christian life, growing in love for God and neighbor by acts of piety (prayer, worship, Scripture reading, Communion, Christian conferencing, fasting) and acts of mercy (outward acts of care and love towards others).

Thus, some of you may have noticed, that I am not actively reading blogs as I was wont, nor am I participating in my online communities as oft as I was. If there is another person in the room with me who is not absorbed in their own task, it is my responsibility to interact with them with actions of love and care. Pure and simple. So don't look for MORE blogging or Second Life-ing or Facebooking or Twittering (or anything else!) from me.

And that's the way it is on June 23, 2008. Good Blogging and Good Morning.

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