Teen Internet and Video Gaming Addiction

Social Consequences of Teen Gaming Addiction: Part I

2012-03-04T13:37:00.000-08:00

Imagine this scenario: 15-year-old Jeff's cell phone rings. The call is from a school friend who wants to hang out. It's Friday night. Instead of answering, Jeff thinks to himself: "I'll call him as soon as I finish this level of the game." One hour passes. Two hours. Three hours. The call is never returned or even acknolwedged.

Teens addicted to gaming encounter situations like this all the time, situations in which they have to choose whether to interact with the real world or continue living in their fantasy world. As time goes on, the real world rarely wins.

Addicted gamers not only ignore real-life relationships, but they also talk so much about gaming -- to the exclusion of everything else -- that friends lose interest in being friends. Many compulsive gamers cannot or will not engage in real world conversations or be a source of support or encouragement to friends and family. Because their friends talk about other subjects, they begin to feel left out, which in turn causes them to feel irritated or offended. It doesn't occur to gaming addicts that they have chosen to be left out by devoting all their time to gaming.

The lack of social interaction that results from compulsive gaming can have long-term social and developmental consequences. An addicted teen may never develop effective social skills, which can stifle the ability to create and maintain healthy relationships in college and beyond. Suddenly a gamer is 21 but has the social skills of a 15-year-old. He does not know how to make friends, talk to girls, or just "hang out" and enjoy people's company. The social anxiety and lack of skills created by the isolation of compulsive gaming feeds the addiction. The gaming addict will likely retreat to his online world where relationships are established and easier to negotiate.

Part II coming soon.

Your Teen's Arousal Template

2012-03-02T06:47:00.002-08:00

According to sex educators we all have an "arousal template" that determines how and when we become "turned on." We all have unique preferences for what creates sexual excitement - such as gender, physical appearance, and personality traits.

According to clinicians at Oxbow Academy, a residential treatment center in Utah for teen boys who have engaged in sexually inappropriate behaviors, the arousal templates of adolescents are fluid. With burgeoning hormones and identities in formation, teens are in the process of discovering who and what they find sexually attractive. It's normal for adolescents to wonder: am I gay or am I straight? Who am I attracted to? If parents react strongly to one element of their teen's fluid arousal template, their emotional charge can shame the adolescent.

However, for teens engaging compulsively in inappropriate sexual behavior, problems arise when their arousal template becomes fixed. Sex therapist Wendy Maltz, author of The Porn Trap, believes that viewing porn frequently causes the arousal template to become fixated on pornographic content. For the teen hooked on internet porn, the thoughts, images, sounds, and messages communicated through that medium become the only things that the teen finds sexually attractive.

When adolescents equate porn sex with good sex, they find it difficult to feel sexually attracted to real people. They may even form attachments to particular porn stars, thus limiting their ability to form healthy attachments to appropriate, and realistic, romantic partners.

For more information on overcoming the problems associated with frequent porn use, read my "A Teenager's Guide to the Safe Use of Pornography" available on my website: www.teenvideogameaddiction.com. You can also call me for a consultation at 855-735-HELP. And if your teen's sexual behavior is causing significant problems in his life, consider a residential facility such as Oxbow Academy that specializes in treating sexual problems in adolescents.

What Makes Video Games Addictive?

2012-02-29T08:16:00.000-08:00

Games are designed to be difficult enough to be challenging, while allowing players to achieve small accomplishments that motivate them to keep playing. In this respect, the design of video games is similar to the design of slot machines, which will allow players to have small "wins" that keep them playing.

There are several "hooks" built into games that increase the odds of making play an addictive experience:

1. The High Score

Whether you have tried the latest edition of Halo or Call of Duty or you haven't played a video game since PacMan, the high score is one of the most easily recognizable hooks. Trying to beat the high score (even if the player is trying to beat his own score) can keep a player focused for hours.

2. Beating the Game

The desire to beat the game is fed as a player "levels up" or finds the next "hidden clue."

3. Role-Playing

Role-playing games allow players to do more than just play to beat a level or a score -- they get to create the characters in the game and then take off on an adventure unique to their character. As a result of creating an "avatar," a strong emotional attachment to the character is often developed which drives ongoing play.

4. Discovery

The exploration or "discovery hook" is most often used in role-playing games. One of the most popular online games EVER is World of Warcraft. During the game the player spends time exploring imaginary worlds. The thrill of discovering fantasy civilizations/cultures can be extremely compelling -- especially for teens and adults who are dissatisfied with their offline lives.

5. Relationships

Online role-playing games allow teens to build relationships with other players who are also online. For some teens, this online community becomes the place where they are most accepted, admired and desired -- which draws the teen back again and again.

Massive Multiplayer Ongline Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) are especially addictive because there is no ending to the game. Unlike standard games like Super Mario Brothers (where you win when you save the princess), the MMORPG goes on and on -- with new adventures and challenges unfolding.

In addition to the psychological addiction, it is now believed there is a strong physiological element to addictive game-playing. Researchers at Hammersmith Hospital in London conducted a study in 2005 which found that dopamine levels in players' brains doubled while they were playing. Dopamine is a mood-regulating hormone associated with feelings of pleasure. The findings of this study (and many others conducted in China, Korea, and the U.S.) show that gaming is chemically addictive and can permanently rewire the brain.

Although there is ongoing debate about whether gaming addiction is a diagnosable disorder, compulsive gaming behavior undeniably exists. The combination of intentional programming by designers and the predisposition many teens have to addictive behavior means this is a real issue that parents, teachers and friends should be aware of and take action to prevent.

Teens: Why Logging On is a Turn-On Parents Need to Turn Off

2012-02-27T21:31:00.000-08:00

Social biologist Dalton Conley states that youth who multi-task in multiple media (gaming, texting, Facebooking) derive high degrees of pleasure because the brain releases dopamine -- a neurotransmitter that produces pleasure -- which then creates a "forward-feeding cycle" in which youth pay more and more attention to texts, instant messaging, posts on social media sites, etc. The intense focus spent on media erodes teens' ability to focus on schoolwork that requires sustained attention: writing, reading, problem-solving.

Children and teens who have pre-existing social-emotional problems are far more likely to become compulsively involved in media. Young people who lack appropriate social skills, who feel disconnected and alienated from their peer group, who are unable to initiate and sustain relationships, receive little if any meaningful benefit from their relationship to technology.

For many families with children/teens with special needs, computers, video games, and other technology are perceived as an essential part of their involvement or connection to the world. Although youth with special needs are certainly drawn to technology, the involvement is not essential. The problem for many parents is when they consider limiting their child's access to media and technology and are confronted with a daunting problem:

What will they do with their kids instead?

Unplugging children/teens from electronic entertainment and social media will bring on protests, complaints and tantrums. Parents will need to structure and plan leisure and recreation activities for their children, a necessity that is sure to feel challenging when faced with an angry kid.

However, the rough terrain that lies ahead for parents who choose to limit or eliminate access to electronic entertainment and social media is worth the effort. It requires young people with social-emotional deficits to live in reality and to become competent in reality, instead of living in perpetual fantasy.

Your Cyber Addicted Child's Digital Diet

2012-02-25T15:01:00.001-08:00

If your child is showing signs of compulsive behavior related to the internet or gaming, you will need to seek assistance through a trained mental health professional. The following are tips developed by The Cyber Addition Recovery Center to help parents lessen their children's overuse of technology.

1) Limit technology to one hour a day (non-school-related use).
2) Spend one hour a day, one day per week, and four days per month completely "unplugged" from all forms of technology.
3) Institute a "tech curfew": no recreational use of tech after 9:00 p.m.
4) Keep all forms of technology out of bedrooms at all times.
5) Turn off smart phones at 9:00 p.m. (no texting, surfing, etc.)
6) Collect all tech gadgets after curfew and have them "sleep" in the kitchen or family room.
7) Take family "field trips" at least once per week (parks, restaurants, beach, museums, hiking, movies).
8) Exercise as a family: biking, hiking, swimming, sports, boogie boarding, roller-skating, bowling.
9) Do not have conversations or meals with any tech device in hand (eyes "up" and focussed on your conversation partner).
10. Structure your "tech" day: set specific times for e-mailing, Facebook, chat rooms, eBay, research, etc.

A Guide to Healthy Sex for Teen Cyber Porn Addicts

2012-02-22T20:29:00.001-08:00

Here is a review from goodreads.com:

Guide to Getting It On!

by Paul Joannides, Daerick Gross (Illustrator)

The Guide To Getting It On! has won five awards and has
been translated into 12 foreign languages. It has sold
hundreds of thousands of copies from the dorms of
UC San Diego to thebedrooms of Tripoli.

Some people say The Guide is the best
how-to book on sex ever written--we say it's the most fun to
read. It is smart enough to be used in sex education courses,
but is also a favorite at stores that sell the kind of sex toys
that will land you in the slammer in Mississippi,
Alabama and Texas.

Schools even use it to train doctors.
The Guide covers a full range of topics from romance,
necking and losing your virginity, to things we can't even
mention here.(less)

reSTART Visit

2012-02-19T15:50:00.002-08:00

I flew up to Seattle Wednesday and visited reSTART - the nations first retreat center for technology addiction. I was able to spend time with Cosette Rae the clinical director and Hilarie Cash the executive director - both are incredibly professional, knowledgeable, and compassionate. They have created a perfect environment for young adults to get unplugged and restart their lives. Their program combines state of the art treatment methods with a nurturing and warm home like environment. They really know what they are doing with a population that is very hard to understand and help. They also have a great website that is updated regularly with information on all matters related to technology addiction. Great place!

Interview with Wendy Maltz LCSW: The Impact of Cyber Porn on Teens

2012-02-09T15:27:00.000-08:00

I recently had the opportunity to interview Wendy Maltz LCSW, co-author (with her husband Larry Maltz) of The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography, one of the most informative and thought-provoking books I have read on the topic of pornography. Over the past six months, I have given considerable thought to creating a curriculum for teens that would provide an open and honest appraisal of the risks and rewards or cost and benefits of exposure to online or cyber pornography (for more about Wendy go to: http://www.healthysex.com/page/about-wendy/ ).

Since 2005 I have worked with adult sex addicts and through this work it is clear to me cyber pornography creates more problems than any other behavior, including sex with prostitutes, exhibitionism, voyeurism, and sex with multiple/anonymous partners. Cyber pornography is accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week (home, work, or any place with Wi-Fi connection) and can be accessed without any financial cost. When combined with compulsive masturbation, cyber pornography can produce serious and long term problems in psychological, physical, and spiritual well-being. As would follow, the relapse rate with cyber porn addicts far exceeds the relapse rate related to any other sexually compulsive behavior.

In my clinical work with adult cyber porn addicts a consistent story emerged: exposure to pornography began as early as childhood and certainly by adolescence. The vast majority of my clients said they believe their addiction began with their first exposure to pornography, particularly if that first exposure was online. The intensity and variety of online pornography provides a degree of sexual stimulation that is simply impossible to match in any other sexual context.

As a result of my work with adult sex addicts, it became clear to me that there should be cyber porn education, prevention, and treatment for teens. With this topic in mind, I asked Wendy Maltz how she would construct a sex education curriculum for teens that specifically addressed cyber pornography. I began the interview by asking Wendy what parents should do to help protect children from the potential lifelong damage produced by cyber pornography.

Wendy first explained it is vitally important for parents to engage in an open and honest conversation with children about the way sex is presented in the media. She believes parents need to think about what type of sexual messages are being endorsed within the media, which includes television, music, film, and online pornography. Parents then need to talk to their children about what they are seeing in order to create critical thinking skills. For Wendy the central challenge for parents is to empower their children to take a critical stance towards sexual content in media rather than become passive consumers.

Wendy encourages parents to examine what type of sexual content (and stimulation) is being introduced into their child's psychological and biological “systems,” in the same way they discuss eating habits, the use of drugs and alcohol, and smoking. By beginning a process of sexual media education within the family at an early age, children can develop a comfort level and sense of trust in talking about sexual behavior with their parents, which is crucial for providing parental guidance. If both child and parent feel unsure, anxious, and fearful about the discussion of healthy sexual behavior, more than likely they will have great difficulty addressing the complicated issues presented by cyber pornography.

When I asked Wendy what she would recommend parents regarding cyber porn specifically, she said the message that needs to be related is that porn, although exciting and entertaining, poses significant health risks. This conversation needs to happen in a way where the parent is not shaming their teen for looking at porn or attempting to provoke a guilt response. Parents need to explain, in a way that avoids lecturing and moralizing, that porn presents a limited, often unhealthy, view of sex. The sex portrayed in pornography is distorted as it presents “good” sex as impersonal, irresponsible, and cut off from values and feelings, and fails consider relationship dynamics and consequences as important.

Rather than helping, habitual porn use often winds up harming a person’s self-esteem, social relationships, and ability to form a satisfying long-term intimate sexual relationship. Again, the purpose of this conversation is inform and empower so that teens will be make positive choices with respect to their “consumption” of sexual content in the media and cyber pornography in particular, and the kind of sexual person they want to be throughout their life.

I then asked whether she would recommend parents take the position of banning pornography within the household. Wendy began by saying that although she appreciates there are many different views of cyber pornography (e.g., it’s harmless fun, teens are only curious, porn shows a variety of forms of sexuality, censorship is wrong) and recognizes some teens can manage to engage with cyber porn without significant negative consequences, she would nonetheless recommend parents take the position that porn will not be part of the family’s media diet-- in the same way that a parent would set a limit with respect to drug use, alcohol, smoking, and consuming junk food.

I then turned our discussion to sex education for teens focusing on cyber pornography (middle and high school settings). I posed the question “If given the opportunity to speak to teens, what would you say about cyber pornography? Would you recommend moderation? Abstinence?” In response to this question, Wendy talked about her personal journey through pornography, which began with the perception of pornography as a risk-free source of pleasure and stimulation, to a positive influence on individuals and couples in the context of sex therapy, to a concern about how pornography was affecting individuals and couples, to the belief that pornography represents a true public health risk. Wendy’s journey is described in detail in an article on her website (Out of the Shadows/Is Porn Bad for You? Available at: http://www.healthysex.com/page/out-of-the-shadows).

Wendy explained teens need to be made aware that cyber pornography can have a destructive effect on the way their brains function that is very similar to the negative impact of drugs such as crack cocaine. Consistent exposure to cyber pornography, particularly when this exposure is combined with masturbation, dramatically increases the production of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which produces intense and sustained states of pleasure. The pursuit of this pleasurable/euphoric state can shape a teen’s sexual preferences and choices in a way that can substantially reduce (even eliminate) their capacity to experience deeply satisfying, passionate sex with an intimate partner. In addition, cyber porn can easily shift sexual interests into extreme, risky and illegal sexual activity, putting the user’s public standing, health, career, and freedom in jeopardy.

Wendy made the important point that sex is a form of behavioral and emotional conditioning. Every time we have sex certain thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are reinforced by virtue of the pleasure or discomfort we experience during sex. Wendy explained that an orgasm is perhaps the most powerful physiological re-award/reinforcer that exists in all of human experience. Wendy said teens need to understand that the thoughts and feelings they have at the point of orgasm are reinforced and ultimately become hardwired into their perception of sex -- which in turn shapes their sexual needs and preferences. Hence, when a teen masturbates to orgasm using porn, the teen’s understanding of what sex is and his or her future sexual desires become intensely fused with what was shown in the pornography.

Wendy believes that as a society we are going through a period of experimentation with cyber pornography and this experiment has the potential to change our sexual values and needs and behaviors in ways never imagined before. Without realizing it, we may be changing human sexuality in ways that move away from love, full-body sensual pleasures, and life-affirming/deeply rewarding sexual connections. As we were concluding our conversation, Wendy made the interesting and important observation that what is available to children and teens on the Internet has the potential to produce the type of trauma that we see in victims of sexual abuse. Wendy then wondered, given the present shame and silences surrounding porn use, whether our society will ever take active and decisive steps to protect youth from online pornography, as we have with smoking and alcohol.

After our interview I began to think about how to frame a sex education for teens that that would include the topic of cyber pornography when Wendy forwarded me an outline of the type of content she would include in a cyber porn sex education curriculum.

Wendy's outline included the following topics:

1) Sex basics and realities (bodies, brains, desires, functioning)

2) How sexual interest begins and is developed and shaped

3) Defining healthy sex

4) The role of sexual pleasure in mating, bonding, love, self-esteem, and healthy communities

5) Sexual rights (in contrast to sexual exploitation)

6) Gender similarities and differences (what does it mean to “be a man” or “be a woman”?)

7) Sexual harm (what are harmful influences and behaviors and why?)

8) Pornography (defining pornography; traits of today's product; the effect of regular/heavy use on the brain; how porn differs from other sexually explicit materials; how content is often sexist/racist and becomes more violent/extreme; what pornography does not show/teach; the benefits/rewards of looking at porn; risks related to looking at porn; common problems; the lack of warning on pornography; the absence of informed consent and regulation; similarities to sexual perpetration/abuse; trickery; peer attitudes and pressure).

9) Making wise sexual choices

10 Understanding empathy and integrity (the impact of your sexuality on your self-esteem and on others)

11 How to create and maintain healthy sexual relationships

1 How to build a healthy sex life (with yourself)

13 How to develop skills for being a good lover

14 How to recognize sexual problems and get help when needed

It is difficult to understand, 12 years into the 21^st century, why the topic of teen use of cyber pornography has not been incorporated into mainstream sex education at the middle and high school levels (Wendy has great free posters on her website that are intended to educate teens about porn: http://www.healthysex.com/page/do-you-know-the-difference/).

The reasons for the absence of this discussion in school settings is obviously complex and would invite debate from many different groups, ranging from those who believe pornography is morally reprehensible, to those who see pornography as a First Amendment issue, to those who see pornography as a harmless form of sexual stimulation, to those who have worked with sex addicts and see the potential damage of a relationship with pornography.

Notwithstanding the need to address the various concerns of these groups, it seems more than reasonable for adults, particularly those who are in a position to educate teens, to begin to at least take on the process of developing a sex education curriculum that candidly addresses the types of choices and experiences that teens have via the Internet.

Christopher Mulligan LCSW

To order The Porn Trap go to: http://www.amazon.com/Porn-Trap-Essential-Overcoming-Pornography/dp/0061231878/ref=tmm_pap_title_0/182-0831377-6777866%3E%20Barnes%20and%20Noble%20%3C%20http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Porn-Trap/Wendy-Maltz/e/9780061231872/?pwb=2

Interview with Wendy Maltz LCSW Author of the "The Porn Trap"

2012-01-28T15:22:00.000-08:00

I interviewed Wendy Maltz LCSW, co-author of "The Porn Trap," yesterday for an hour. We had a great discussion about how to approach teen sex education in the age of cyber porn and cyber sex. I will write up a summary of our conversation this week. It is amazing that in 2012 cyber porn and cyber sex are largely ignored in sex education programs even though more and more teens are getting a heavy dose of sex education via the net based porn!

Being Lonely and Problematic Internet Use?

2012-01-22T08:43:00.000-08:00

Here is a summary of an article posted on the ReStart website about the link between being lonely and problematic internet use. Research is showing that those who develop problematic use of the internet use are trying to develop social networks -- and the use of the internet for this purpose doesn't seem to result in better social supports. Certainly, this has been my experience of teens on the autism spectrum that are part of gaming guilds or who communicate about with "friends" they met via the internet.

Internet Use and Its Relationship to Loneliness

Posted in Internet Addiction

CyberPsychology & Behavior

Internet Use and Its Relationship to Loneliness

Published in Volume: 4 Issue 3: July 5, 2004
Eric J. Moody, BS
The association between Robert Weiss's bimodal theory of loneliness and Internet use was examined. The degree of social and emotional loneliness was assessed using the Social and Emotional Loneliness scale. This was compared with self-report measures of Internet use and the breadth of one's network of friends, both online and on a face-to-face basis. Low levels of social and emotional loneliness were both associated with high degrees of face-to-face networks of friends, while high levels of Internet use were associated with low levels of social loneliness and high levels of emotional loneliness. This supports recent research that has found that the Internet can decrease social well-being, even though it is often used as a communication tool.
Access this research article

To cite this article: Moody, E. J. (2004) Internet Use and Its Relationship to Loneliness. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 4(3): 393-401. doi:10.1089/109493101300210303.

The Loss of Self-Reflection in a Networked Life?

2012-01-18T20:56:00.000-08:00

I can vividly recall lying in my bed at night, during middle school, thinking through the events of the day, scrolling through images and pieces of conversations. I recall enjoying this time alone, in the dark. I recall thinking, contemplating, remembering up until the point I drifted off into sleep. There was something deeply relaxing and fulfilling about this private time. It was in the quiet of the night that I could consider ideas, question feelings, let loose fantasies in complete privacy. I had the opportunity to work out and work through embarrassing encounters with friends, confusion about my feelings, wonder about a possible romantic partner, or fantasize about playing alongside Jerry West, wearing Laker purple and gold.

For many 21^st century teens, the quiet of lying in bed is interrupted by the sound of a text coming through their smart phone or the sound of an instant message arriving on their laptop or desktop. Today's youth are “networked" at all times of the day and night. Many teens experience fear, even panic, if they are separated from their web of contacts/friends within their smart phone, Facebook page, or My Space page.

The constant opportunity for communication seems to have the unfortunate consequence of decreasing opportunities to be alone and, in the experience of being alone, the expansion of self-awareness. The process of being in a contemplative state, a focused state of personal reflection about one's identity, is diminished by always being tethered electronically to one's peer group (and or family).

It is the expectation of today's youth (and adults, for that matter) they will be able to reach peers twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. The expectation of connection seems to have created an aversion to being alone, simply because being alone is so unfamiliar. Rather than see periods of quiet as opportunities for recharging, contemplation and reflection, quiet is experienced as alien and, because it is alien, as uncertain and frightening.

In William Deresiewicz’s essay “The End of Solitude,” he writes: “So we live exclusively in relation to others, and what disappears from our lives is solitude. Technology is taking away our privacy and our concentration, but it is also taking away our ability to be alone.” He goes on to say: “Young people today seem to have no desire for solitude, have never heard of it, can't imagine why it would be worth having. In fact, their use of technology -- or, to be fair, our use of technology -- seems to involve a constant effort to stave off the possibility of solitude, a continuous attempt, as we sit alone at our computers, to maintain the imaginative presence of others.”

The implication of this essay is the more teens try to keep aloneness at a distance, the less they will be able to deal with being alone and the more terrifying aloneness will become. Because of this fear the “I generation” may lose the ability to be still or idle and, therefore, the capacity for solitude. And if solitude is gone, what exactly does this loss involve? What is at stake? Well, the ability for introspection, the capacity to examine the self, to discover hidden or nascent parts of the self. Deresiewicz writes: “But no real excellence, personal or social, artistic, philosophical, scientific or moral, can arise without solitude.”

As Sherry Turkle points out in her book Alone Together, in addition to the fear of being alone and the loss of the opportunity for contemplation, when today's youth experience an uncomfortable feeling, they can fire off multiple texts immediately to gain support and validation. According to Turkle, the teen of today has little time or patience to sift or sort through their feelings. As feelings emerge, their first response is to reach out and share the feeling, achieving clarification and validation through a peers’ “texted” response. Turkle says one can make the case that for today's youth a feeling isn't truly “real” until it is communicated – which means texted or posted

Another important dimension of today's youth is the messages that are sent via text or Facebook, must be brief and tailored for the consumption of an audience -- not for one' private consumption or process of reflection. Through this type of writing, it seems fair to suggest the self is reduced and diminished. Whenever teens begin to write, they “size up” their thoughts in terms length of “text” or “post” and public perception. They do not have the luxury of time to first rehearse what they want to say, to investigate their own private ideas and feelings, precisely because technology requires immediate, synchronous, communication.

The “always on” and constantly networked youth has little need or capacity to contemplate their lives because they are never truly alone. And, when they do express themselves, they are focused on tailoring and revising their thoughts with an audience in mind. The reality is, this type of communication decreases and, perhaps erodes, the circuitry in the brain responsible for self-reflection and contemplation.

It has been noted by Gary Small, M.D., that the high-tech revolution places teens in what he calls a “state of continuous partial attention.” This means teens are constantly keeping tabs on multiple activities without fully focusing on any one subject/activity/person at a time. Small says continuous partial attention ultimately places teens’ brains in a heightened state of stress, precisely because they do not have the time to reflect, contemplate, or make thoughtful decisions. They exist in an “alert state,” always waiting for a new contact or new information to come in through whatever technological device they are using.

Small argues the teenager’s brain was not made to maintain this kind of connection for extended periods. He warns that after endless hours of digital connectivity, the brain begins to strain. In this stressed state, the brain secretes cortisol and adrenaline, which can eventually lead to impaired cognition and altered mood, such as depression. Small also suggests a much more disturbing possibility: the fully networked brain may be permanently rewired, thus ending the capacity for contemplation, reflection, solitary moments.

As I write this blog, I am conscious of the obvious nostalgia, perhaps even romanticizing, a time long gone by. Perhaps the networked teen will experience an evolution in thinking and communication, rather than a regression or loss. Perhaps my concern for the loss of time for quiet contemplation minimizes the extraordinary opportunities for connection afforded through the technological modes of communication. Perhaps so.

But, I doubt it. One of the most important tasks of adolescents and young adulthood is the development of self-awareness. Self-awareness evolves through quiet moments of contemplation. Self-awareness grows through confusion and uncertainty about one's own thoughts, ideas, values, and feelings. If we can “text” a feeling before we are clear about what feeling we are having, we are deprived of the opportunity to deeply experience feelings, to turn them inside out, to connect our feelings and life choices.

So, what is the solution, if the networked teen is being deprived of the opportunity to develop self-awareness? Should parents step in and require teens to turn off their phones and computers? Should parents require teens to spend time journaling, reading, drawing, or having face-to-face conversations? Assuming parents did take on this responsibility, this mission to save the capacity for self-reflection and self-awareness, would any teen listen? Probably not.

Herein lies a fundamental decision in parenting today's “networked” youth: should the opportunity for deep reflection and contemplation be a requirement of family life? And, if so, what would this mean? What would it look like? The 21st century, technologically savvy and connected teen, needs stewardship and guidance from his/her parent. Parents need to set firm and compassionate limits on access to technology. Reading, drawing, journaling, travel, exercise, outings, and face-to-face communication need to be priorities for the family.

Then the questions arises: is today's “networked” parent, who is very likely as engaged and as distracted by technology as their teen, truly interested in preserving contemplation, reflection, self-awareness, and above all moments of solitude and quiet?

Sadly, it may very well be that the power of multiple technological connections through multiple types of media have overwhelmed parental priorities, and thus parents do not have the time, the patience, the endurance, to fight the good fight, to hold onto the value of contemplation, self-reflection, and above all, self-knowledge.

Perhaps the best course of action is for parents to unplug from their network life a day or two a week and, in so doing, invite their children into experiences of a contemplative, interconnected, quiet life.

I will give it a try and get back to you… Via another blog, of course.

The Meaning of Online and Offline Continuity

2012-01-09T15:44:00.000-08:00

The majority of teenagers who are online, using e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, participating in chat rooms, and downloading and uploading photos and videos, have continuity between their online and off-line identities. Although many parents fear teens have secret identities and secrets lives as they move about in cyberspace, research shows teens are much more likely to have integration or continuity between their online and off-line lives than adults. Adults are far more likely to engage in secretive and dishonest behavior online, such as cyber affairs, clandestine spending on eBay, and gambling.

Teens use the internet to maintain established social relationships: they instant message, e-mail, and post messages, comments, and media content on Facebook as a way of enhancing and expanding friendships. Certainly, some teens are engaged in accumulating online friends and, in many cases, compete with one another to acquire hundreds of friends on Facebook. Social media sites can stimulate an unhealthy preoccupation with the quantity of friends rather than the quality of friendships. Additionally, it is fair to say, many teens who are engaged in social media sites express themselves in sound bites and tend to tailor their comments in a manner that enhances their social status and popularity. As a result, teens are spending less time seriously deliberating and contemplating their identities and via traditional methods such as journaling.

Notwithstanding the potential problems of status or ego oriented Internet based communication, teens do not see a meaningful distinction between their online and off-line personalities, preferences, interests, and motivations. Facebook, Twitter, texting, and instant messaging are used as a way of tracking and connecting with peers (sometimes on a minute by minute basis). Thus, due to the motivation of teenagers to connect with their off-line friends, they are unlikely to engage in secretive or compartmentalized behavior.

One of the red flags of problematic Internet use for teens (and adults) is a disconnection between off-line and online friendships, activities, and interests. Teens that have become compulsive in their use of Internet pornography, for example, tend to isolate from their family and friends. Internet pornography can become an all-consuming and result in teens living in a cyber-fantasy world that replaces their off-line lives. In some cases, the compulsive interest in Internet pornography is a result of alienation and rejection by off-line peers at school. In fact, one of the well-researched triggers for a compartmentalized and disconnected online life is a disappointing, impoverished, and unsuccessful social reality off-line.

In addition to the compulsive use of Internet pornography, the compulsive use of video gaming, whether it be console-based or computer-based, can lead to a disconnection between off-line and online reality. Many teens (and adults) who engage in role-playing games become solely invested in the fantasy world they participate in and co-create with other game players (thus creating an experience of a social community). Although role-playing games do involve coordination and collaboration with peers, some across the globe, the nature of the relationships are entirely oriented around the execution of the goals of the game. The commitment to the game and to the gaming community can create a barrier that completely cuts off a teenager from off-line opportunities and activities.

The integration and balancing of online and off-line lives is a sign of health. Why? Because integration, like all forms of connection, has the potential to create synergy. Integration, as John Suler says (author of The Psychology of Cyberspace) leads to “development and prosperity where both sides are enriched by the exchange of information and energy.” Suler goes on to say that if one of the goals of life is to “know thyself,” then this applies to connecting different parts of the self that are expressed via online and off-line friendships and activities. In order to reach this goal, teens and adults alike must learn to take down barriers between their online and off-line identities.

One notable and very important exception to the goal of integration and synergy between online and off-line living, is online communities that provide support to individuals who cannot access support off-line or are not ready to access support off-line. For example, a person struggling with sex addiction may initially be more comfortable seeking a support group online rather than risk exposure off-line. Another important example of separation between online and off-line identities/activities is a teen or young adult who is working through the process of coming out as a gay or lesbian and utilizes resources on the Internet to gain information and support about coming out process. Other examples include researching topics that may be potentially embarrassing, such as contraception, sexually transmitted diseases, human reproduction, and forms of sexual self-expression.

As we move deeper into the 21st century, there will be an increasing pull to separate online and off-line life simply because technology will become more pervasive and increasingly complex and compelling. Cyberspace is an expanding universe with extraordinary opportunities for education, growth, and development. Cyberspace is also filled with potential risks and hazards, most notably compulsive behavior and the escape into fantasy worlds that serve to split online and off-line life.

For parents who are considering modifying their child/teen’s online activities, the important consideration is the balance between online and off-line activities. As long as a teen is demonstrating consistent balance and interest in off-line and online activities, the opportunities offered by cyberspace can be fulfilling, motivating, and lead to skills that are applicable to the 21st century workplace.

When parents begin to see splitting between online and off-line activities and a preference for online fantasy, it is very important to step in and establish a contract or agreement regarding how to achieve balance between online and off-line activities and preferences. Parents are often reluctant to intrude into the privacy of their teenager’s online lives; however, without parental guidance and wisdom, it is very easy for teens to lose their way and end up in a very isolated and disconnected world of online gaming, chat rooms, porn, and databases. When in doubt, parents need to step in to their child/teen’s online world and provide balance and structure that will help them successfully navigate the interplay between cyberspace and three dimensional space.

Christopher Mulligan LCSW

Youth Sexting: A National Study

2012-01-08T08:56:00.000-08:00

The Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics published a national study on youth sexting in the January 2012 edition. The study showed that estimates of youth involved sexting vary considerably -- depending on what type of activities are included in the definition of sexting. The number of youth who have created or sent images that constitute a violation of current child pornography laws (i.e., images of nude or nearly nude children or youth engaged in sex acts) is very low at one percent.

These results indicate that sexting involving sexually explicit content is far from a normative type of behavior for youth. This means that sexting data, like data on cyber bullying and cyber predators, is often distorted by the media and this distortion can lead to responses to youth sexting that are not aligned with the reality of youth behavior. What is of the utmost importance is to develop a clear understanding of the reasons for youth sexting on a case by case basis so that instances where conflict and malice are involved can be addressed immediately. The identification of this type of behavior can only happen if youth believe they can safely go to an adult and explain that an incident of sexting was hurtful, destructive, coercive, etc. Monitoring phones and computers for sexting activity by adults isn't nearly as helpful and efffective as having an open line of face-to-face communication between a parent and a child/teen.

Wilderness Day Group for Video Game Addicted Kids

2011-12-21T15:47:00.000-08:00

                                  CYBER ADDICTION RECOVERY CENTER
                                       CHRISTOPHER MULLIGAN LCSW
                                                       "Get Unplugged!"

                Wilderness Adventures for “Tech” Dependent/Addicted Kids

Christopher Mulligan LCSW is offering therapeutic activities in our local-natural surroundings (Los Angeles) designed to help children and teens break the destructive cycle of compulsive internet and gaming behavior. Children/teens will be presented with the opportunity to participate in outdoor adventures that unfold in a therapeutic sequence that will develop self-awareness, physical skills, communication skills, trust in self and others, respect, psychological and physical courage, and empathy.

In order to create new and adaptive behaviors tech dependent/addicted children/teens must get “unplugged” from their home environment. Participating in outdoor activities is one of the most effective ways to help tech dependent/addicted children/teens create an accurate awareness of how technology is damaging the quality of their lives and develop new social skills and recreational interests that will help them “plug” in to a non technological dependent life style.

Prior to the start of each wilderness experience there will be a group check-in where therapists will facilitate introductions, allow for the exploration of each person’s history including what brings them to our program, set the stage for the events of the day, and focus on helping the group members develop their observational skills and a greater awareness of their environment as well as the impact they have on their environment.

Therapists will review and emphasize the importance of the safety of group members and discuss how communication, trust, and accountability factor into the activities chosen for a given day. Throughout the day therapists supervise and process individual and group dynamics and connect these dynamics to tech dependence/addiction. After the completion of the group activities, therapists check-in with the group and review reflections and lessons from the day.

Adventure 1: Day Hike Adventure 2: 2-Day Hike (1 Overnight) Adventure 3: Climbing Adventure 4: Learning to Rappel Adventure 5: Hiking and Rappelling Adventure 6: Multi-day Outing

For more information, contact Christopher Mulligan LCSW at 855-735-HELP (4357) or email cyberrecovery@gmail.com

Should private Social Media Communication Stop Between Students and Teachers?

2011-12-18T08:23:00.000-08:00

Today there is a very interesting article on page 1 of the NY Sunday Times on school districts that are trying to limit or prevent private social media communication between students and teachers. Seems like a really good idea to me. What do you think?

Research: Video gaming youth have brains like gamblers!!

2011-12-18T08:03:00.000-08:00

Research: Video gaming youth have brains like gamblers

. Posted in Gaming Addiction

Children who love video games have brains like gamblers

Certain children's brains could be hard-wired to spend hours playing video games, according to a study which reignites the debate over whether the habit should be considered an addiction.
Dr Simone Kuhn of Ghent University in Belgium, who led the research, said: "Although our subjects were not addicted to video games in the strict diagnostic sense, the current result seems to suggest that video gaming is related to addiction."
Dr Henrietta Bowden-Jones, a neuroscientist from Imperial College London, said the findings "further close the gap between this activity and other addictions, giving us a better understanding of possible long term treatment."
Read the journal article at the Telegraph
Citation: Translational Psychiatry (2011) 1, e53; doi:10.1038/tp.2011.53 Published online 15 November 2011

The neural basis of video gaming

S Kühn^1,2,3, A Romanowski², C Schilling², R Lorenz², C Mörsen², N Seiferth², T Banaschewski⁴, A Barbot⁵, G J Barker⁶, C Büchel⁷, P J Conrod⁶, J W Dalley^8,9, H Flor¹⁰, H Garavan¹¹, B Ittermann³, K Mann¹², J-L Martinot^13,14, T Paus^15,16,17, M Rietschel¹⁸, M N Smolka^19,20, A Ströhle¹, B Walaszek³, G Schumann⁶, A Heinz² and J Gallinat² The IMAGEN Consortium
ABSTRACT
Video game playing is a frequent recreational activity. Previous studies have reported an involvement of dopamine-related ventral striatum. However, structural brain correlates of video game playing have not been investigated. On magnetic resonance imaging scans of 154 14-year-olds, we computed voxel-based morphometry to explore differences between frequent and infrequent video game players. Moreover, we assessed the Monetary Incentive Delay (MID) task during functional magnetic resonance imaging and the Cambridge Gambling Task (CGT). We found higher left striatal grey matter volume when comparing frequent against infrequent video game players that was negatively correlated with deliberation time in CGT. Within the same region, we found an activity difference in MID task: frequent compared with infrequent video game players showed enhanced activity during feedback of loss compared with no loss. This activity was likewise negatively correlated with deliberation time. The association of video game playing with higher left ventral striatum volume could reflect altered reward processing and represent adaptive neural plasticity.

Download a .pdf copy of the research article: The neural basis of video gaming at Nature.com

Do Teens Have Different Types of Sex Addiction?

2011-12-17T21:04:00.000-08:00

Ten Types of Sex Addiction in "Don't Call It Love"

Patterns of Addictive Sexual Behaviors

Below is an excellent summary of 10 types of sex addiction idenified by Dr. Patrick Carnes in a blog by Elizabeth Hartney, of About.com Guide. Dr. Carnes has focused on adult sexual behavior and the 10 types of behavior below apply to adults. Do they also apply to teens? Certainly the application to teens can be debated, but there is little doubt that teens who are engaged in online sex or cyber sex are vulnerable to compulsive "fantasy sex," "anonymous sex," "paying for sex," and "voyeuristic sex."

Updated July 31, 2010

In his book, "Don't Call It Love," sex addiction expert Dr. Patrick Carnes described 10 types of addictive sexual behavior. As the title, "Don't Call It Love" suggests, each type of sexual addiction puts distance between people, in contrast with the closeness and intimacy they experience with genuine love.
Opinions about what constitutes problematic behavior vary among professionals and the public. Clearly, some of these behaviors, such as fantasy sex, can occur in moderation within healthy sexual relationships, while others, such as exploitative sex, are highly problematic in any context.

1. Fantasy sex

Fantasy sex is an obsession with sexual fantasy, rather than the reality of genuine sexual feelings, sexual behavior, and sexual relationships. The fantasies can be so intense and overwhelming that they are a major preoccupation for the individual involved. As the fantasy is a way of escaping from reality, it can prevent a person from developing genuine loving feelings, which are based on accepting the other person the way they really are.

2. Seductive role sex

Seductive sex focuses on charming, persuading or manipulating others into sexual contact, and involves treating the other person as a "conquest" or a challenge, rather than someone else to connect with. The other person becomes an object the seducer uses to make himself or herself feel more powerful. People who get addicted to seductive sex may have multiple relationships, affairs, and/or unsuccessful serial relationships.

3. Anonymous sex

Anonymous sex is becoming sexually aroused through having sex with strangers. This may involve engaging in sex with anonymous partners, or having one-night stands. Obviously, anonymous sex makes it impossible to develop genuine loving feelings towards the other person, because they cease to be sexually interesting when the partners get to know each other.

4. Paying for sex

The financial basis of sexual contact when a person pays for prostitutes or for sexually explicit phone calls also inhibits genuine connection, because the implication is that sex is a business arrangement, and that the person being paid is having sex for financial gain, not because he or she is interested in developing a loving relationship with the paying partner.

5. Trading sex

The other side of the paying-for-sex transaction is receiving money or drugs for sex or using sex as a business. For these individuals, sex is treated as a commodity, rather than a personal experience. Whether the person trading sex feels empowered by charging a fee for sexual services, or whether they feel financially desperate, dependent on drugs or believe trading sex is necessary for their means of survival, trading sex can diminish emotional connections to sex.

6. Voyeuristic sex

Voyeuristic sex is focused on observing other people engaged in sexual activity, rather than engaging in sexual contact yourself. This can involve getting sexually aroused using pornographic pictures in books, magazines, the computer, pornographic films, peep-shows or secretly observing other people when they might be naked or having sex. Voyeurism tends to be combined with excessive masturbation, even to the point of injury. As the voyeur is engaging in solitary activities, rather than connecting with the object of their desire, and exploiting the other person or people without their knowledge, intimacy and love are not an option.

7. Exhibitionistic sex

Exhibitionist includes flashing sexual parts of the body in public, sometimes while wearing clothes designed to expose. Posing for pornographic pictures or films, or having sex where others can see are also forms of exhibitionism. Exhibitionism can override genuine loving connections because the excitement comes from the reaction -- typically of shock or disapproval -- of the audience, not from the sexual contact with your partner.

8. Intrusive sex

Intrusive sex involves touching others in a sexual way -- such as touching their penis, vulva, buttocks or breasts -- without permission. Intrusive sex may involve the use of a position of power or authority, such as the role of priest, parent or teacher, to sexually exploit another person. Because intrusive sex is by it's nature exploitative, making it impossible to form the basis for trust or love, although victims may experience feelings of loyalty towards authority figures that they misconstrue as love.

9. Pain exchange

The giving or receiving of pain, also known as sadomasochism or S&M, is a type of sexually addictive behavior in which pain is associated with sexual pleasure. There is a blatant imbalance of power between the giver and the receiver, although both partners may be consenting. As with intrusive sex, victims may perceive their feelings towards their torturer as loving, but there is no genuine trust or intimacy when a relationship is based on hurting one another.

10. Exploitative sex

Exploitative sex is a step beyond intrusive sex, and involves the forcing another person to engage in sexual contact. Rape and sex with children or other vulnerable people are types of exploitative sex. Because one person is being violated by the other, there is no possibility for genuine love or intimacy to develop, and usually the opposite emotions are provoked in the victim.

If you, as a parent, suspect your child/teen has crossed the line and is engaging in any/all of the above types of sex addiction, reach out for help as soon as is possible. It is very diificult to admit that a child/teen has a sexual behavior problem, so the inclination is to deny/hide/avoid. Time is a very important factor in the development of a serious problem with sex addiction. Ask for guidance. Don't let shame get the best of you. Call 855-735-HELP for a fully confidential assessment.

Chris Mulligan LCSW

Bully Proof Your Child!

2011-12-17T08:59:00.000-08:00

Here is a really effective set of guidelines for protecting your child/teen from bullying fro stopbullying.gov.

Bully-proofing My Child

Bullying is not a normal rite of passage. It can have serious consequences. You can help your child learn how to prevent bullying. These tips can help:

Help your child understand bullying. Explain what bullying is. It is more than physical; it can be done in person or over the phone or computer.
Keep open lines of communication with your child. Check in with your child and listen to any concerns about friends and other students.
Encourage your child to pursue their interests. Doing what they love may help your child be more confident among their peers and make friends with other kids with similar interests.
Teach your child to take a stand against bullying. Give guidance about how to stand up to those who bully if it is safe to do so.
Talk to your child about seeking help from a trusted adult when feeling threatened by a bully. Talk about whom they should go to for help and role-play what they should say. Assure your child that they should not be afraid to tell an adult when someone they know is being bullied.
Know what is going on in your child's school. Visit the school website, subscribe to the student paper—if there is one—and join the PTA listserv or mailing list. Get to know other parents, school counselors, and staff. Contact the school by phone or e-mail if you have suggestions to make the school a safer and better learning place.

STOP CYBER BULLYING - TODAY!

2011-12-17T08:11:00.001-08:00

Here is a great website: www.stopbullying.gov

Responding to Bullying

How you and your entire school community respond to bullying makes a huge difference in both the moment the bullying occurs and preventing bullying in the future.

How Bullying Affects a School

Bullying negatively affects the atmosphere of the school and disrupts the learning environment:

Student achievement suffers among both the students who are bullied and those who engage in bullying. Students who bully and students who are bullied by others are more likely to skip and/or drop out of school.
Teacher morale declines amid harmful social dynamics in the classroom that interfere with discipline and learning.
Adult-student relationships suffer. Students who witness bullying can become fearful and develop the belief that the adults are not in control or are uncaring.
Parent confidence and trust in the school erodes when students experience bullying or are accused of bullying others.

Additional Resources

What We Know About Bullying [PDF 397 KB]
Myths About Bullying [PDF 210 KB]
Best Practices in Bullying Prevention and Intervention [PDF 525 KB]
A Guide to Developing, Maintaining and Succeeding With Your School Resource Officer Program
Bullying Among Children and Youth with Disabilities and Special Needs [PDF 681 KB]
Bullying in Out-of-School Time Programs: Tips for Youth-Serving Professionals and Volunteers [PDF 566 KB]
Youth Violence Prevention (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Electronic Aggression (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
The ABCs of Bullying: Addressing, Blocking, and Curbing School Aggression (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration)
Sample Newsletter Article: Bullying Among Children and Youth [PDF 436 KB]
Bullying and Victimization: What Adults Can Do (U.S. Department of Agriculture)
Bullying Among Children and Youth on Perceptions and Differences in Sexual Orientation [PDF 681 KB]

Teen Video Game Addiction and the Loss of Social Growth.

2011-12-14T18:52:00.000-08:00

When we think about the potential damage to teens from compulsive gaming, perhaps the most significant problem is the lost social "practice" time. As teens struggle to figure out peer relationships -- especially dating -- they go through hundreds and hundreds of learning trials. They practice approaching groups, keeping a conversation going, the art of sarcasm, how to make plans in a way that is inviting to a peer, and of course, being rejected. Personal identity is also a long process filled with ups and downs, wins and losses, coherence and disorganization. It's not so much a matter of the teen years being filled with drama and upheaval, but more that teens need a lot of time to grow and season.

For each hour spent deep in a fantasy land, building an army, creating wealth, etc., is time a learning trial is lost forever. The ratio isn't one to one -- meaning for every one hour in video game mode is one hour lost in reality. The cost is much greater. As typical teens create growth through risk taking in the real world, the video gamer falls further and further behind. Six months of compulsive gaming can result in a gap of twelve months of growth. At a certain point, the gap becomes so large that the gamer can't see any way to fit in and thus turns more deeply into his fantasy life.

The key is to try to head off/prevent these losses from happening by carefully monitoring time spent in "real time" with real friends. If you see a trend of withdrawal and avoidance, be prepared to act decisively to set clear limits so that your teen can keep pace with his peers and not get lost in a role playing game, potentially forever.

Teen video game addiction website!

2011-12-11T21:13:00.000-08:00

Dear blog readers, I have just created a new website that focuses on mental health treatment for child/teen video game and net addiction. The purpose of the site is to help parents understand addiction and find appropriate mental health care. Check it out and let me know what you think!

www.teenvideogameaddiction.com

Tipe of the Day from Techaddiction.com: The Most Addictive Games

2011-12-07T20:03:00.001-08:00

Most Addictive Video Games - Internet Addiction Tips

"Nothing to see here."
Given that the vast majority of American and Canadian households now have computers, internet access, and in many cases game consoles, access to video games has never been easier. Videogames are a multi-billion dollar industry and sales increase steadily year after year. An eagerly anticipated new game title can easily surpass the box office receipts of major movie releases. For example, Halo 3 for the XBox 360 brought in $170 million in its first day while Spiderman 3 earned $59 million on opening day.
Considering the size of the game industry, consumers have an almost overwhelming selection of titles to choose from. However, some choices are better than others...
When parents shop for a new game for their child they are able to check the ESRB rating printed on the front of the box to see if the content is appropriate for the age of their child. For example an "E" (Everyone) rating indicates that the game is "suitable for ages 6 and older", while a "M" (Mature) rating indicates that the game has content "suitable for persons age 17 and older".
How can one avoid the most addictive video games? Unfortunately there is no rating to indicate the potentially addictive nature of the game. Of course it would be nearly impossible to devise a rating system for "addictiveness" - and TechAddiction certainly does not believe that this is a practical solution. As we have written before, most people can play most games without becoming addicted - they know when to stop and are interested in many activities other than gaming. However, there are certain games which do seem to have a higher risk of turning into an addiction.
What are the most addictive video games?
Based on the clients I see in my own clinical practice, from speaking to other therapists, and from newly emerging research in the field, you may want to reconsider your decision to get involved with the following games due to their potentially addictive nature. A list of the most addictive video games may include:
1) World of Warcraft 2) Everquest 3) Second Life 4) Diablo 2 5) Eve Online
The easiest way to be a non-smoker is to never start. Similarly, the best way to avoid becoming addicted to a game is to not buy it. Simple, but true. Hopefully, being aware of some of the most addicitve video games should help you avoid bringing these games into your home.
If you are considering buying one of these video games, ask yourself if it is really worth the risk. What do you have to lose by starting one of these games? Well, depending on who you are: Your marriage, your boyfriend / girlfriend, your school grades, your university degree, your scholarship, your savings, your friends, your health, your job...
There are literally thousands of other video games which are less likely to become addictive. Again, TechAddiction realizes that most people can play these games without becoming addicted, but if you haven't already started playing, why take the risk? When you see these games in a store, you may want to just keep walking - you have nothing to gain and potentially a lot to lose.
One final thought: You may have noticed that all of the most addictive video games listed above are MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games). In next month's tip, TechAddiction will outline why this type of game seems to result in addiction more than any other genre.
Good luck!

The Myth of Cyber Bullying: Sophie Prince

2011-12-03T15:08:00.000-08:00

CNN did a piece on Sophie Prince -- the Irish 15 high school student who committed suicide outside of Boston last year due to bullying (on Piers Morgan 11/30/11). Sophie's mother was interviewed and in the context of the interview she stated that cyber bullying had very little to do with Sophie's suicide. Most of the truly horrific cyber comments on Facebook occurred AFTER Sophie was dead. The day-in-and-day-out bullying happened fact-to-face while Sophie was at school, with other children and adults around.

The Berkman Center at Harvard made this same point last year in a summary of current research on bullying: most youth fear and are most affected by OFFLINE bullying/aggression/intimidation. They key here is to remember that students and staff in school settings are on the front line of bullying and are in the best position to stop bullying. Cyber attacks are terrible, but they are not as destructive or as prevalent at old fashioned, in the hallway way or in the bathroom bullying that occurs at school.

People who multitask actually fail at multitasking!

2011-11-26T07:59:00.000-08:00

Study finds people who multitask often bad at it

RANDOLPH E. SCHMID 08/24/09 09:38 PM ET

WASHINGTON — The people who multitask the most are the ones who are worst at it. That's the surprising conclusion of researchers at Stanford University, who found multitaskers are more easily distracted and less able to ignore irrelevant information than people who do less multitasking.
"The huge finding is, the more media people use the worse they are at using any media. We were totally shocked," Clifford Nass, a professor at Stanford's communications department, said in a telephone interview.
The researchers studied 262 college undergraduates, dividing them into high and low multitasking groups and comparing such things as memory, ability to switch from one task to another and being able to focus on a task. Their findings are reported in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
When it came to such essential abilities, people who did a lot of multitasking didn't score as well as others, Nass said.
Still to be answered is why the folks who are worst at multitasking are the ones doing it the most.
It's sort of a chicken-or-egg question.
"Is multitasking causing them to be lousy at multitasking, or is their lousiness at multitasking causing them to be multitaskers?" Nass wondered. "Is it born or learned?"
In a society that seems to encourage more and more multitasking, the findings have social implications, Nass observed. Multitasking is already blamed for car crashes as several states restrict the use of cell phones while driving. Lawyers or advertisers can try to use irrelevant information to distract and refocus people to influence their decisions.
In the study, the researchers first had to figure out who are the heavy and light multitaskers. They gave the students a form listing a variety of media such as print, television, computer-based video, music, computer games, telephone voice or text, and so forth.

The students were asked, for each form of media, which other forms they used at the same time always, often, sometimes or never.
The result ranged from an average of about 1.5 media items at the low end to more than four among heavy multitaskers.
Then they tested the abilities of students in the various groups.
For example, ability to ignore irrelevant information was tested by showing them a group of red and blue rectangles, blanking them out, and then showing them again and asking if any of the red ones had moved.
The test required ignoring the blue rectangles. The researchers thought people who do a lot of multitasking would be better at it.
"But they're not. They're worse. They're much worse," said Nass. The high media multitaskers couldn't ignore the blue rectangles. "They couldn't ignore stuff that doesn't matter. They love stuff that doesn't matter," he said.
Perhaps the multitaskers can take in the information and organize it better? Nope.
"They are worse at that, too," Nass said.
"So then we thought, OK, maybe they have bigger memories. They don't. They were equal" with the low multitaskers, he added.
Finally, they tested ability to switch from one task to another by classifying a letter as a vowel or consonant, or a number as even or odd. The high multitaskers took longer to make the switch from one task to the other.
This particularly surprised the researchers, considering the need to switch from one thing to another in multitasking.
"They couldn't help thinking about the task they weren't doing," lead author Eyal Ophir said. "The high multitaskers are always drawing from all the information in front of them. They can't keep things separate in their minds."
The next step is to look into what multitaskers are good at and see if the difference between high and low multitaskers is one of "exploring" versus "exploiting" information.
"High multitaskers just love more and more information. Their greatest thrill is to get more," he said. On the other hand, "exploiters like to think about the information they already have."
The research was funded by Stanford Major Grant, Volkswagen Grant, Nissan Grant and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant.
___
On the Net:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: http://www.pnas.org

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The truth about teens and multi-tasking from The Children's Digital Media Center

2011-11-23T22:14:00.000-08:00

In this article, Dr. Patricia Greenfield and Yalda T. Uhls, from UCLA and Children’s Digital Media Center, help us make sense of some of the research being done on how multitasking affects productivity and development.

Children’s simultaneous use of different media, or media multitasking, is at an all-time high, as a recent study from the Kaiser Family Foundation demonstrates.1 The primary driver of this trend is the computer with its multiple windows, but other media contribute to multitasking because they can be used simultaneously. For example, a child who uses a computer to instant message with friends while a television is on in the background or while listening to music is multitasking.

There is also social multitasking, in which, for example, you text one person while talking face-to-face to another. And it’s important to realize that we all multitask everyday. To date, it has actually been considered a valuable skill, given that in our time-strapped society, multitasking allows you to complete many different tasks at the same time.

Multitasking is here to stay; the question is, what are the benefits or costs to multitasking, and, if there are costs, how can parents mitigate them?

Early research pointing to positive effects of playing video games showed that it could promote divided attention skills, a perceptual foundation for multitasking.2 A more recent study employed a tool that measures how effectively a participant performs on four tasks carried out simultaneously. This study showed that participants who played two hours of a shooting game called Counter-Strike improved multitasking scores significantly over those in a control group who did not play the game.3

So video games promote skills in multitasking — but many parents, educators, and researchers are left asking whether multitasking is fundamentally a good thing. Recent studies have investigated whether someone performs better or processes a task more deeply if it is done alone rather than in a multitasking environment.

One of these studies used CNN Headline News to simulate a multitasking environment and a cognitive task that many of us encounter daily: simultaneously collecting information from multiple visual and aural cues.4 The experiment showed that college students recalled significantly fewer facts from four main news stories in CNN’s visually complex environment than from the same stories presented in a visually simple format, with the news anchor alone on the screen and the news crawls and other stimuli edited out.

So what happens to learning in a classroom environment that encourages media multitasking? Researchers at Cornell University studied this in a college-level communication studies class in which students were generally encouraged to use their laptops and the Internet during lectures to explore topics in greater detail. Half the students were allowed to keep their laptops open, while the other half had to close their laptops. Students with closed laptops recalled significantly more material in a surprise quiz after class than did the students with open laptops.5 Although these results may be obvious to teachers, many schools appear to be unaware of the potentially negative impact on learning produced by multitasking when they provide wireless connections to the Internet in lecture halls with the intention of improving learning.

This research indicates that multitasking — both within-medium, as with the CNN study, and multimedia, as with the classroom Internet study — decreases our ability to process and retain information. These studies show the cognitive costs of multitasking: It can distract from the main message and from socially important tasks. Multitasking can also decrease reflection on learning — or “metacognition” — as it shifts activity away from brain areas that deeply reflect on information and learning to areas that deal with more habitual processing.6 It can also cause situational Attention Deficit Disorder, which can lead to irritability, declining productivity, and disorganization.7

Additionally, there are social costs, which concern many parents today. In an intense four-year study of modern family life, anthropologist Elinor Ochs at UCLA’s Sloan Center found that multitasking contributes to decreased family interaction. Researchers in Norway found that social multitasking with a cell phone creates generational boundaries, undermines family rituals and shared communication, and magnifies the importance of peer group while decreasing the importance of family.8

So what can mitigate some the cognitive effects of multitasking — such as decreased reflection and automatic thinking? One answer is reading. Research has shown that the amount of out-of-class reading done in college years is a statistically significant predictor of critical thinking skills.9 In addition, reading promotes imagination, increases vocabulary, and encourages reflection.10

Perhaps most importantly, parents can lead by example to encourage breaks from multitasking. This may mean setting limits on media time or turning off the TV and pulling out a board game that requires concentration on a single task. But, more generally, it means slowing down the pace a bit and encouraging family time, since the positive influences of parents on a child’s development can take place only when parents spend time with their children.

If you’re interested in learning more, please take a look at Patricia Greenfield’s article in Science magazine.

Rideout, V., Foehr, U., & Roberts, D. (2010). Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds. Menlo Park, CA: Kaiser Family Foundation. http://www.kff.org/entmedia/mh012010pkg.cfm
Greenfield, P. M., Dewinstanley, P., Kilpatrick, H., & Kaye, D. (1994). Action video games and informal education: Effects on strategies for dividing visual attention. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 15:105–123.
Kearney, P. In Proceedings of the DiGRA World Conference, 2005.
Bergen, L., Grimes, T., & Potter, D. (2005). How attention partitions itself during … Human Communication Research, 31 (3), 311-336.
Hembrooke, H., & Gay, G. (2003). The Lecture and the Laptop: Multitasking in wireless learning … Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 15(1), 46-65.
Foerde, K., Poldrack, R.A., & Knowlton, B.J. (2007). Secondary task effects on classification learning. Memory & Cognition, 35, 864-74.
Hallowell, E. M. (2005). Delivered from distraction: Getting the most out of life with attention deficit disorder. New York: Ballantine Books.
Ling, R. and Yttri, B. (2005). Control, emancipation and status: The mobile telephone in the teen’s parental and peer group control relationships. In R. Kraut, M. Brynin, & S. Kiesler (Eds.) Information technology at home. Oxford: Oxford.
Terenzini, P. T., Springer, L., Pascarella, E. T., & Nora, A. (1995). Influences affecting the development of students’ critical thinking skills. Research in Higher Education, 36, 23-39.
Kagan, J. (1965). Reflection-impulsivity and reading ability in primary grade children. Child Development, 36, 609-628.

By Common Sense Media
January 21, 2010

a Parent's Guide to Cyber Safety: FBI Publication

2011-11-22T22:41:00.000-08:00

A Parent's Guide to Internet Safety

view printable version (pdf)

Dear Parent:

Our children are our nation's most valuable asset. They represent the bright future of our country and hold our hopes for a better nation. Our children are also the most vulnerable members of society. Protecting our children against the fear of crime and from becoming victims of crime must be a national priority.

Unfortunately the same advances in computer and telecommunication technology that allow our children to reach out to new sources of knowledge and cultural experiences are also leaving them vulnerable to exploitation and harm by computer-sex offenders.

I hope that this pamphlet helps you to begin to understand the complexities of online child exploitation. For further information, please contact your local FBI office or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-843-5678.

Louis J. Freeh, Former Director
Federal Bureau of Investigation

Introduction

While on-line computer exploration opens a world of possibilities for children, expanding their horizons and exposing them to different cultures and ways of life, they can be exposed to dangers as they hit the road exploring the information highway. There are individuals who attempt to sexually exploit children through the use of on-line services and the Internet. Some of these individuals gradually seduce their targets through the use of attention, affection, kindness, and even gifts. These individuals are often willing to devote considerable amounts of time, money, and energy in this process. They listen to and empathize with the problems of children. They will be aware of the latest music, hobbies, and interests of children. These individuals attempt to gradually lower children's inhibitions by slowly introducing sexual context and content into their conversations.

There are other individuals, however, who immediately engage in sexually explicit conversation with children. Some offenders primarily collect and trade child-pornographic images, while others seek face-to-face meetings with children via on-line contacts. It is important for parents to understand that children can be indirectly victimized through conversation, i.e. "chat," as well as the transfer of sexually explicit information and material. Computer-sex offenders may also be evaluating children they come in contact with on-line for future face-to-face contact and direct victimization. Parents and children should remember that a computer-sex offender can be any age or sex the person does not have to fit the caricature of a dirty, unkempt, older man wearing a raincoat to be someone who could harm a child.

Children, especially adolescents, are sometimes interested in and curious about sexuality and sexually explicit material. They may be moving away from the total control of parents and seeking to establish new relationships outside their family. Because they may be curious, children/adolescents sometimes use their on-line access to actively seek out such materials and individuals. Sex offenders targeting children will use and exploit these characteristics and needs. Some adolescent children may also be attracted to and lured by on-line offenders closer to their age who, although not technically child molesters, may be dangerous. Nevertheless, they have been seduced and manipulated by a clever offender and do not fully understand or recognize the potential danger of these contacts.

This guide was prepared from actual investigations involving child victims, as well as investigations where law enforcement officers posed as children. Further information on protecting your child on-line may be found in the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's Child Safety on the Information Highway and Teen Safety on the Information Highway pamphlets.

What Are Signs That Your Child Might Be At Risk On-line?

Your child spends large amounts of time on-line, especially at night.

Most children that fall victim to computer-sex offenders spend large amounts of time on-line, particularly in chat rooms. They may go on-line after dinner and on the weekends. They may be latchkey kids whose parents have told them to stay at home after school. They go on-line to chat with friends, make new friends, pass time, and sometimes look for sexually explicit information. While much of the knowledge and experience gained may be valuable, parents should consider monitoring the amount of time spent on-line.

Children on-line are at the greatest risk during the evening hours. While offenders are on-line around the clock, most work during the day and spend their evenings on-line trying to locate and lure children or seeking pornography.

You find pornography on your child's computer.

Pornography is often used in the sexual victimization of children. Sex offenders often supply their potential victims with pornography as a means of opening sexual discussions and for seduction. Child pornography may be used to show the child victim that sex between children and adults is "normal." Parents should be conscious of the fact that a child may hide the pornographic files on diskettes from them. This may be especially true if the computer is used by other family members.

Your child receives phone calls from men you don't know or is making calls, sometimes long distance, to numbers you don't recognize.

While talking to a child victim on-line is a thrill for a computer-sex offender, it can be very cumbersome. Most want to talk to the children on the telephone. They often engage in "phone sex" with the children and often seek to set up an actual meeting for real sex.

While a child may be hesitant to give out his/her home phone number, the computer-sex offenders will give out theirs. With Caller ID, they can readily find out the child's phone number. Some computer-sex offenders have even obtained toll-free 800 numbers, so that their potential victims can call them without their parents finding out. Others will tell the child to call collect. Both of these methods result in the computer-sex offender being able to find out the child's phone number.

Your child receives mail, gifts, or packages from someone you don't know.

As part of the seduction process, it is common for offenders to send letters, photographs, and all manner of gifts to their potential victims. Computer-sex offenders have even sent plane tickets in order for the child to travel across the country to meet them.

Your child turns the computer monitor off or quickly changes the screen on the monitor when you come into the room.

A child looking at pornographic images or having sexually explicit conversations does not want you to see it on the screen.

Your child becomes withdrawn from the family.

Computer-sex offenders will work very hard at driving a wedge between a child and their family or at exploiting their relationship. They will accentuate any minor problems at home that the child might have. Children may also become withdrawn after sexual victimization.

Your child is using an on-line account belonging to someone else.

Even if you don't subscribe to an on-line service or Internet service, your child may meet an offender while on-line at a friend's house or the library. Most computers come preloaded with on-line and/or Internet software. Computer-sex offenders will sometimes provide potential victims with a computer account for communications with them.

What Should You Do If You Suspect Your Child Is Communicating With A Sexual Predator Online?

Consider talking openly with your child about your suspicions. Tell them about the dangers of computer-sex offenders.
Review what is on your child's computer. If you don't know how, ask a friend, coworker, relative, or other knowledgeable person. Pornography or any kind of sexual communication can be a warning sign.
Use the Caller ID service to determine who is calling your child. Most telephone companies that offer Caller ID also offer a service that allows you to block your number from appearing on someone else's Caller ID. Telephone companies also offer an additional service feature that rejects incoming calls that you block. This rejection feature prevents computer-sex offenders or anyone else from calling your home anonymously.
Devices can be purchased that show telephone numbers that have been dialed from your home phone. Additionally, the last number called from your home phone can be retrieved provided that the telephone is equipped with a redial feature. You will also need a telephone pager to complete this retrieval.
This is done using a numeric-display pager and another phone that is on the same line as the first phone with the redial feature. Using the two phones and the pager, a call is placed from the second phone to the pager. When the paging terminal beeps for you to enter a telephone number, you press the redial button on the first (or suspect) phone. The last number called from that phone will then be displayed on the pager.
Monitor your child's access to all types of live electronic communications (i.e., chat rooms, instant messages, Internet Relay Chat, etc.), and monitor your child's e-mail. Computer-sex offenders almost always meet potential victims via chat rooms. After meeting a child on-line, they will continue to communicate electronically often via e-mail.

Should any of the following situations arise in your household, via the Internet or on-line service, you should immediately contact your local or state law enforcement agency, the FBI, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children:

Your child or anyone in the household has received child pornography;
Your child has been sexually solicited by someone who knows that your child is under 18 years of age;
Your child has received sexually explicit images from someone that knows your child is under the age of 18.

If one of these scenarios occurs, keep the computer turned off in order to preserve any evidence for future law enforcement use. Unless directed to do so by the law enforcement agency, you should not attempt to copy any of the images and/or text found on the computer.

What Can You Do To Minimize The Chances Of An On-line Exploiter Victimizing Your Child?

Communicate, and talk to your child about sexual victimization and potential on-line danger.
Spend time with your children on-line. Have them teach you about their favorite on-line destinations.
Keep the computer in a common room in the house, not in your child's bedroom. It is much more difficult for a computer-sex offender to communicate with a child when the computer screen is visible to a parent or another member of the household.
Utilize parental controls provided by your service provider and/or blocking software. While electronic chat can be a great place for children to make new friends and discuss various topics of interest, it is also prowled by computer-sex offenders. Use of chat rooms, in particular, should be heavily monitored. While parents should utilize these mechanisms, they should not totally rely on them.
Always maintain access to your child's on-line account and randomly check his/her e-mail. Be aware that your child could be contacted through the U.S. Mail. Be up front with your child about your access and reasons why.
Teach your child the responsible use of the resources on-line. There is much more to the on-line experience than chat rooms.
Find out what computer safeguards are utilized by your child's school, the public library, and at the homes of your child's friends. These are all places, outside your normal supervision, where your child could encounter an on-line predator.
Understand, even if your child was a willing participant in any form of sexual exploitation, that he/she is not at fault and is the victim. The offender always bears the complete responsibility for his or her actions.
Instruct your children:

Frequently Asked Questions:

My child has received an e-mail advertising for a pornographic website, what should I do?

Generally, advertising for an adult, pornographic website that is sent to an e-mail address does not violate federal law or the current laws of most states. In some states it may be a violation of law if the sender knows the recipient is under the age of 18. Such advertising can be reported to your service provider and, if known, the service provider of the originator. It can also be reported to your state and federal legislators, so they can be made aware of the extent of the problem.

Is any service safer than the others?

Sex offenders have contacted children via most of the major on-line services and the Internet. The most important factors in keeping your child safe on-line are the utilization of appropriate blocking software and/or parental controls, along with open, honest discussions with your child, monitoring his/her on-line activity, and following the tips in this pamphlet.

Should I just forbid my child from going on-line?

There are dangers in every part of our society. By educating your children to these dangers and taking appropriate steps to protect them, they can benefit from the wealth of information now available on-line.

Helpful Definitions:

Internet - An immense, global network that connects computers via telephone lines and/or fiber networks to storehouses of electronic information. With only a computer, a modem, a telephone line and a service provider, people from all over the world can communicate and share information with little more than a few keystrokes.

Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) - Electronic networks of computers that are connected by a central computer setup and operated by a system administrator or operator and are distinguishable from the Internet by their "dial-up" accessibility. BBS users link their individual computers to the central BBS computer by a modem which allows them to post messages, read messages left by others, trade information, or hold direct conversations. Access to a BBS can, and often is, privileged and limited to those users who have access privileges granted by the systems operator.

Commercial On-line Service (COS) - Examples of COSs are America Online, Prodigy, CompuServe and Microsoft Network, which provide access to their service for a fee. COSs generally offer limited access to the Internet as part of their total service package.

Internet Service Provider (ISP) - Examples of ISPs are Erols, Concentric and Netcom. These services offer direct, full access to the Internet at a flat, monthly rate and often provide electronic-mail service for their customers. ISPs often provide space on their servers for their customers to maintain World Wide Web (WWW) sites. Not all ISPs are commercial enterprises. Educational, governmental and nonprofit organizations also provide Internet access to their members.

Public Chat Rooms - Created, maintained, listed and monitored by the COS and other public domain systems such as Internet Relay Chat. A number of customers can be in the public chat rooms at any given time, which are monitored for illegal activity and even appropriate language by systems operators (SYSOP). Some public chat rooms are monitored more frequently than others, depending on the COS and the type of chat room. Violators can be reported to the administrators of the system (at America On-line they are referred to as terms of service [TOS]) which can revoke user privileges. The public chat rooms usually cover a broad range of topics such as entertainment, sports, game rooms, children only, etc.

Electronic Mail (E-Mail) - A function of BBSs, COSs and ISPs which provides for the transmission of messages and files between computers over a communications network similar to mailing a letter via the postal service. E-mail is stored on a server, where it will remain until the addressee retrieves it. Anonymity can be maintained by the sender by predetermining what the receiver will see as the "from" address. Another way to conceal one's identity is to use an "anonymous remailer," which is a service that allows the user to send an e-mail message repackaged under the remailer's own header, stripping off the originator's name completely.

Chat - Real-time text conversation between users in a chat room with no expectation of privacy. All chat conversation is accessible by all individuals in the chat room while the conversation is taking place.

Instant Messages - Private, real-time text conversation between two users in a chat room.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) - Real-time text conversation similar to public and/or private chat rooms on COS.

Usenet (Newsgroups) - Like a giant, cork bulletin board where users post messages and information. Each posting is like an open letter and is capable of having attachments, such as graphic image files (GIFs). Anyone accessing the newsgroup can read the postings, take copies of posted items, or post responses. Each newsgroup can hold thousands of postings. Currently, there are over 29,000 public newsgroups and that number is growing daily. Newsgroups are both public and/or private. There is no listing of private newsgroups. A user of private newsgroups has to be invited into the newsgroup and be provided with the newsgroup's address.

view printable version (pdf)

Federal Bureau of Investigation
Cyber Division
Innocent Images National Initiative
11700 Beltsville Drive
Calverton, MD 20705
Contact your local FBI office for further informa

Cyber Predator vs. Jerry Sandusky

2011-11-19T16:26:00.000-08:00

There are many lessons to be learned about child safety from the events at Penn State -- perhaps none more relevant to our "techy" time in history than the vast majority of child sexual predators live offline and are VERY familiar to their victims. Jerry Sandusky did not use a computer to groom his victims, but instead used face-to-face kindness, generosity, trust, and opportunity.

The Berkman Center at Harvard has disputed the "cyber predator" as a common event and have strongly encouraged everyone who has children or works with children to look at offline predators as posing the greatest risk. It is crucial to focus on the fact that 90% of all child sexual abuse comes at the hands of a person who the child knows and trusts (60% involve some one in the child/teen's family).

The fact that Jerry Sandusky was able to use his charitable foundation and access to Penn State athletic facilities to find, groom, and abuse children does not surprise me in the least. He did what many pedophiles do: they find a public venue to identify vulnerable children and then rely on the adults surrounding the child to look the other way, to be in denial, to rationalize deviant and violent behavior. Yes, there is an expectation by clever pedophiles that the egregious nature of their offense will be allowed to proceed because no one who knows the pedophile (as a stand up guy) will want to get involved accuse the pedophile of an unspeakable act (shame on you JoePA and every one on your staff!).

So, remember that the Sandusky story is really SOP for pedophiles -- as is the lack of action by Penn State. Cyber space can be aa dangerous place for sure -- but the most skilled sexual predators are next door, at the YMCA, coaching youth sports, or running an organization for at risk youth.

Christopher Mulligan LCSW

10 Reasons to Cancel Your Teen’s Data Plan

2011-11-18T06:44:00.000-08:00

from: www.phoneservice.com:

10 Reasons to Cancel Your Teen’s Data Plan

Teenagers in today’s society have a wealth of information at their fingertips. Just by using a web-enabled cell phone, they have access to everything the internet has to offer. News outlets across the United States have reported the unseen dangers, but many parents remain unaware of the trouble that can result. Here are ten reasons you might want to consider canceling your teen’s data plan.

Difficult to Monitor – Despite the parental controls that some service providers offer, a tech-savvy teen can still hide their tracks on a mobile device.
Sexually Inappropriate Content – Not having a data plan makes sending questionable images to another cell phone much more difficult. The lack of online capabilities can greatly reduce the access your teen has to sexually inappropriate content, whether that means pornography or sharing ill-advised photos of themselves.
Bullying – The bullying epidemic among older kids and teens is no secret. Limiting the capabilities of your teen’s cell phone can help protect them from some forms of bullying, or prevent them from being a bully to others.
The Distraction Factor – Today’s teens spend an enormous amount of time using social networking sites from their phones, leaving them completely distracted from the world around them. Not having the ability to access such sites at their fingertips throughout the entirety of their day forces them to interact with their surroundings; everything from their grades to the conversation at the dinner table can improve when there’s no media plan available.
Cheating – Having access to search engines during a difficult test can tempt even the most honest teen. Removing that temptation can help steer your teen away from making a decision that can have an adverse effect on their academic future.
Usage Fees – The charges for data usage can be exorbitant, especially if your teen is downloading music, games and ringtones. Opting to have data usage disabled can save a small fortune, especially if you have more than one teenager on a family plan.
Driving Dangers – While disabling data use doesn’t prevent texting, it can limit the available distractions. Have a talk with your teen driver about the dangers of texting while driving, but it might be a good idea to also consider dropping the data plan from their line for this reason as well.
Peer Pressure and Risky Behavior – Today, everything from nudity to fighting is encouraged among groups of teens, simply for the purpose of recording and sharing the photos and video footage. Limiting the capabilities of your teen’s device can curtail his or her involvement in such risky or illegal behavior.
Spreading of Harmful Rumors and Gossip – Though most wouldn’t use the term “blackmail,” that’s exactly what some teens are doing when they use photos and video caught on a cell phone to torment a classmate. Though disabling your teen’s data usage won’t protect them from being the victim of voyeurism, it will prevent them from sharing embarrassing footage of others.
Too Much Information – Many social networking sites like Facebook offer the ability to “check in” from a mobile device. This publishes the user’s current location, sometimes complete with a map. For naïve teens, this doesn’t seem like an issue, but it can be dangerous if their privacy settings allow strangers to see the information.

Simply restricting your teen’s access to these services won’t keep them safe from the dangers of our high-tech society. It’s imperative to explain your reasons for not allowing mobile web access, and to have a conversation about the behaviors that a cell phone simply documents.

Focusing on the Self Rather than Caring for Others

2011-11-13T08:27:00.001-08:00

A Shift Toward Self

By Stuart Wolpert

Published Jul 25, 2011 12:00 AM

A study shows fame as the top value promoted in TV programs targeted to pre-teens in 2007, with emphasis on community feeling and kindness to others far less than before.

"Don't you know who I am? Remember my name. Fame! I'm gonna live forever."
— Irene Cara, "Fame"
Being famous is now the number one value emphasized by television shows popular with 9- to 11-year-olds, according to a recent study by UCLA psychologists.
On a list of 16 values, fame jumped from 15th in both 1987 and 1997 to first in 2007. From 1997 to 2007, the quality of benevolence (being kind and helping others) fell from second to 13th, and tradition dropped from fourth to 15th.
The study assessed the values of characters in popular television shows in each decade from 1967 to 2007, with two shows per decade evaluated.
"I was shocked, especially by the dramatic changes in the last 10 years," says Yalda T. Uhls, a UCLA doctoral student in developmental psychology and the lead author of the study. "I thought fame would be important but did not expect this drastic an increase or such a dramatic decrease in other values, such as community feeling. If you believe, as I do, that television reflects the culture, then American culture has changed drastically."
Community feeling (being part of a group) was the top value in 1967, 1977 and 1997 and was number two in 1987, the study found. By 2007, however, it had fallen out of the top 10, to 11th.
"The rise of fame in preteen television may be one influence in the documented rise of narcissism in our culture," explains the study's senior author, Patricia M. Greenfield, a UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Children's Digital Media Center @ Los Angeles. "Popular television shows are part of the environment that causes the increased narcissism, but they also reflect the culture. They both reflect it and serve as a powerful socialization force for the next generation."
The top five values in 2007 were fame, achievement, popularity, image and financial success. In 1997, the top five were community feeling, benevolence, image, tradition and self-acceptance. In 2007, benevolence dropped to 12th and community feeling to 11th. Financial success went from 12th in 1967 and 1997 to fifth in 2007.
The two least emphasized values in 2007 were spiritualism (16th) and tradition (15th); tradition had been ranked fourth in 1997.
Uhls and Greenfield analyzed Nielsen demographic data to determine the most popular shows with 9- to 11-year-olds and then surveyed 60 participants, aged 18 to 59, to determine how important each value was in episodes of the various shows.
"The biggest change occurred from 1997 to 2007, when YouTube, Facebook and Twitter exploded in popularity," Uhls says. "Their growth parallels the rise in narcissism and the drop in empathy among college students in the United States, as other research has shown. We don't think this is a coincidence. Changes we have seen in narcissism and empathy are being reflected on television. In the past, children had their home, community and school; now they have thousands of 'friends' who look at their photos and their posts and comment on them. The growth of social media gives children access to an audience beyond the school grounds."
"If you have 400 or more Facebook friends, which many high school and college students do, you are on stage," Greenfield says. "It's intrinsically narcissistic."
"Preteens are at an age when they want to be popular, just like the famous teenagers they see on TV and the Internet," adds Uhls, who has an 11-year-old daughter and formerly worked as a movie studio executive. "With Internet celebrities and reality TV stars everywhere, the pathway for nearly anyone to become famous, without a connection to hard work and skill, may seem easier than ever. When being famous and rich is much more important than being kind to others, what will happen to kids as they form their values and their identities?"
To learn about the Children's Digital Media Center @ Los Angeles, visit www.cdmc.ucla.edu .

New Porn Policy in the UK!

2011-11-13T07:44:00.001-08:00

UK Internet Users Forced To Choose Whether They Want Porn Or Not

October 11, 2011 — techaddiction1 LONDON – A coalition of major U.K. Internet providers said Tuesday that it would begin forcing customers to choose whether to have access to pornography and other potentially unsavoury websites, rather than simply offering consumers the option to block them.

Or, if you live in the UK you can also say "yes" - it's your call.

The family advocate behind the move says it will push families to think about what their children are looking at online, but civil libertarians worry that adults could be caught up in — and potentially get used to — online censorship.
“The choice needs to be framed as a choice about parental controls,” said Jim Killock, the chief executive of Britain’s Open Rights Group. “Adults should not be being asked to make choices about content they may wish to view, or may need to view in the future.”
Like their counterparts elsewhere, British Internet providers have long offered customers the option of installing parental blocks to protect children from objectionable content — including not just pornography and gambling but also websites that promote eating disorders, self-harm or suicide.
But a government-ordered review into the sexualization of children published in June recommended that parents be forced to make an explicit choice whether to include the blocks. The review’s author, family advocate Reg Bailey, told BBC television that the issue with existing parental controls is that “the default position is that they’re turned off.”
He said forcing the choice is a way to confront parents with the question: “Do you actually want to access adult material on the Internet through this device?”
“That persuades parents in many ways to have a conversation with children and young people about whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing,” he told the broadcaster. “It’s a much more active process than it is at present.”
Killock said he didn’t have a problem with stronger parental controls — so long as they remained just that. The danger, he said, was that forcing adult consumers to explicitly state whether they wanted to access pornography or other material might intimidate some into agreeing to a form of censorship.
“If you’re faced with the question: ‘Do you wish to switch on adult content, yes or no?’ then people will switch it off because they might think: ‘Oh my partner won’t approve,’” he said. “It’s inappropriate to get adults to start living in a censored world.”
The four providers who’ve pledged to implement the new measure are the BT Group PLC, British Sky Broadcasting Ltd., Virgin Media and the TalkTalk Telecom Group PLC. None of the providers gave a precise timeline for when the measure would be put into place.

Teen internet addiction

2011-11-13T07:36:00.000-08:00

Teenage Internet Addiction Symptoms Treatment Help

Teen Internet Addiction Overview
It’s no secret that many teens are big fans of video games and the Internet. But for some young people, what started as an interest in technology, a means of entertainment, or a way to keep in touch with friends may morph into a serious behavior disorder.
Teen Internet addiction is much more than just a strong desire to be online. As is the case with other behavior disorders — such as compulsive gambling — teen Internet addiction is marked by a progressive loss of control over one’s ability to avoid, regulate, or limit a behavior. In this case, the behavior in question is spending time on the Internet.
Though some people continue to regard teen Internet addiction as little more than a parenting issue, many experts in the field of addictions and compulsions have identified teen Internet addiction as a real issue that is deserving of continued study. In fact, Internet addiction was seriously considered for inclusion in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V).
Though teen Internet addiction did not make it into DSM-V, the substance-related disorders work group (which evaluated proposed changes to the DSM) recommended that Internet addiction be included in the appendix of DSM-V, and called for further research on the topic.

Causes of Internet Addiction
As is the case with other compulsive behavior disorders, no one cause has been identified as definitively leading to teen Internet addiction. As is also the case with other addictions and compulsions, teen Internet addiction is thought to be more prevalent among teens who are also struggling with disorders such as depression, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), anxiety, poor self-image, and low self-esteem.

For teens who become enamored with online MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online roleplaying games) such as World of Warcraft and Everquest, the likelihood of addiction may be greater because these games never end. With new quests and adventures continually being added to the game, the user never reaches a point where the game has been mastered or otherwise completed — thus, there is always the enticement to return for more.
For those who are at risk of developing teen Internet addiction, the rush of playing triggers a release of endorphins (brain chemicals associated with pleasure) that mimics what occurs in the brains of individuals who are addicted to alcohol and other drugs, or to behaviors such as gambling.
For teens who are struggling with other mental health or behavioral challenges, and who have difficulty with “real life” social situations) the power, sense of community, and adrenaline rush of online gaming can be extremely enticing.
Symptoms of An Internet Addiction
The core components of teen Internet addiction are similar to those of any other addiction or compulsion. Young people who struggle with teen Internet addiction are likely to meet many if not all of the following criteria:

Tolerance — Needing to play more and more in order to experience the same “rush”
Obsession — Spending most offline time thinking about past online experiences and planning for future online sessions
Frustration, anxiety, and/or irritability when not able to go online
Abandoning friends and other hobbies in order to focus on online activities
Continuing to spend time online even after negative repercussions (such as school problems, deteriorating relationships, and even health problems)

The following are among the specific signs that could indicate the presence of teen Internet addiction:

Most non-school hours are spent on the computer or playing video games
Falling asleep in school
Falling behind with assignments
Worsening grades
Lying about computer or video game use
Choosing to use the computer or play video games, rather than see friends
Dropping out of other social groups (clubs or sports)
Being irritable when not playing a video game or being on the computer

Physical symptoms associated with teen Internet addiction may include the following:

Carpal tunnel syndrome (associated with repetitive motions such as excessive keyboard use)
Insomnia
Poor nutrition (failing or refusing to eat in order to remain online)
Poor personal hygiene (again, neglecting this important issue in order to focus on online activities)
Headaches, back pain, and neck pain
Dry eyes and vision problems

In short, if a teen demonstrates an inability to stop spending time online — or cannot limit his/her time on the Internet — especially when Internet use is creating problems in other areas of his/her life, then teen Internet addiction may be to blame.
Treatment for An Internet Addiction
Determining the optimal course of treatment for a young person who is struggling teen Internet addiction depends upon a range of factors, including the teen’s age, the nature and severity of the compulsive behavior, and the presence of co-occurring disorders.1
Some teens may respond best to outpatient therapy (such as weekly sessions with a counselor or therapist), while others may be best served by enrollment in a therapeutic teen wilderness program or a residential program for teens.
Specific therapies and therapeutic activities will vary from teen to teen, but the following may be among the many options that will have the best impact on a young person who has been dealing with teen Internet addiction.

Structured and closely supervised schedule with little or no access to Internet-connected devices
Individual, group, and family therapy
Behavior modification
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)
Equine therapy
Expressive arts therapy
Recreation therapy

Children's Digital Media Center: Teens and the Internet

2011-11-05T08:47:00.001-07:00

By Yalda T. Uhls |Patricia M. Greenfield

Children's Digital Media Center Los Angeles

At the Children's Digital Media Center in Los Angeles, we have spent the last eight years exploring life on line and the developmental implications for both adolescents and emerging adults. From the early days of chat rooms to today's pervasive use of social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook, we have seen digital media grow and change at a rapid pace to the point where adolescents are living a large part of their life electronically - especially online. In this article, we will describe how young people use the Internet, with a focus on social network sites; discuss our assessment of risks and benefits; and provide some ideas for parents.
Research shows that adolescents use a variety of Internet applications to connect with their peers and to explore adolescent concerns such as identity and sexuality, all issues that teenagers grapple with off-line (1, 2, 3). A 2008 report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 93% of teenagers go on-line and 65% use a social networking site.

Social Networking Sites

Social networking sites are an online communication tool that allows users to create a public or semi-public profile, as well as to create and view their own and other users’ online social networks (4). Unlike chat rooms, but like personal web pages, a social networking site is intrinsically tied to the individual, which means teenagers often use this medium to express themselves as well as to communicate (3, 5). Essentially, adolescents create a social network of “friends,” and post information about themselves including likes, dislikes and activities, through photos, audio, text messages, blogging and more (6). One effect of social networking is that aspects of self and social relationships that used to be quite private are now displayed for an audience of “friends”, typically over a hundred and ranging up to more than 600 (3, 6). We do not yet know the effects on human development of living in public; at the CDMC, we are working on research that examines this question.

Media portrayals of social networking sites often describe it as a dangerous place where kids are stalked by sexual predators. The truth is somewhat different. In 2009, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University found that, in fact, peer bullying and harassment are the most frequent threats that minors face, both online and offline. The report also found that social networking sites are not the most common space for solicitation and unwanted exposure to problematic content, but are frequently used in peer-to-peer harassment, most likely because they are broadly adopted by minors and are used primarily to reinforce pre-existing social relations (6). In addition, minors who are most in jeopardy often engage in risky behaviors and have difficulties in other parts of their lives. In other words, it is not the use of the Internet, but the teenager and his or her off-line environment that better predicts potential problems with the medium. However, the social networking site is a powerful tool that has the potential to magnify offline problems; and parents should realize that they are far from powerless.

The Role of Parenting in Technology Use

Indeed, parents can have an important influence in reducing teens’ risky behaviors with social networking sites. In recent research, teens who perceived their parents to be indulgent (warm and involvement, but low in strictness and supervision) reported the most risky online behavior such as meeting someone in person they had first met online (7). Teens who perceived their parents as authoritative (warm and involved, as well as high in strictness and supervision) reported the lowest frequency of this risky behavior. Authoritative parenting also involves open lines of communication between parent and child.

We know that open parent-child communication reduces risky and antisocial behavior induced by media such as TV that present sexualized and aggressive content (8). We therefore highly recommend a parenting style that combines warmth, supervision, and open communication between parent and child. One important means of parental supervision is to place a computer in a central area, rather than in the child’s room.

In addition, MySpace and Facebook present new opportunities for parent-child child communication and parental supervision. Once a young person posts a MySpace or Facebook page, their lives are public and open, not kept hidden away in a secret diary. If a parent is able to access their child’s page, he or she can use it as a means to interact and learn more about the child. For example, if the teenager is open to allowing the parent to be a “friend,” parents can join their teenager’s network and monitor their communication, just as other friends do. In order to become a teenager’s “friend,” a parent will need to create his or her own social networking site page; doing so may turn out to be a means to understand the nature of this communication tool. Ideally, parents should be able to discuss with their children the positive and negative influences of the site, as well as what is appropriate for “public” consumption and what is inappropriate and should be kept private and offline. For example, an adolescent may not understand that something posted online can be accessed by future employers, college recruiters and others.

Threats Online

Cyber-bullying may appear especially frightening to parents because it involves communication technologies with which they are unfamiliar. Research has found that cyberspace may not function as a separate risky environment but rather as an extension of the school grounds (9). For example, in today’s world, a teenager who is bullied at school can also be bullied at home, while on the computer. In fact, a majority of adolescents who experience cyber-bullying know the perpetrator from their offline world. These scientists also found that ninety percent of children do not tell an adult about their experience with cyber-bullying primarily because of fear of parental restrictions.

One useful feature of social networking sites is that if a teenager is feeling harassed by someone, they can choose to stop further communication from that person by blocking screen names. Juvonen and Gross found that many adolescents do not use such procedures to protect themselves, perhaps because they are unaware that they are available (9). In addition, privacy measures have given adolescent users a great deal of control over who views their profiles. Recently, MySpace has restricted the ability of users over the age of 18 to become friends with younger users (10). More safety measures such as these are being added all of the time.

Benefits Online

The Internet is not all about risks. It contains potential benefits as well. Research shows that the internet can provide social compensation in that a socially awkward adolescent may feel more comfortable communicating on-line and in writing than in person, and indeed may gain positive self esteem from this type of communication (1). Through the Internet, teens may also develop a community of mutual support for an unusual and potentially tragic situation such as being afflicted with cancer (5). Adolescents can also use teen health and sexuality bulletin boards to get information on topics that can be too embarrassing to discuss with parents, physicians, or even friends (11).

Let us end by putting the Internet and adolescence in a larger perspective. Human beings evolved for face-to-face communication. The presence of another person in the flesh triggers important human emotions such as empathy. We may be reducing such emotions in developing human beings by reducing face-to-face communication and augmenting electronic communication. At the same time, we all recognize that adolescents need a social life. To the extent that they have restricted access to peers in in-person situations, they will compensate using electronic means. Because of this need for a social life and the unique functions of face-to-face communication, it is important that parents take steps to ensure that their teens have plenty of opportunity for face-to-face interaction with their peers.

On the other hand, and equally important, electronic communication often enhances relations with peers while undermining family rituals and establishing intergenerational boundaries (12). Parents therefore need to make efforts to maximize family activities in order to expand their own influence through positive means. The positive influences of parents on adolescent development can take place only when parents spend time with their adolescent children.

The preceding makes it clear that there are both risks and benefits when adolescents live their lives through electronic communication, a trend that has peaked with the advent of social networking sites.

Parents must act to remain the key influence in children’s lives by providing opportunities to socialize with peers in constructive ways and by organizing enjoyable family activities.
By educating themselves about these new forms of communication, parents can apply appropriate rules and restrictions to adolescent’s use of the technology; however, desired results depend on combining these behaviors with parental warmth and involvement.
Parents may also be able to use the technology to enhance communication with their children for the benefit of their adolescent children’s development and family life.

References

Gross, E.F. (2004). Adolescent internet use: What we expect, what teens report. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 25 (6),633-649.
Subrahmanyam, K., Smahel, D., & Greenfield, P. M. (2006). Connecting developmental processes to the internet: Identity presentation and sexual exploration in online teen chatrooms. Developmental Psychology, 42, 395-406
Manago, A. M., Graham M. B., Greenfield, P. M., & Salimkhan, G. (2008). Self presentation and gender on MySpace. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 29, 446- 458.
Boyd, D. M., & Ellison, N. B. (2007), Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13 (1), 210-230.
Suzuki, L. K., & Beale, I., L. (2006). Personal web home pages of adolescents with cancer: Self-presentation, information dissemination, and interpersonal connection. Journal of Pediatric Oncology Nursing, Vol 23, No 3., 152 – 163.
Subrahmanyam, K., Reich, S., Waechter, N., & Espinoza, G.(2008), On-line and off-line social networks: Use of social networking sites by emerging adults. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 29 (6), 420-433.
Rosen, L. D., Cheever, N. A., and Carrier, L. M.(2008), The association of parental style and parental limit setting and adolescent, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 29 (6) 459-471.
Greenfield, P. M. (2004). Inadvertent exposure to pornography on the Internet: Implications of peer-to-peer file sharing networks for child development and families. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 29. (6), p. 417-419.
Juvonen, J., Gross, E.F. (2008). Extending the school grounds? Bullying Experiences in cyber space, Journal of School Health, 78 (9), 496-505.
Subrahmanyam, K. & Greenfield, P. G. (2008), Virtual worlds in development: Implications of social networking sites. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 29. (6), p. 417-419.
Suzuki, L. K., & Calzo, J. P. (2004). The search for peer advice in cyberspace: An examination of online teen bulletin boards about health and sexuality. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 5, 685-698. (pp. 219-234). New York: Oxford University Press
Ling, R. & Yttri, B. (2006), Control, Emancipation and Status, the mobile phone is teens’ parental and peer relationships. In R. E. Kraut, M. Brynin, & S. Kiesler (Eds.), Computers, phones, and the Internet: domesticating information technology

Yalda T. Uhls and Patricia M. Greenfield, Department of Psychology, UCLA, Children’s Digital Media Center, Los Angeles, yaldatuhls@gmail.com, greenfield@psych.ucla.edu. For more information, please visit The Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles at http://www.cdmc.ucla.edu.

Pornography and Teens from iKeep Safe.com

2011-11-02T14:17:00.000-07:00

Pornography

Parents should be concerned about their children’s exposure to obscene content online. As Dr. Michael Rich, Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Associate Professor of Society, Human Development, and Health at Harvard School of Public Health, points out:

“Pornography has many many different effects, but the central one that exists regardless of age– at its base, pornography commodifies the sexual act. [Pornography] turns something that is intimate, human communication and intimate connection with another human into something which can be bought and sold” [1].

Studies show that young men repeatedly exposed to pornography are more likely to objectify women, and young women who view pornography are more likely to self-objectify and tolerate sexual harassment from men [2].Some children may seek out sexually explicit content online out of curiosity, but accidental exposure is also common. One national survey found that 25% of its participants (ages 10 to 17) had experienced unwanted online exposure to pornography in the past year (3).
Parents who keep current, keep communicating, and keep checking can help children understand why pornography is harmful and know what to do when obscene content is encountered.

Keep Current
Be aware of the different ways the internet can be accessed in your home. Many parents are aware of how to limit and filter the home computer or laptop, but the internet can also be accessed through a cell phone, a gaming system, or the “help function” button on any computer program. Install filters on all kinds of connected technology (computer, cell phone, game consoles). A variety of filters can be purchased commercially. K9 Web Protection is a free filter designed for Windows and Mac computers. Family Shield is a free filter service which has options for game consoles. For cell phones, contact your service provider to discuss options for filtering or limiting internet access.
Keep computers and other connected technology consoles in public areas of the house where a parent can monitor the content being accessed or viewed.

Keep Communicating
Filters help, but they don’t prevent all contact with inappropriate content. Discuss with your children why you use filters and monitoring software. The discussion will set a benchmark for your family standards and help your children understand what you expect. In an age-appropriate, but open manner, discuss with your children the reasons obscene content is dangerous for them.

Have your children help keep the computer safe from inappropriate content– children can help you locate the internet access points in your home. Always encourage them to let you know if they discover a problem.
Determine an action plan for encounters with inappropriate content (both in the home and out of the home). For example: turn off the screen and tell an adult, or call for a ride home. Practice the action plan in family meetings or informal discussions.

Keep Checking
Make sure your children know you will keep checking all connected devices including cell phones. Help them understand the internet is a public forum and never completely private. Review internet histories regularly. Check text messages on cell phones.

On a regular basis, discuss the risks of viewing obscene content. In this way, you can allow for children to feel safe discussing the topic and make appropriate adjustments to filtering systems.

References
1. iKeepSafe Coalition. (n.d.). Dr. Michael Rich—Porn Commodifies Sex [Video]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ercmw6jNHU&feature=player_embedded#!
2. Flood, M. (2009, November 2). The Harms of Pornography Exposure Among Children and Young People. Child Abuse Review, 18. Retrieved from http://www.xyonline.net/sites/default/files/Flood,%20The%20harms%20of%20pornography%20exposure%2009.pdf

Get Unplugged! Outdoor Recreation Program for Tech Addicted Kids/Teens

2011-11-01T14:49:00.000-07:00

Outdoor-Recreational Activities for “Tech” Dependent/Addicted Kids and Teens

Christopher Mulligan LCSW is now offering a therapeutic program designed to help children and teens break the destructive cycle of compulsive internet and video gaming use. Children and teens will participate in a variety of outdoor activities that will improve physical conditioning, develop new recreational skills, and connect members to our natural surroundings. Rather than focus strictly on decreasing or restricting access to technology our program is intended to promote motivation to live a healthy and balanced life.

In order to create new and adaptive behaviors “tech” dependent/addicted children and teens must get “unplugged” from their home environment. Participating in outdoor recreational activities is the most effective way to help technology dependent/addicted children and teens develop an awareness of how technology is limiting the quality of their lives.

By engaging in recreational activities that involve outdoor exercise, physical competence and teamwork children and teens will develop social skills, problem solving skills as well an expanded range of recreational interest. By creating these changes group members will learn the benefits of “plugging in” to a non-technological dependent life style. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation the average child/teen is spending 7.35 hours per day engaged with some type of technology. When “switch-tasking” is included (using more than one tech device at the same time) this number jumps to an incredible 10.50 hours! These numbers are creating a ever expanding group pf children and teens who are suffering serious social, biological, and emotional consequences.

Prior to the start of each group session there will be a group check-in where therapists will facilitate introductions, allow for the exploration of each person’s history including what brings them to the program, and set the stage for the activities of the day.

Therapists will review and emphasize the importance of the safety of members and discuss how communication, trust, focus, perseverance, resilience and accountability factor into the activities chosen for that group. Throughout the group therapists will supervise and process individual and group dynamics and connect these dynamics to “tech” dependence and addiction. After the completion of the group activities therapists check-in with the group and review reflections and lessons from the day.

SAMPLE ACTIVITIES

Activity 1: Day Hike

Activity 2: Bike Ride

Activity 3: Ocean swimming/boogie boarding

Activity 4: Park Day (Capture the flag/kick ball/hand ball)

Activity 5: Park Day (Relay races/Tag medley)

Activity 6: Park Day (Water fun – water balloons, water guns, etc.)

Activity 7: Park Day (Nerf Base Ball/Nerf football)

Activity 8: Introduction to core strength (Balance ball, free weights, stretching, etc.)

Activity 9: Ropes course

Activity 10: Two night camping trip

Activity 11: Introduction to rock climbing

Activity 12: Introduction to rappelling

Activity 13: Fresh water fishing

Activity 14: Horseback riding

HOW IT WORKS

This program meets for 16 Saturdays between 12pm and 4pm. Each week we will engage in a different outdoor activity – building fitness, physical skills, team work AND MOST OF ALL POSITIVE MEMORIES OF NON TECHNOLOGICAL RECREATION.

Visit our blog: www.cybersolutionstoday.blogspot.com.

For more information, contact Christopher Mulligan LCSW at 310/287-1640 or email groupworkswest@aol.com.

Internet gambling in teens!

2011-10-31T08:06:00.001-07:00

From Dr. Kimberly Young's blog:

The Dangers of Internet Gambling among Teenagers

Internet Gambling has become an increasingly popular form of gaming. Through online web sites, users can gamble through interactive television and mobile phones. The convenience of 24-hour access, the ease of setting up an online account and the variety of sites from traditional betting, to casino gambling, to lotteries - makes Internet gambling very appealing.

Individuals who start experiencing a problem with Internet gambling become preoccupied with gambling creating a disruption in their personal, family, and social aspects of their lives. Studies found that teen-aged Internet gamblers were more likely to have a serious gambling than other gamblers. Teen-aged Internet gamblers were also more likely to suffer from health and emotional problems such as substance abuse, circulatory disease, depression, and risky sexual behaviors. According to the National Gambling Impact Commission, young children and teenagers are at the greatest risk to develop a problem with Internet gambling. They estimated that 16-24 year old males comprise 4% of Internet gamblers and 11-18 year old males comprise 4-7% of Internet gamblers, a significant increase with advent of online casinos (www.ncalg.org).

Brad, a 19-year old math major at the University of Minnesota lost his scholarship and had to resign from school because of his addiction to online gambling. “I didn’t start out thinking I would get so hooked,” he explained. “I started playing Texas Hold ‘Em after watching a poker show on TV. It was just something I did for fun. Then, I started staying up late, missing classes, spending tons of money; all my time was spent playing the game. It was more than winning and losing money. To be a good player, you’ve got to be smart and I liked the intellectual challenge and competitiveness of the game.”

Brad’s mother became concerned when she discovered Brad’s falling grades.

“I knew it was about the computer,” she said. “But no one seemed to believe me. A counselor at his school told me that it was just a phase but this was more than just a phase.” Parents and partners are usually the first to notice a loved one’s online gambling habit and the range of behaviors is similar to those for any type of gambling addiction:

Showing increased excitement when going online to find new gambling spots;
Rearranging schedules to permit more time for online gambling activities;
Feeling that a change in online gambling activities will bring good luck and subsequently increasing the size of their bets;
Chasing lost bets to try to catch up;
Placing larger bets and betting more frequently;
Boasting about winning and minimizing losses.
Going online to gamble when faced with a crisis or a stressful situation.

For the addict, these symptoms also result in changes in the person’s personality and routine behaviors. Suddenly there are unexplained absences from work, home, or other responsibilities. The addict becomes secretive, conceals or attempts to conceal how his or her time is spent at the computer, and outright lies about the real nature of his or her computer activity. Often, the gambling addict experiences mood swings, showing extreme highs when they win and extreme lows when they lose. Values go by the wayside and many violate their own principles. They begin to hide money, make secret loans, or make unusual, sporadic, or unexplained withdrawals from family bank accounts. Suddenly they find themselves capable of or actually stealing money from friends and family—then lying about it—in order to bet more, pay off debts, or recoup losses.

Surfing porn at work?

2011-10-30T23:21:00.000-07:00

Surfing porn still popular at work

Lauren La Rose

Toronto— The Canadian Press

Published Wednesday, May. 26, 2010 4:15PM EDT

In a relationship with pornography that spanned three decades, Michael Leahy said it was in the final five years that his use of the material went beyond recreational — it became an obsession.
At the height of his addiction, Leahy worked out of a cubicle for a computer company in Atlanta, and accessed porn online for an hour or two a day. As a company salesman who was often on the road, Leahy said that tally could reach as many as eight hours in a day.
“Of all the places where I acted out sexually in inappropriate ways, I did it more often at work than any place else,” said Leahy, 52, a recovering sex addict, founder and executive director of BraveHearts and author of “Porn Nation” and “Porn@Work.”
“Work was a safe place for me in essence because my wife at the time, she was at home with our children, and home wasn't a safe place, and what other choices do you have at that time?”
The Center for Internet Addiction Recovery says estimates suggest one in five Internet addicts are engaged in some form of online sexual activity, primarily viewing porn and/or engaging in cybersex. Statistics have also shown 70 per cent of all Internet porn traffic takes place during the 9-to-5 workday.
A 52-year-old employee with Ontario's Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services was arrested and charged last week after child pornography images were found on his work computer.

If you're serious about keeping your job, you've got your breaks, your lunch, you've got your own BlackBerry. Get an iPhone and do what you want to do on your time. Fiorella Callocchia, a certified management consultant

And south of the border, an investigation of employees with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission found senior agency staffers were spending hours surfing pornographic websites.
In one case, a senior attorney spent up to eight hours daily looking at and downloading porn, burning files to CDs or DVDs when he ran out of hard drive space. In another, an accountant was blocked more than 16,000 times in a month from visiting websites classified as “sex” or “pornography.”
In an era where many employers are cracking down on personal use of office computers for non-work related activity, why would employees run the risk of trying to access explicit material using company resources — and on-the-job time?
“I think that people perhaps think they can get away with it,” said Penny Lawson, manager of the Sexual Addiction Treatment Program at Bellwood Health Services in Toronto, which specializes in treatment of addiction and mental health problems.
“Not everybody who accesses porn at work has a sexual addiction. But certainly someone with a sexual addiction, the risk of getting caught increases the excitement around it.”
While there are many types of behaviour a sex addict will engage in, a very large proportion of them use Internet porn and masturbation as a form of excitement, Lawson said.
“It's a big part of it for the people we see,” she said. “Availability is one of the criteria that makes a fertile ground for addiction to develop.”
Lawson said she has also heard from addicts that even if there are filters and blocks to sexually explicit material, those who are very tech-savvy can get around them to access porn.
Marco Bonanni of Optrics Engineering, a diamond partner of Barracuda Networks, which specializes in e-mail and web security, said workers should be aware everything they're doing is marked and logged — even things they might think are innocent.
“The equipment that most organizations install nowadays have months and months of logged data and information about every single message that goes in and out of the company, or every single URL or website that's been visited,” he said from Edmonton.
What's more, some filters are set or configured to display a message notifying users that a particular website they're trying to visit has been blocked.
“Even though it is blocked, it still logs the fact that they attempted to go to it,” he said.
In most cases, Bonanni said companies are trying to protect themselves against virus infection, but in some instances they're looking for something specifically to prevent abuse.
Amid the vast amount of sexually explicit content available online, one of the world's most famous men's magazines seems to be aiming its target in a slightly different direction with what's being billed as a “safe-for-work website.”
In a brief statement sent to The Canadian Press, Playboy virtually echoed the teaser posted on The Smoking Jacket, saying that the site “brings you everything you love about men's entertainment and the Internet, minus the stuff that'll get you into hot water at the office!” Playboy says the site is scheduled to launch in the coming months.
Fiorella Callocchia, a certified management consultant and president of HR Impact in Mississauga, Ont., said most of her clients have a very strict policy on what can and can't be done on office computers.
“If they want to check their Hotmail, or they want to check their Gmail... or they want to quickly go on eBay or something, there's a little bit of give and take. But in terms of any sites that are questionable, it's an absolute no-no in most companies,” she said.
Callocchia said companies need to be clear about the appropriate use of technology. Workers should find out about policies with respect to use of the Internet and err on the side of caution, she said.
“Don't give the company a reason to fire you. Don't give them a reason not to trust you,” Callocchia said. “If you're serious about keeping your job, you've got your breaks, your lunch, you've got your own BlackBerry. Get an iPhone and do what you want to do on your time.”
Ultimately, Callocchia said companies have the right to monitor the system and do so without their employees' knowledge, as it is their brand and reputation that's at stake.
“When you hurt a company's brand, you're hurting your own employability. You're hurting your own potential security,” she said. “Whether you steal from a company whether it's time or whether it's supplies or whether it's somebody's lunch in the fridge, you're hurting the organization. And it's not just the nameless, faceless few. Other people's jobs are at risk too. And I think we've got to start holding managers accountable for communicating this kind of stuff to people.”
Leahy said responsibility lies with both sides: workers need to be active in seeking help, and companies should be proactive by adding assistance for sex addiction and recovery among things listed as employee benefits.
“We need to be able to go to those employees and say, `Listen, you need help with this. If you do, we'll hold your position, help you get the help you need. But right now, the prevailing winds say `One strike and you're out,“’ he said.
“Organizations are scared to death of sexual harassment lawsuits and hostile workplace environment lawsuits that this kind of unacceptable sexual behaviour in the office can create.”
Firing a worker using online porn who may be grappling with a sexual addiction won't solve the problem but simply result in them popping up somewhere else in the labour supply chain, Leahy said.
“They're going to work for a competitor or a customer or a supplier. They're not going away,” he said.
“And what's really the issue here is we as a society have really created this thing — this compulsive, addictive behaviour because we're creating media and messages that are more sexualized and more compelling. We're trying to draw eyeballs to our computer screens or the TV programs or what have you, and a good ad or a good promotional piece has a lot of alluring sexual content in it.”
“There's a percentage of this population that has not been able to learn how to handle that, and that's where the problems are coming up.”

Facebook use correlates to larger brain regions, study shows!

2011-10-30T23:17:00.001-07:00

Biology | 19.10.2011

Facebook use correlates to larger brain regions, study shows

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Facebook has more than 800 million active users worldwide

Scientists have found a correlation between parts of the brain related to social perception and a person's number of Facebook friends. The study is part of a set of studies examining how the brain and Internet interact.

In a study involving 125 British university students who were subjected to an MRI brain scan, the ones with more Facebook friends showed that they have a higher volume of brain matter in the amygdala, the right superior temporal sulcus, the left middle temporal gyrus and the right entorhinal cortex. The amygdala is associated with emotion, while the other regions tend to be associated with interpreting body language and social perception.

The British scientists, writing in a study published Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, cautioned that Facebook does not necessarily make parts of the brain bigger.

"There had to be a simple relationship between positivity and the number of friends on Facebook," said Ryota Kanai, a researcher at the University College, London, who was the study's lead author. "We expected some sort of relationship, but we were surprised that there was such a strong correlation."

New form of interaction

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Ryota Kanai observed a relationship between the size of certain areas of the brain and number of Facebook friends

Kanai also told Deutsche Welle that Facebook and other social networks are inherently different than previous types of interactive websites, as they connect real-life interactions with virtual ones.

"There's something interesting about Facebook, which is that most of the young students know the people that they're connected to," he said. "They use Facebook as a way to maintain contact with people they know in real life. In that sense it's different than old ways of using the Internet."

However, Kanai emphasized that this study merely showed a relationship, and not necessarily a causal one - research does not show, at least for the time being, that having more Facebook friends enhances the size of these sections of the brain.

A hot research area

The relationship between the Internet and the brain has been a growing area of research around the globe.

Work published by a team of Chinese researchers in June 2011 found that "long-term Internet addiction would result in brain structural alterations." Three years ago, an article in the American magazine, The Atlantic, asked: "Is Google making us Stupid?"

Neurologists said they are intrigued by the new findings.

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Facebook use has been steadily growing worldwide

"I think it's very exciting, it's an intriguing observation," said Heidi Johansen-Berg, a reader in clinical neurology at the University of Oxford, who was not part of the study.

However, she also cautioned that this study would need to be expanded beyond Facebook-using university students.

"One way, which is how it's intuitively interpreted is the fact that you have this extensive social network that has altered your brain," she told Deutsche Welle. "Does it reflect your sociability or the fact that you're open to new media? Those are other factors why you behave in that way. Are virtual networks tapping into the same or different brain systems than real-life friends?"

Kanai said his research would continue to work in this direction as the Internet becomes ever-more pervasive in modern society.

"One of the important questions is the causation: we want to know how Facebook, or the Internet in general, has an impact in our brain?" he said. "Ideally we want to track how the brain changes as people use Facebook. We want to find people who haven't used the Internet and give them the Internet and see how the brain changes."

Author: Cyrus Farivar

Editor: Sean Sinico

8 Signs You May Need Help for Problematic Technology Use

2011-10-24T07:43:00.000-07:00

8 Signs You May Need Help for Problematic Technology Use

From: reSTART WEBSITE'

Posted in Gaming

8 Signs you may need Help for Problematic Technology use

Your technology use may be out of balance if:

You'd rather spend time interfacing with technology (e.g., playing games, using the Internet, text messaging, shopping online, or social networking, etc.) rather than pursuing other activities or responsibilities in life.
When you're asked to stop playing or using technology, you are more concerned about letting down your online friends, than letting down those closest to you.
You find creative ways to conceal, lie about, or hide your use from others--like getting up when others have gone to bed so you can continue playing without detection.
Shortly after arising each day, one of the first things you do is get online, start playing, or check your messages.
You engage with technology as a way of avoiding conflict and the negative consequences you might be experiencing as a result of your use.
You previously found video gaming and technology use exciting and fun. Now you continue to play, but it's not as challenging and rewarding as it once was.
People in your life are constantly nagging you about the amount of time you spend gaming, or using the computer, cell phone, or social networking.
Regardless of the consequences, you tell yourself, and others that your use is a "lifestyle" choice.

Most problematic technology users deny their level of use is an issue. In fact, when confronted with the problems associated with excessive use, users continue to play, or engage with technology even in the face of academic dismissal, loss of significant relationships, or lack of employment, for example.

Studies show that between 8-10% of technology users are in need of treatment for problematic use.

It's also likely that most of your friends are gamers, or those closest to you use the computer for school or work. Technology use isn't the problem. Technology devices are simply delivery mechanisms-- like a syringe for heroin addicts. What is the problem, for some people, is the intermittent and reinforcing delivery system which stimulates, and intermittently reinforces brain neurochemistry. This process is highly addictive for certain individuals. Like other addictions, the brain may grow dependent on the dopamine rich and pleasurable activities the Internet has to offer. Real life may seem less rewarding.
Heavy media consumption may interfere with academic, work and family life. It's hard to maintain balance when the brain is focused on the rewarding aspects of technology use at the exclusion of other necessary aspects of life.
If these and other issues have been occurring for 3 months or longer, it may be more difficult to stop on your own without help. While unplugging for a period of time is always an option, it may be easier to control or moderate your use with support.
If the thought of changing your pattern of use seems daunting, or if you've been experiencing symptoms of anxiety or depression unrelated to your use, you may need professional help. Reach out to those closest to you and talk to them about your concerns. Oftentimes, the people closest to you already know you have a problem with your use and may be willing to assist you in finding ways to balance your technology consumption.

Stats and Facts: Cyber-Bullying

2011-10-23T09:08:00.001-07:00

From: DoSomething.org

11 Facts About Cyber Bullying

Nearly 42% of kids have been bullied online and almost one in four have had it happen more than once.
Among this percentage, being ignored and disrespected were the most common forms of cyber bullying.
Nine out of ten middle school students have had their feelings hurt online.
About 75% have visited a Web site bashing another student.
Four out of ten middle school students have had their password(s) stolen and changed by a bully who then locked them out of their own account or sent communications posing as them.
About 21% of kids have received mean or threatening e-mails.
The psychological and emotional outcomes of cyber bullying are similar to real-life bullying outcomes, except for the reality that with cyber bullying there is often no escape. School ends at 3 p.m., while the Internet is available all the time.
The primary cyber bullying location where victimizing occurs, at 56%, is in chat rooms.
Girls are about twice as likely as boys to be victims and perpetrators of cyber bullying.
About 58% of kids admit someone has said mean or hurtful things to them online. More than four out of ten say it has happened more than once.
Cyber bullying has increased in recent years. In a national survey of 10-17 year olds, twice as many children indicated they had been victims and perpetrators.

Sources:

Stop Cyber Bullying

Know to Love

New York State School Counselor Association

National Crime Prevention Council

New App To Track Teen Online Activity

2011-10-19T19:13:00.000-07:00

New App Allows Parents Detailed View of Their Child’s Sex-Related Facebook Activity

A new computer monitoring tool is allowing parents to view more details than ever when it comes to their children’s Facebook accounts. In some cases, parents are finding shocking sex-related content.
The technology is part of EyeGuardian app, a program developed by ImageVision, based in Texas. One employee shared her story in a local KDAF-TV 33 News report, saying that she was stunned to see her teens’ conversations in detail, especially the ones that revealed what the monitoring system deemed "suspicious."
EyeGuardian can bypass a person’s privacy rules on Facebook and search for sexually themed words, pictures and more, using specialized technology. It can place conversations involving these subjects into a one-page document a parent can view.
An addition to the app will be available soon, allowing parents to receive an alert when something may require attention, straight to a parent’s mobile phone.
The technology may also help alert parents to conversations that involve bullying or sexting, and can also be used by law enforcement to view Facebook conversations. Parents must first log in to EyeGuardian to allow police to access a child’s conversations.
To install EyeGuardian on Facebook, the person holding the account has to give their permission. Developers of EyeGuardian hope the software will not only prevent teens from becoming involved in cybersex activities, but will get parents talking with their children about the dangers of sexting and cybersex.

Talking to Teens About Sexuality from Sexual Recovery Institute

2011-10-19T18:59:00.000-07:00

Tips for Encouraging Healthy Views of Human Sexuality

Young adults are reporting having problems with sex, love, and porn addiction in greater numbers than ever before. Though SRI does not treat minors, for the first time we are receiving calls and emails for help and advice from teens as young as 14. We also have noted a marked increase in patients coming to treatment who are 18-25 years old. As many young people still live at home, we are hearing from concerned parents as well. Television shows like Celebrity Sex Rehab on VH-1 and the highly publicized sexual challenges of national figures like Tiger Woods are likely bringing this issue to the attention of a younger generation. While it may be alarming to consider that your child/teen is struggling with problems with porn and sex, they greatly need parental support and acceptance to talk about these issues, be taken seriously and offered treatment, if that type of help is indicated.
While there are myriad factors involved in why young adults are seeking treatment, what differentiates this generation from previous ones is that they were raised entirely in the Digital Age and probably have had greater exposure to pornography (via the Internet) than any other generation. Internet pornography does NOT, in our opinion, constitute a healthy sex education. With the exception of educational websites aimed at teens such as Scarleteen.com, most of the sexual content your teen and young adult views online doesn’t present a balanced view of human sexuality.
Internet porn presents a view of sexuality stripped of the context of true intimacy, closeness, and the health and well being of oneself and partner. If this is your child’s sole sex education, it will be inaccurate and inadequate. Porn presents fantasy that does not take into account the whole person engaged in these sex acts, their stories, their feelings, their relationships; it encourages the viewer to see the human beings involved as objects. Teenagers, who repeatedly turn to sexual content as a means of self-nurturing, distraction and comfort can become addicted to that behavior – and without intervention, carry the problem into adult life.
Tips for Encouraging Healthy Views of Human Sexuality:
*Talk to your children in age-appropriate ways about sexuality. Avoid being invasive and giving too much detail they are not asking for.
*Refrain from shaming your children when they have questions about sex and relationships. If you are uncomfortable talking about the “birds and the bees” with your kids, give them a book that you have read first that presents accurate information. We like Lynda Maderas’ “What’s Happening to My Body?” series for teens. If you don’t know the answers to their questions, do your own research.
*Model self-esteem, self-respect, and a healthy relationship for your kids. Children learn the most from their primary caregivers; you have more influence than you might thing.
*Install a filter on all computers at home, which will block adult content. Make sure it is password protected.
*If your child has viewed Internet pornography and asks you about it, take the time to talk to them about what they’ve seen and put it into context. Do not shame them for having looked or for their curiosity; next time, they may not come to you for help and advice.
*When your children start dating, encourage them to gradually get to know and trust someone before contemplating being physical with them. Get to know the parents of anyone your child is dating.
*Whatever your religion, morals, or ethics are regarding teen sexuality, teens who don’t have responsible adults to educate them about safer sex and birth control will often just turn to their peers and often be misinformed, or worse, not take any precautions against pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) at all.
If you sense that your teen and young adult is already struggling with sex, porn and relationships, or even asks you for help, it is important to connect them with appropriate treatment (a counselor certified in sex addiction treatment is best, see www.iitap.com or www.sash.net for referrals in your area). Because sex addiction is often misunderstood or mysterious, the signs might be overlooked.
Signs Your Teen/Young Adult May Need Evaluation or Treatment:
*A pattern of short, unstable relationships that often overlap (seen more often in girls).
*Falling “in love” often but the relationships last three months or less.
*Complete avoidance of relationships and/or social interaction.
*Refusal to allow a parent to see the history of what has been viewed online or on a smart/cell phone.
*Late nights in front of the computer, or being shut up in a bedroom for many hours at a time.
*Persistent irritability and a tendency to blame others.
*A pattern of dishonesty when confronted about their sexual behavior.
*Over organized bookmarking or filing of pornographic images.
*Avoiding bringing dates or boyfriends/girlfriends home to meet family.
*Shame and anger exhibited when asked about dating life.
*Overly seductive and manipulative behavior.
*Preoccupation with sexual subjects and language.
*Lack of appropriate physical and emotional boundaries.
While some of the examples above can be typical of ‘teen behavior,’ others also apply to a variety of other disorders, including sexual abuse. If three or more of the above are answered in the positive there is likely some cause for concerns. It is essential to calmly and openly talk over your concerns with your teen/young adult and consider a referral to an appropriate therapist for an assessment and evaluation if this remains unresolved.

Is Video Gaming Really an Addiction?

2011-10-16T08:53:00.000-07:00

Is Video Gaming Really an Addiction?

By Elizabeth Hartney, About.com Guide

Updated January 08, 2011

Case For Addiction

Several research studies have been conducted that indicate video game addiction is real in around 10% of gamers who meet criteria for video game addiction. Grüsser et al (2007) found that pathological gamers differed from regular gamers in terms of daily time spent playing, and had higher "expected relief of withdrawal symptoms when gaming," and higher "craving due to the expectation of a positive outcome of gaming." These are all characteristics which mirror those of of substance dependence.
Skoric et al (2009) showed that video game addiction is independent of simply how much time is spent playing, and how engaged children are with the game. In their study, addiction tendencies were negatively related to scholastic performance, while no such relationship was found for either time spent playing games or for video game engagement. A similar pattern of video game addiction being negatively related to scholastic performance was previously found in a separate study by Chiu et al (2004).

Charlton's (2002) factor analysis provided support for computer addiction as a unique concept. This research demonstrated the importance of recognizing the specific characteristics of computer addiction, rather than simply adapting measures of pathological gambling, which are likely to overestimate the occurrence of computer addiction.

Recognition of video game addiction would allow support services to be integrated into community addiction settings, and specific training to be provided to staff. This is particularly important given the high incidence of concurrent disorders among those with video game addiction.

Case Against

Video game playing may have several advantages. Proficiency in video games can develop the self esteem of the player. It can develop eye-hand coordination, and can have other educational features. More sophisticated games can help players to develop other skills, and recent developments have built in aspects of physical exercise -- although this may have limited appeal to gamers.
The reality of popular culture is that we are more and more dependent on technology. A generation ago, computers were complicated and difficult to use, but modern computers are more user-friendly, and are relatively easy and enjoyable for the majority of people to use. Video games allow people to have positive experiences of using computers, that can provide transferable skills for using computers for a variety of purposes.

Bearing in mind the potential positive effects of video game playing, to label the activity an addiction without sufficient evidence and interpretive guidelines about what constitutes addiction (as opposed to benign or positive game playing) could deter many children and their parents who could possibly benefit from video games. This would be a mistake.

There is wide variation in video games, and although some appear to have harmful effects, particularly through the promotion of violence and other anti-social behaviors, this is a function of the content of specific games, rather than a characteristic of video games per se. Video games as a medium have equal potential to develop positive social skills, or to provide benign forms of entertainment -- although these may not be as easily marketable to kids.

As with other addictions, there is a risk that a label like video game addiction could be used too liberally, without paying attention to other concurrent or underlying conditions, such as attentional problems, autism spectrum disorders, depression and anxiety disorders. These conditions have different treatments which might more effectively help the excessive game player.
And video game addiction is vulnerable to the same criticism that all behavioral addictions are -- that addictions are a chemical problem resulting from the intake of addictive substances, not a pattern of behavior.

Where It Stands

The APA is not saying that video game addiction does not exist, nor that it is not addiction, but simply that they are looking at the issue and won't make a decision until the next edition of the DSM comes out in 2013.
In the same release in which they withdrew their recommendation that video game addiction be recognized, the APA expressed serious concern about the consequences of excessive video game playing in children, stating:
"Psychiatrists are concerned about the wellbeing of children who spend so much time with video games that they fail to develop friendships, get appropriate outdoor exercise or suffer in their schoolwork. Certainly a child who spends an excessive amount of time playing video games may be exposed to violence and may be at higher risks for behavioral and other health problems."
Therefore, whether or not video game addiction is acknowledged as a real addiction, or even as a mental health problem in and of itself, the APA is clear that excessive video game playing in children can be unhealthy, and can lead to other problems.
_{Sources
American Psychiatric Association, News Release: Statement of the American Psychiatric Association on "Video Game Addiction". Release No. 07-47. June 21, 2007.
American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th Edition – Text Revision), Washington DC, American Psychiatric Association. 1994.
Block, M.D., Jerald J., "Issues for DSM-V: Internet Addiction." Am J Psychiatry 165:3. 2008.
Charlton, J. P. "A factor-analytic investigation of computer addiction and engagement." British Journal of Psychology 93:329–344. 2002.
Chiu, Ed.D., S., Lee, M.A., J. & Huang, Ph.D., D. "Video Game Addiction in Children and Teenagers in Taiwan." Cyberpsychology & Behavior 7:571-581. 2004.
Entertainment Software Association. "2008 Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry." Accessed 10 Feb 2009.
Grüsser, Ph.D, S.M.., Thalemann, Ph.D., R. & Griffiths, Ph.D., M. "Excessive computer game playing: evidence for addiction and aggression?" Cyberpsychology & Behavior 10:290-292. 2007.
Khan, MD, PhD, Mohamed K. “Emotional and Behavioral Effects, Including Addictive Potential, of Video Games.” Report Of The Council On Science And Public Health. CSAPH Report 12-A-07. 2007. Accessed 10 Feb 2009.
Skoric, M., Lay Ching Teo, L. & Lijie Neo, L. "Children and Video Games: Addiction, Engagement, and Scholastic Achievement." CyberPsychology & Behavior. 12:567-572. 2009.}

Internet Addiction Linked to ADHD and Depression in Teens

2011-10-16T08:42:00.000-07:00

Risk of Internet Addiction Higher in Teens with ADHD and Depression

By Leslie Davis
Between school, work, home and cell phones, it is hard to escape the Internet. As society becomes more reliant on the World Wide Web, the risk of Internet addiction increases. For one segment of the population, that is especially true.
Children and teens who are diagnosed with one of several emotional and behavioral disorders are more likely than their peers to become addicted to the Internet, according to a recent study in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine:

Boys diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or hostility are more likely to become addicted to the Internet.
Girls diagnosed with depression or social phobia are more likely to develop an addiction to the Internet.

For children and teens with ADHD, the constant stimulation offered by the Internet (including social networking sites that are constantly updated and fast-paced video games) offers the perfect outlet. For those with depression, social phobia or hostility, the Internet has a therapeutic effect, permitting them to create their own online identity without having to function “normally” in the real world.
“If you have a child that is hyperactive, the Internet can move at their pace,” Michael Gilbert, a senior fellow at the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California, said in an Oct. 6 HealthDay News article. “If you have a child that is depressed or has social phobia, they can get in touch with other kids dealing with the same kinds of issues. They can go into artificial worlds, like ‘Second Life,’ where they can live out fantasies or take on different personas. For kids who have anger or hostility, the Internet gives them a chance to play out their aggression there.”
Internet Addiction and ADHD

Researchers from the study published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine determined that teens with significant ADHD symptoms are at high risk for becoming addicted to the Internet. The researchers say this is because of several factors:

Children and teens with ADHD are easily bored and have an aversion to delayed reward.
Internet behavior is characterized by rapid response, immediate reward and multiple windows with different activities, reducing feelings of boredom or delayed aversion.
While playing online games, striatal dopamine is released, possibly compensating for the dopamine deficit in teens with ADHD.
Children with ADHD have abnormal brain activities associated with impaired inhibition. This lack of self-control may make it difficult for them to control their Internet use, making them vulnerable to Internet addiction.

Internet Addiction and Hostility
The study indicated that male teens with significant hostility were more likely to become addicted to the Internet than those teens not characterized as hostile. For teens considered hostile, the Internet allows them to express their hostility and engage in violence through such activities as online gaming.
Because they are able to get out their aggression via the Internet, hostile teens may be more prone to spending more time online than in the real world.
Internet Addiction and Depression

Females with depression were found to have a higher risk of Internet addiction. The study’s researchers determined that this was likely because the Internet can be used to alleviate depression through social support, achievement, the pleasure of control and a virtual world in which to escape from emotional difficulties.However, too much Internet use can worsen the symptoms of depression and make depressed teens particularly vulnerable to developing an Internet addiction.

Internet Addiction and Social Phobia.

As with depression, females with social phobia are more likely to become addicted to the Internet. Researchers believe this is because the Internet can provide social support in a non-face-to-face setting, allowing teens with social phobia to feel more relaxed and engaged.
The researchers warned, however, that becoming too reliant on the Internet for social support could result in an online addiction.

What Constitutes Internet Addiction?
If your child or teen is excessively using the Internet to the detriment of grades, family relationships and emotional health, an Internet addiction may be to blame. No set definition of Internet addiction exists, but the diagnosis is being considered for inclusion in the 2012 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Any of the following may indicate an Internet addiction:

A preoccupation with the Internet
Excessive time and effort spent online
Falling asleep in school, not keeping up with assignments and worsening grades
Lying about computer or Internet use
Choosing to use the Internet rather than see friends
No longer engaging in social activities
An inability to cut back on usage
Symptoms of withdrawal (such as irritability, anxiety and boredom) when not online
An impairment of decision-making ability

Physical symptoms of an Internet addiction can include headaches, dry eyes, weight loss, neglected personal hygiene and sleep disturbances.

Treatment for Internet Addiction, Underlying Disorders
Previous reports found that anywhere between 1.4 percent and 18 percent of children and teens are addicted to the Internet. Among those teens, a large percentage likely suffers from ADHD, depression, social phobia or hostility.

If you have determined that your child or teen is addicted to the Internet, it is important to get help immediately. Doing so can also help you identify any disorders that are underlying your teen’s addiction, such as ADHD or depression. If necessary, an adolescent residential treatment center can help teens overcome both their addiction and any underlying disorder.
Don’t let the Internet take over your teen’s life. If you are worried that your teen has an Internet addiction, or undiagnosed ADHD, depression, social phobia or hostility, seek treatment today.

How does porn impact boys?

2011-10-13T17:41:00.000-07:00

How does pornography impact boys' ideas about women and relationships?

Q: Recently my daughter shared with me that the boys in her 8th grade class were looking at pornographic images on one of their phones during lunch. With so much online pornography being directed at our tween/teen boys, has there been any research done in this area, or will we not know the effects of such imagery on these boys’ brains/relationships for some time? I am wondering what impact this will have not only on our boys’ health and well-being but also on their relationships with the girls who date and marry them.
-Serious About Sex in Solana Beach, CA

A: Dear Serious,
Whether we like it or not, this scenario is neither rare nor one of “bad kids doing bad things.” Pornography is not being directed just at tween/teen boys but at all of us. It is a multibillion-dollar economic engine of the Internet, and it is easily accessible with any Web-capable device. Combine that with the rapidly increasing ownership of and facility with cell phones by school-aged children, and you have the situation you describe.

There are two issues here. The first is the effects of viewing pornography on anyone, and the second, and more important one in this age group, is its effects on youth who are forming their ideas and attitudes about sex. Research with older adolescents and young adult males has shown that exposure to pornography results in objectification of, desensitization to, and reduced empathy for women. It also shows that men who view sexually explicit films degrading to women are more dominant in their subsequent interactions with women.

Media-effects research, which addresses outcomes from violence to nutrition, has consistently shown that young people learn about the world and how to behave in it from the media they use. Research from the

Netherlands

found that the more exposure a young person has to pornography, the more realistic they think it is, which influences expectations for their own sexual behavior. Another study by the same researchers suggests that seeing sexually explicit material was associated with thinking of women as sex objects. Eighth graders are sexually curious and experientially naïve. Pornography and mainstream media representations of sex as a desirable commodity with no commitment, connection, or consequences may be their first, most powerful impressions of sex. “Friends with benefits” and other potentially unhealthy sexual attitudes and behaviors can result if these media messages are not countered.

Parents, teachers, and other adults can help reduce the potential unhealthy effects of exposure to sexual media by talking with kids about sex in a way that is clear, matter-of-fact, and without shame. Make it safe and comfortable to come to you for information. That way, if and when they encounter sexually explicit media, what they see becomes just one part of their larger understanding of sex, human relationships, and how they work in the real world. It can be difficult to know how to start these conversations, but there is advice out there that can help you figure out what to say and how to say it. Media portrayals of sexual situations can actually make these conversations easier and more effective, as research around a Friends episode dealing with condom failure demonstrated. Although unquestioned and undiscussed exposure to sexually explicit material has been associated with negative effects of children’s sexual health, you can address your child's curiosity about sex in ways that supports healthy development and the kind of understanding of sex and relationships you’d like them to have.

Enjoy your media and use them wisely,
The Mediatrician®

Cyber Wellness!

2011-10-12T20:06:00.000-07:00

Cyber Wellness...

refers to positive well-being of Internet users and a healthy cyber culture for the internet community;
involves an understanding of the risks of harmful online behaviour, an awareness of how to product oneself and others from such behaviour;
is a recognition of the power of internet to affect oneself and the community-at-large

4 values underpinning the cyberwellness vision are...

Embracing the Net & Inspiring Others - Youths adopt an attitude of using the internet to make a positive difference to others through their online activities
Aututeness - means develpoing in youths a sense of being 'street smart' when using the internet. This includes (i) developing an awareness of the dangers in cyberspace and recognising the different forms of this danger (ii) identifying and protecting youths from harmful and illegal online behaviour
Respect & Responsibility - The respect for (i) Medium - by not abusing the internet for activities such as hacking (ii) Self and others - by not surfing pornographic sites, putting up false rumours, infringing others' privacy and rights, and illegally downloading copyrighted media.
Beyond the Internet - The balance between cyberspace and the physical world. Internet to be used in moderation. If the balance is not achieved, it may lead to:

(i) Internet Addiction: Spending too much time online that family and friends are ignored and normal daily tasks are affected.
(ii) Addiction to role playing online games: (a) A feeling of an anxiety and discomfort when disconnected from the virtual world (b) Inability to limit gaming activity and to distinguish between the real world and the fantasy world.

Source: The Offline Guide for the Online Generation

Teen sexting tips

2011-10-06T10:33:00.000-07:00

Teen Sexting Tips

These tips are re-posted from our sister site, ConnectSafely.org
“Sexting” usually refers to teens sharing nude photos via cellphone, but it’s happening on other devices and the Web too. The practice can have serious legal and psychological consequences, so – teens and adults – consider these tips!
It’s illegal: Don’t take or send nude or sexually suggestive photos of yourself or anyone else. If you do, even if they’re of you or you pass along someone else’s – you could be charged with producing or distributing child pornography. If you keep them on your phone or computer you could be charged with possession. If they go to someone in another state (and that happens really easily), it’s a federal felony.
Non-legal consequences: Then there’s the emotional (and reputation) damage that can come from having intimate photos of yourself go to a friend who can become an ex-friend and send it to everyone you know. Not only can they be sent around; they can be distributed and archived online for people to search for pretty much forever.
Not just on phones. Sexting can be done on any media-sharing device or technology – including email and the Web. Teens have been convicted for child porn distribution for emailing sexually explicit photos to each other.
Many causes. In some cases, kids are responding to peer pressure in a form of cyberbullying or pressure from a boyfriend or girlfriend (they break up, and sometimes those photos get sent around out of revenge). Sometimes it’s impulsive behavior, flirting, or even blackmail. It’s always a bad idea.
Parents: Talk with your kids about sexting in a relaxed setting. Ask them what they know about it (they may not have heard the term, so “naked photo-sharing” works too). Express how you feel in a conversational, non-confrontational way. A two-way dialog can go a long way toward helping your kids understand how to minimize legal, social and reputation risks.
The bottom line: Stay alert when using digital media. People aren’t always who they seem to be, even in real life, and sometimes they change and do mean things. Critical thinking about what we upload as well as download is the best protection.

What to do
We’re not in a position to provide legal advice, but we can tell you that laws vary from state to state, each jurisdiction enforces the law differently, and the applicable laws were written before sexting was “invented.” With sexting, the same minor can be both perpetrator and victim when producing and sending photos of him or herself – a very tricky situation under current laws.
Parents:
* If your children have sent any nude pictures of themselves, make sure they stop immediately. Explain that they’re at risk of being charged with producing and distributing child pornography. If they’ve received a nude photo, make sure they haven’t sent it to anyone else.
* Either way, the next most important thing is to have a good talk. Stay calm, be supportive and learn as much as you can about the situation. For example, see if it was impulsive behavior, a teen “romance” thing, or a form of harassment.
* Consider talking with other teens and parents involved, based on what you’ve learned.
* Some experts advise that you report the photo to your local police, but consider that, while intending to protect your child, you could incriminate another – and possibly your own child. That’s why it’s usually good to talk to the kids and their parents first. If malice or criminal intent is involved, you may want to consult a lawyer, the police, or other experts on the law in your jurisdiction, but be aware of the possibility that child-pornography charges could be filed against anyone involved.
Teens:
* If a sexting photo arrives on your phone, first, do not send it to anyone else (that could be considered distribution of child pornography). Second: Talk to a parent or trusted adult. Tell them the full story so they know how to support you. And don’t freak out if that adult decides to talk with the parents of others involved – that could be the best way to keep all of you from getting into serious trouble.
* If the picture is from a friend or someone you know, then someone needs to talk to that friend so he or she knows sexting is against the law. You’re actually doing the friend a big favor because of the serious trouble that can happen if the police get involved.
* If the photos keep coming, you and a parent might have to speak with your friend’s parents, school authorities or the police.
These tips were written in April 2009, after several reported cases of teens being prosecuted for taking, distributing and possessing pictures of themselves or friends. While we are aware that such activity is inappropriate and risky, we do not feel that – in most cases – law enforcement should treat sexting as a criminal act. Except in the rare cases involving malice or criminal intent, law enforcement should play an educational role, along with parents, community leaders, school officials and other caring adults.
If you’d like to print these tips out, here’s a PDF version. Please contact admin@connectsafely.org for permission to reprint or post.

Tips for dealing with cyber bullying

2011-10-06T10:30:00.000-07:00

Tips to Stop Cyberbullying

Reposted from ConnectSafely.org
Don’t respond. If someone bullies you, remember that your reaction is usually exactly what the bully wants. It gives him or her power over you. Who wants to empower a bully?
Don’t retaliate. Getting back at the bully turns you into one and reinforces the bully’s behavior. Help avoid a whole cycle of aggression.
Save the evidence. The only good news about digital bullying is that the harassing messages can usually be captured, saved, and shown to someone who can help. You need to do this even if it’s minor stuff, in case things escalate.
Talk to a trusted adult. You deserve backup. It’s always good to involve a parent but – if you can’t – a school counselor usually knows how to help. Sometimes both are needed. If you’re really nervous about saying something, see if there’s a way to report the incident anonymously at school.
Block the bully. If the harassment’s coming in the form of instant messages, texts, or profile comments, do yourself a favor: Use preferences or privacy tools to block the person. If it’s in chat, leave the “room.”
Be civil. Even if you don’t like someone, it’s a good idea to be decent and not sink to the other person’s level. Also, research shows that gossiping about and trash talking others increases your risk of being bullied. Treat people the way you want to be treated.
Don’t be a bully. How would you feel if someone harassed you? You know the old saying about walking a mile in someone’s shoes; even a few seconds of thinking about how another person might feel can put a big damper on aggression. That’s needed in this world.
Be a friend, not a bystander. Watching or forwarding mean messages empowers bullies and hurts victims even more. If you can, tell bullies to stop or let them know harassment makes people look stupid and mean. It’s time to let bullies know their behavior is unacceptable – cruel abuse of fellow human beings. If you can’t stop the bully, at least try to help the victim and report the behavior.

For more info:* Cyberbullying & Cyberthreats: Responding to the Challenge of Online Social Aggression, Threats, and Distress, by Nancy Willard
* Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard: Preventing and Responding to Cyberbullying, by Sameer Hinduja and Justin Patchin
* Cyber Bullying: A Prevention Curriculum for Grades 3-5 and Cyber Bullying: A Prevention Curriculum for Grades 6-12, by Susan Limber, Robin Kowalski, and Patricia Agatston

Cognitive behavioral factors in PIU (problematic internet use)

2011-10-02T19:33:00.000-07:00

Computers in Human Behavior (2002)

Volume: 18, Issue: 5, Publisher: PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD, Pages: 553-575

Abstract: Scott Caplan

The paper presents results from an exploratory study that: (1) developed a theory-based measure of PIU and (2) administered the instrument to a sample of undergraduate students to assess the associations among PIU and several psychosocial variables including, depression, self-esteem, loneliness, and shyness. A new instrument, the Generalized Problematic Internet Use Scale (GPIUS) was designed to operationalize Davis's Computers in Human Behavior, 17 (2001), 187 theoretical construct of generalized PIU. The GPIUS and several measures of psychosocial well-being were administered to 386 undergraduate students. Results from this preliminary study indicate that the GPIUS is both reliable and valid. A factor analysis identified seven unique sub-dimensions of the GPIUS, including: mood alteration, perceived social benefits available online, negative outcomes associated with Internet use, compulsive Internet use, excessive amounts of time spent online, withdrawal symptoms when away from the Internet, and perceived social control available online. All GPIUS subscales were correlated with psychosocial health variables including: depression, loneliness, shyness, and self-esteem. A regression analysis identified several important psychosocial and cognitive-behavioral predictors of negative outcomes associated with generalized PIU. Results also suggest that one's preference for computer-mediated social interaction, as opposed to face-to-face interaction, plays a role in the etiology, development, and outcomes of generalized PIU. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Author-supplied keywords

1 302 831 1892 1 302 831 2958 caplan cmc computer e edu e mail address fax gpius internet addiction mediated communication pathological internet use piu problematic internet use s tel udel

One in twenty five teens addicted to the internet!

2011-09-28T07:53:00.000-07:00

1 in 25 teens addicted to Internet, study finds

Students who were problematic Internet users were more depressed, prone to fighting

One in every 25 teens had "problematic Internet use" in a new study of high school students from Connecticut. What's more, those students who reported an "irresistible urge" to be on the Internet and tension when they weren't online were more likely to be depressed and aggressive and to use drugs than their peers.However, it's not clear that the obsessive computer use was causing the depression and related behaviors.

"It's really hard to explain the link," Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, a Stanford University researcher who was not involved in the study, told Reuters Health.

"It often becomes a chicken and egg issue: are they online because they're depressed or are they depressed because they're spending inordinate amounts of time online?" explained Aboujaoude, the author of the book Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the E-Personality.
The answer to that question, in turn, is critical for whether or not exaggerated Internet use should be considered a problem in its own right.

Led by Yale University's Dr. Timothy Liu, the authors of the new study surveyed students at ten different high schools in Connecticut, asking more than 150 questions about health, risky behaviors, and impulsiveness -- including seven questions on Internet use.
Teens were asked to report if they had ever missed school or important social activities because they were surfing the Web, or if their family had expressed concern about their time online.
Specifically, Liu and his colleagues used three questions to determine if a student had "problematic Internet use." They asked students if they had ever had an "irresistible urge" to be online, if they had experienced "a growing tension or anxiety that can be relieved only by using the Internet," or if they had tried to quit or cut down on using the Internet.
Out of 3,560 students, four percent met the criteria for problematic Internet use. Asian and Hispanic students were most likely to qualify as problematic users -- although the majority of students in the study, published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, were white.
Girls were more likely to answer yes to one of questions on problematic Internet use, but more boys said they spent in excess of 20 hours a week online -- about 17 percent of boys, compared to 13 percent of girls.

Students who were problematic Internet users according to the survey also tended to be more depressed and would get into serious fights more often. And boys in that category had higher rates of smoking and drug use.However, they didn't do any worse in school based on their grades.
Liu and colleagues note that the findings can't prove a cause-and-effect relationship between problematic Internet use and depression and drug use.

They say that more research is needed to get at the causes behind different kinds of Internet use -- such as social networking and role-playing games.Preliminary evidence, Aboujaoude said, suggests that problematic Internet use shares common features of drug and alcohol abuse disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and disorders where people have trouble controlling their pleasure-seeking impulses.

Dr. Jerald Block, a psychiatrist at Oregon Health & Science University, said that to him the evidence points toward an addiction."There seems to be common pathways within the brain for addictive behaviors, of which pathological gambling is one example," he told Reuters Health. "I would say that there's sufficient data to show that pathological computer use is another example of an addictive behavior."He also suggested that because rates of computer use were based on students' responses about their own behavior, the new study might be underestimating the number of kids who actually have the problem.
"With pretty much any addiction there's a tendency to under-report" how much time you spend doing the activity, explained Block, who was not involved in the new research.
There's not a one-size-fits-all way to treat problematic Internet use, said Liu, the new study's author.
"I would support treating all the underlying conditions (such as depression) as you would treat anyone with psychiatric illness," he told Reuters Health. But, he added, "we don't really have a lot of evidence for treatment."

Block said that while it might take some time, he has "absolutely no doubt" that psychiatrists will eventually recognize problematic Internet use as its own disorder."When you start using (the computer) 30 hours a week, it becomes a container for emotion," he said. "It occupies time. The computer itself becomes a significant other, becomes a relationship."

Preschoolers: too much screen time!!

2011-09-27T18:10:00.001-07:00

Preschoolers' Physical Activity, Screen Time and Compliance with Recommendations

Hinkley, Trina; Salmon, Jo; Okely, Anthony D.; Crawford, David; Hesketh, Kylie

Published Ahead-of-Print

Abstract

Purpose: Little evidence exists about the prevalence of adequate levels of physical activity and of appropriate screen-based entertainment in preschool children. Previous studies have generally relied on small samples. This study investigates how much time preschool children spend being physically activity and engaged in screen-based entertainment. The study also reports compliance with the recently released Australian recommendations for physical activity (>=3h/d) and screen entertainment (<=1h/d) and the NASPE physical activity guidelines (>=2h/d) and AAP screen entertainment recommendations (>=2h/d) in a large sample of preschool children.
Methods: Participants were 1004 Melbourne preschool children (mean age 4.5, range 3-5 years) and their families in the Healthy Active Preschool Years (HAPPY) Study. Physical activity data were collected by accelerometry over an eight-day period. Parents reported their child's television/video/DVD viewing, computer/internet and electronic game use during a typical week. A total of 703 (70%) had sufficient accelerometry data and 935 children (93%) had useable data on time spent in screen-based entertainment.
Results: Children spent 16% (approx. 127 mins/day) of their time being physically active. Boys and younger children were more active than were girls and older children, respectively. Children spent an average of 113 minutes per day in screen-based entertainment. Virtually no children (<1%) met both the Australian recommendations and 32% met both the NASPE and AAP recommendations.
Conclusion: The majority of young children are not participating in adequate amounts of physical activity and in excessive amounts of screen-based entertainment. It is likely that physical activity may decline and screen-based entertainment increase with age. Compliance with recommendations may be further reduced. Strategies to promote physical activity and reduce screen-based entertainment in young children are required.
(C)2011The American College of Sports Medicine

Factors in lonliness and depression in cyberspace

2011-09-25T11:26:00.000-07:00

Cyberpsychology and Behavior (2007)

Volume: 10, Issue: 3, Pages: 475-477

PubMed: 17594274

Available from www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Abstract

This study investigates how disembodiment-that is, transcendence of body constraints in cyberspace-in online chat affects social psychological well-being. The results demonstrate that disembodiment is a strong predictor of increased loneliness and depression, and decreased social support. However, the amount of chat use is a positive contributor to decreased offline estrangement and depression, and increased happiness. These contrasting results suggest that online chat use is a technology for social connection used for offline connectivity, but the disembodiment motive is associated with declines in social support and psychosocial well-being. The investigation of specified motives for online interaction, personal competency, or advanced technological alternatives in interaction is suggested for future research on the effects of online interaction on offline outcomes.

Computer mediated communication: are we LESS social?

2011-09-25T11:09:00.000-07:00

The Rise and Rise of Social Networking, Could Facebook be making us Less Social?

26/04/2010 Andrew Pettigrew 28 comments

Given the huge increase in popularity of Social Networking, could sites such as Facebook be making us less social?
Today’s societies consist of both localised and distributed tribes linked by numerous advanced forms of communication that transcend both real and virtual worlds. In the last 20 years we’ve experienced a rapid evolution with many new forms of Computer-Mediated-Communication (CMC) being used for social and relational purposes (Katz, Rice, Acord, Dasgupta, & David, 2004; Kavanaugh, Reese, Reese, Carroll, & Rosson, 2005). Primarily based around the Internet, these new forms of communication include technologies such as web-pages, blogs, newsgroups, forums, bulletin boards, chat lines, Multiple User Dungeons (MUDs) and Multi-user-dungeon Object Oriented (MOOs). Much of the earliest forms of CMC socialisation were based around e-mail (Finholt & Sproull, 1990), however in the last five years its been the exponential uptake of Social Networking Services (SNS) by mainstream society, (Ofcom, 2008) that has authorities (Kirby, 2009) and academics most concerned (Heim, 1992, 2009; Rideout, Foehr, & Roberts, 2010).
In addition to the highly collaborative, participatory, interactive and some might say addictive nature of SNS, we see the making and collecting of friends as the primary focus of many sites such as Facebook. Capitalising on the fundamental desire for friendship and being part of a group or tribe, hundreds of websites such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Bebo, Hi5, and Qzone, have blossomed in the past 5 years, where hundreds of millions members religiously login and communicate on a daily basis (Snell, 2010). In addition to the huge rise in popularity and visitor numbers to SNS sites, it’s the stickiness of these sites, (the amount of time users spend on a site) that’s a major concern. Recent studies by The Nielsen Company in 2010, shows the average web-user is spends almost three times longer on Facebook than on other leading sites such as Google, e-Bay, Yahoo or Microsoft (Neilsen, 2010). Note the time spent on Facebook in the following table:-

Social networking activity can be divided into two basic groups, those who had or have real-life friends and those who don’t. Typically adults looking to establish new relationships are sometimes found on dating websites such as Matchmaker.com, RSVP.com.au, and e-Harmony.com that provide meeting places for those looking to create new online relationships they can hopefully take off-line. However it’s the increased usage rates by the mainstream populus (those who have who have off-line friends) and new found obsession with social networking websites such as Facebook that’s a major vexation and the focus of this paper (Facebook, 2010).
Let’s consider the views of late 20^th century scholars and their opinions concerning online relationships; some argued that CMC technologies promote interpersonal relationships and create opportunities for genuine connectedness and community formations (Barak & Sadovsky, 2008; Kavanaugh, et al., 2005; Parks & Floyd, 1996; Rheingold, 1993; Wellman & Gulia, 1999; Wood & Smith, 2004). Whilst others believe that on-line relationships are shallow, impersonal, and sometimes hostile and provide just an illusion of real-life society or community (Bakardjieva, 2003; Cummings, Butler, & Kraut, 2002; Heim, 1992). In addition early humanities and communications scholars conducted studies comparing CMC to face-to-face communications (Garton & Wellman, 1993) and discovered numerous social disadvantages with CMC. They argued that CMC groups had difficulty in forming a consensus of opinion (Kiesler & Sproull, 1992) and often displayed online aggression with derisive or nasty comments towards those of dissimilar opinions. CMC groups were also less likely to form agreements than face-to-face (Hiltz, Johnson, & Turoff, 1986). Even though the technologies used during these studies are now rather dated, the theories, findings and concerns of scholars and researchers from 20 years ago are still relevant today.
Compared to the primitive CMC technologies used in the 1990’s and the small percentage of active participants, today’s multimedia SNS technologies and participation rates are explosive. In 2010 we see SNS participation rates of 9 million Australians registered on Facebook alone (NeilsenWire, 2010). Each day 4.1 million Australians login to Facebook and spend considerable time socialising online (NeilsenWire, 2009). Reports showed the total amount of time spent on the Internet globally between December 2007 and December 2008 increased by 18%. However the amount of time spent on “Member Community” websites increased by 63% and in particular the amount of time spent on Facebook increased by 566% (NeilsenWire, 2009). The increase in web traffic and the sheer amount of time users were spending on Facebook (NeilsenWire, 2010; Nielsen, 2010) has reduced not only face-to-face communications it reduced traffic and time spent on other websites in countries such as Australia, United Sates, Spain, UK, France, Italy and Switzerland. Such is the popularity of sites such as Facebook, that usage rates of traditional CMC technologies like e-mail have in some cases dropped by 41% (Perez, 2009).
Even late adopters of new technologies such as 35 to 60 year old women, have now become the fastest growing demographic on Facebook (Smith, 2009). Not only are traditional off-line mature adults adopting SNS technologies to rediscover old friends, they are now looking for love in safer places on sites such as Facebook (Schomer, 2009). However it’s the missing out on peer group e-mail communications and invitations to social gatherings that drive soccer moms to Facebook. In addition to the decline in face-to-face conversations, we also see a drop in phone calls, e-mails (Perez, 2009) and even text messages as people turn to sites such as Facebook as their primary communications medium. Studies show that face-to-face interaction is essential in the maintenance and strengthening of close friend and family ties (Haythornthwaite, 2001) and what some academics call the “tightness of intimate sphere”(Ling & Stald, 2010). Personal one-to-one communication devices such as mobile phones are seen to strengthen bonds with close friends and family, unlike public broadcasts on SNS. Not only have Generation Y and Z moved away from e-mail and voice communications, we’ve seen large numbers of baby-boomers and Gen X use “weak tie” SNS technologies to communicate with family and friends (Ling & Stald, 2010; Perez, 2009; Smith, 2009).
Even before Web2.0 and the Facebook revolution, academics such as Papacharissi and Rubin recognised the urgency to better understand the personal, social, and communicational changes brought about by the vast increase in CMC usage (Papacharissi & Rubin, 2000). Their 10 year old research, (before the current SNS stampede) showed those comfortable with face-to-face discussions and who had traditional social networks, mainly used the Internet for informational purposes. For those who struggled socially with face-to-face communications used the Internet as a “functional alternative to interpersonal communications or to fill in time” (Papacharissi & Rubin, 2000). Papacharissi and Rubin also found links between those who had social or interpersonal problems or dissatisfied with their real-world lives, often found greater affinity with Internet communities. Those early Internet academics confirmed the traditional “computer nerd” stereotype of 1990’s, where those with similar interests could meet, communicate freely and build virtual communities and quality relationships online (Barak & Sadobasky, 2008; Wellman & Gulia, 1999).
However, as we progressed into the Web 2.0 era (Wikipedia, 2010) and the uptake of broadband connectivity (ABS, 2010), the Internet became popular and appealing to mainstream people and social extroverts (boyd & Ellison, 2007). No longer the realm of the computer nerd, Internet connected computers are now found in most homes in the developed world (InternetWorldStats.com, 2010). In fact there are now more Internet enabled SNS connected mobile phones than Desktop PCs (Perez, 2010). Smartphones such as the iPhone (Apple, 2010) are now commonplace CMC SNS devices (Nielsen, 2010) and are no longer the domain of “computer nerds” and other early adopters of social networking. A recent study of 172 college students found 97% of them had a Facebook account, and spent an average of 47 minutes a day socialising, with the majority having between 200 and 400 friends (Sheldon, 2008). Sheldon’s 2008 research examined traditional theories of introverts and the use of CMC technologies from the 1990’s and compared them to today’s use of modern SNS sites with respect to introverts and extroverts. Sheldon’s Facebook research indicates a “rich-gets-richer” hypothesis, where those who are socially active off-line and typically extroverted, have greater social interaction on-line with more friends on Facebook. Results revealed introverts tended to go to Facebook when bored or to “feel less lonely”, but not to meet new people. Research also proposed that introverts logging into Facebook tended not to “self-disclose” themselves enough to form new relationships. Thus in many ways we see real-life face-to-face communities migrate large proportions of their free-time towards SNS technologies, and closely mimic traditional off-line everyday behaviour of introverts and extroverts (Sheldon, 2008).
As we migrate larger amounts of time (both free and working) from the off-line face-to-face to on-line SNS, many academics and sociologists raise the vexing question, “are we being too social?”(Gourlay, 2010; Greenfield, 2009; Hamilton, 2009; Nie & Lutz, 2010; Rideout, et al., 2010) Since ever growing percentages of the general population are using SNS, many question the excessive popularity of this medium. Has SNS become too popular, are we spending too much time on Facebook instead of interacting face-to-face (Ostrow, 2010)? If trends continue, our face-to-face social interaction skills will continue to decline, our close family ties may weaken our public and peer group verbal communications will decrease, and ultimately our ability to interact intimately will suffer. So what makes Facebook so popular, (Coopes, 2010) what attracts people of all ages to this new medium?
Facebook started life in 2004 as an online college yearbook, with student photo albums, profiles and the ability to post comments on your profile and that of your classmates (Mashable & Yadav, ND). In 2006 this winning formula was opened to the general public, thus allowing anyone including teenagers to create their own mini blog or profile online. Facebook promotes the making friends, migrating off-line friends online and tracking down old or lost friendships once separated by time and space. It also encourages users to migrate their e-mail contact lists to boost friend numbers. In addition to Facebook becoming a giant network of mini-blogs, they then introduced the News Alert system whereby comments posted on friends’ pages automatically appeared on your home page Wall (Thompson, 2008). These frequent Wall updates provided instant group-wide communications, fostering social recognition by your peers, mass publicity and notoriety, all of which is particularly attractive to youth in western societies (boyd, 2007). The volume of e-mail communications emanating from Facebook was traditionally high, with every post appearing on your Wall an e-mail was sent (Gibs, 2009). However in February 2010 Facebook stopped sending alerts, dramatically reducing e-mails received (O’Neill, 2010). This reduction in Spam forced users to login into Facebook to read Wall comments, further driving up traffic and time spent on the site (Dougherty, 2010).
In addition to Facebook’s primary focus of collecting friends, the site makes extensive use of Web 2.0 technologies and exploits the strength of “weak cooperation with many” (Aguiton, 2007). The attraction of posting your photo album online, sharing videos, using hundreds of free online games, e-mail and on-line chat provides a “one-stop” time consuming communications and entertainment environment. People are now entertained whilst being “social” with their on average 130 friends (Facebook, 2010). Behavioural scientists believe the maximum number of so-called “friends” we can possibly handle is 150 (Dunbar, 1993; Thompson, 2008) and those researching traditional friendship numbers believe that we can only hope to have in the real-world 10 to 20 meaningful relationships (Parks, 2007). Mainstream press also reports the maximum number of meaningful friends we can hope to maintain is the Dunbar number of 150 (Gourlay, 2010). Studies report the majority of students now have between 200 and 400 friends on Facebook (Sheldon, 2008; Walther, Van Der Heide, Kim, Westerman, & Tong, 2008). Consequently are we spreading ourselves too thin and devaluing true friendships and family relationships?
Researchers are now questioning the meaning of the term “friend,” particularly amongst university students, where inflated numbers of superficial friends are commonplace. How could one have 300 plus friends and these be classed as true friends (Tong, Van Der Heide, Langwell, & Walther, 2008) ? One might ask “what is the measure of a true friend,” would you invite that person to your wedding, or could you ask that person for help? Or are our Facebook friends simply acquaintances, followers, classmates and casual co-workers which may include a sprinkling of true friends? Some studies of Facebook show a person’s social appearance and their perception of attractiveness relates to an optimum number of Facebook friends. Surprisingly these studies show that for college students, 302 Facebook friends is the optimum number to be “socially attractive.” Simply having a100 friends on Facebook detracts from an individual’s “social attractiveness” and ranks them lower than average. Similarly those with 700 or more friends raised negative concerns that the person may be showing off or may even be considered as desperate (Tong, et al., 2008).
Unfortunately the addictive nature of Facebook and other SNS mediums propagates numerous problems and a raft of social issues particularly for pubescent and adolescents. Even though some research on college students suggest a positive “social capital” and a method “to keep in touch with old friends, and to maintain or intensify relationships” (Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007; Hargittai, 2007), it’s the negative overuse of SNS where its become an obsession thus diminishing time spent face-to-face with family and real friends that’s a major concern. Looking at research published concerning Facebook and SNS use, many college students who have 300 plus friends maintain them via “weak tie” relationships using freely available CMC technologies (Donath & boyd, 2004; Thompson, 2008). However according to 2010 research, high volume “weak ties” are propagated at the expense of face-to-face socialisations including decreased contact with your real true friends and close family members (Ling & Stald, 2010; Nie & Lutz, 2010; Small & Vorgan, 2008). In addition other neuroscientists such as Susan Greenfield are concerned that SNS sites such as Facebook and Bebo were “infantilising the brain into the state of small children by shortening the attention span and providing constant instant gratification” (Greenfield, 2009). It’s felt that adolescents are reading less, and parts of their brains are now being used less for imagination and forming pictorial stories. The lack of reading by the young and the force feeding of multimedia games and social networking, impacts on imagination, social communications, imparting a lack of empathy towards others and often fosters narcissistic behaviour.
Other neuroscientists also believe that the constant over stimulus of multi-dimensional information, obtained in short bursts of data from different directions, and often in different formats, may be linked to conditions such as ADHD and mild forms of autism. Studies also found more mainstream deficiencies such as short attention spans, diminished aptitudes for public speaking, and face-to-face debates, plus a lack of concentration in classroom situations resulted from SNS overuse (Heim, 2009; Small & Vorgan, 2008). In addition, studies now report that many students using Facebook also recorded lower grade point averages (Hamilton, 2009). Senior academics are also concerned about the over use of SNS and report a lack of concentration in their lectures. In an attempt to curb this obsession, some lecturers have banned the use of laptops in their lectures to reduce distractions and improve student concentration during presentations (Heim, 2009).
More disturbing however are the activities of youth and new adopters of SNS technologies. Pubescent girls in particular have become highly dependant up on Facebook and other SNS technologies. Co-rumination, the process of discussing your problems with your peers, has now moved from a small handful of close friends in face-to-face semi-confidential discourse, to mass media publicity were hundreds of so-called Facebook friends are instantly informed of your problems (Matyszczyk, 2009). Immediately your problems are broadcast to 300 plus acquaintances who often want to inflame the situation, spread gossip or be entertained buy your distress. According to academic studies and reports in the general media, the effects of on-line social networking and co-rumination can lead to depression, bullying and in some cases suicide (Hankin, Stone, & Wright, 2010; Kirby, 2009; Rideout, et al., 2010). As the perpetrators of face-to-face bullying move online, they often dominate SNS communities with their extrovert nature, and transfer their off-line bullying to cyber space. Traditional school yard bullying stopped once the student entered the safety of their home, however with cyber bullying there is often no respite. Operating in un-mediated SNS communities, those who would not bully in the real-world, are spectators to online harassment and are often swept up into the event and become active participants in mass bullying incidents (Butler, Kift, & Campbell, 2010). Additionally we see numerous scholars and members of the general public concerned with privacy issues, identity theft, stalking, employer surveillance and other negative uses for SNS sites such as Facebook (Acquisti & Gross, 2006; Raynes-Goldie, 2010; Reis, Ribeiro, Lopes, & Correia, ND)
Many questions are still left unanswered; however we all need to be fearful of the explosive increase in SNS technologies and time spent online. Not only are youth spending large amounts of time socialising online, we see people of all ages using SNS and thus reducing traditional real-world communication skills and devaluing true friendships.

The Psychology of Cyber Space: Jon Suler

2011-09-18T10:21:00.000-07:00

Identity Management in Cyberspace

Who are you in cyberspace? Am I the same John Suler I am in-person or someone a bit different? One of the interesting things about the internet is the opportunity if offers people to present themselves in a variety of different ways. You can alter your style of being just slightly or indulge in wild experiments with your identity by changing your age, history, personality, physical appearance, even your gender. The username you choose, the details you do or don't indicate about yourself, the information presented on your personal web page, the persona or avatar you assume in an online community - all are important aspects of how people manage their identity in cyberspace. Identity is a very complex aspect of human nature.
Here are five interlocking factors that are useful in navigating that maze of how people manage who they are in cyberspace:

1. Level of Dissociation and Integration
A single person's identity embodies multiplicity. You possess many sectors within your personality and play numerous roles in your life - such as child, parent, student, employee, neighbor, friend. Cyberspace offers a niche for each of these specific facets of selfhood. Some people even talk about how we can "deconstruct" ourselves online. We don't have to present ourselves in toto - how we look, talk, move, our history, thoughts, feelings, and personality, all in one big package. In different environments, we can divvy up and present our characteristics in packets of various sizes and content. Thanks to thousands of online groups each devoted to a distinct professional, vocational, or personal topic, we can express, highlight, and develop specific interests and life experiences while setting aside others. You don't have to mention to your stock trading e-mail list that you also hang out at the "I Dream of Jeannie" fan club site. When you join an online community, you often have a choice about how much, if any, personal information you place into the members' profile database. Online communication tools even give you the choice about whether you want people to see how you look or hear your voice. The desire to remain anonymous reflects the need to eliminate those critical features of your identity that you do NOT want to display in that particular environment or group. The desire to lurk - to hide completely - indicates the person's need to split off his entire personal identity from his observing of those around him: he wants to look, but
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The multiple aspects of one's identity may be dissociated, enhanced, or integrated online.
not be seen.
Compartmentalizing or dissociating one's various online identities like this can be an efficient, focused way to manage the multiplicities of selfhood. William James, one of the greatest of American psychologists, talked about how the normal mind operates in a "field" of consciousness in which one's awareness shifts among different hot spots of ideas, memories, and feelings. Role theory in social psychology speaks about how a successful life is an efficient juggling of the various tasks and positions we accumulate and develop from childhood through adulthood. Cyberspace living is yet another manifestation of this shifting, juggling maneuver. It gives people the opportunity to focus on and develop a particular aspect of who they are. It may even give people the chance to express and explore facets of their identity that they do not express in their face-to-face world. Everyone in Jim's in-person world may not know that he is a romantic medieval knight in an online role-playing game.
However, the importance of integrating the assorted components of selfhood should not be ignored. Bringing together the various components of online and offline identity into one balanced, harmonious whole may be the hallmark of mental health - what I like to call the "integration principle."

2. Positive and Negative Valence
The different components of who we are can be categorized as either positive or negative. There are some universal criteria that can help us distinguish the two. Most of the time we will criticize a person's need to hurt other people and applaud compassion. But it's not necessary to present universal truisms about good and bad. Subjectively, a person can feel shame, guilt, fear, anxiety, or hatred about some aspect of their identity, while accepting and appreciating other aspects. People also strive to attain new, idealized ways of being. Those who act out in cyberspace - who are in some way hurting or violating the rights of others, or hurting themselves - are usually discharging some negatively charged aspect of their psyche. This purely cathartic act often goes no where. An insecure, passive-aggressive person gets stuck in an endless stream of online arguments. Others may use cyberspace as a opportunity to exercise their positive characteristics, or to develop new ones in a process of "self-actualization." Online romances, even those involving a clearly recognized element of fantasy, can be growth-promoting. In some cases people may express a negative trait in an attempt to work through it. They are trying to transform the negative feature of their identity into a positive one, or perhaps change their attitude about that feature. A gay person who learns to accept his homosexuality as a result of participation in an online support group has changed the valence from negative to positive.
Whether we view something about ourselves as positive or negative can become a complex issue. Is it good or bad that a person tends to be quiet? Sometimes we have mixed feelings. We are ambivalent. The various environments and styles of
Negative aspects of identity can be acted out or worked through. Positive aspects can be expressed and developed.
communication on the internet serve as a flexible testing ground for exploring those intertwining pluses and minuses. In back-channel e-mail, a fellow lurker in a listserv for professionals may help the quiet person learn the value of being silent in some situations. In a chat room, that same quiet person comes to realize the freedom and delight of spontaneously opening up, and how that leads to friendships.
3. Level of Fantasy or Reality

In some online groups - for example, professional e-mail lists - you are expected to present yourself as you truly are. You don't pretend to be someone other than your true identity. Other groups in cyberspace encourage or even require that you assume an imaginary persona, as in the fantasy worlds of MOOs, MUDs, and other game environments. In multimedia chat communities, you have no choice but to wear an imaginative looking avatar to represent yourself. Many other environments fall somewhere in between reality and fantasy. You could get away with pretending to be someone very different than who you are, or you could alter just a few features - like your name, occupation, or physical appearance - while retaining your other true characteristics. No one will know, especially in text-only environments. In fact, you don't know for sure if other people are altering their identities, or how many people are altering their identities. This power to alter oneself often interlocks with dissociation and valence. Hidden positive and negative parts of oneself may seek expression in an imaginary identity that comes to life online.
The tricky phenomenological issue with the real versus fantasy self is this: What is one's TRUE identity? We usually assume it must be the self that you present to others and consciously experience in your day-to-day living. But is that the true self? Many people walk around in their f2f lives wearing "masks" that are quite different than how they think and feel internally. All the time people are discovering things about their personality that they never realized before. Our daydreams and fantasies often reveal hidden aspects of what we need or wish to be. If people drop the usual f2f persona and bring to life online those hidden or fantasied identities, might not that be in some ways MORE true or "real"?

4. Level of Conscious Awareness and Control
How we decide to present ourselves in cyberspace isn't always a purely conscious choice. Some aspects of identity are hidden below the surface. Covert wishes and inclinations leak out in roundabout or disguised ways without our even knowing it. We're not always aware of how we dissociate parts of our identity or even of the emotional valence we attach to them. A person selects a username or avatar on a whim, because it appeals to him, without fully understanding the deeper symbolic meanings of that choice. Or she joins an online group because it seems interesting while failing to realize the motives concealed in that decision. The anonymity, fantasy, and numerous
One's online identity can be real-to-life, imaginary, or hidden.
People differ in how much their unconscious needs and emotions surface in their online identities.
variety of online environments give ample opportunity for this expression of unconscious
needs and emotions. One good example is "transference."
People vary greatly in the degree to which they are consciously aware of and control their identity in cyberspace. For example, some people who role play imaginary characters report how the characters may take on a life of their own. They temporarily have surrendered their normal identity to the imaginary persona, perhaps later understanding the meaning of this transformation. Those who are acting out their underlying negative impulses - like the typical "snert" - usually have little insight into why they do so. By contrast, attempts to work through conflicted aspects of identity necessarily entails a conscious grappling with the unconscious elements of one's personality. Striving in cyberspace to be a "better" person also requires at least some conscious awareness - a premeditated vision of where one is headed. Some people, on their own, make a fully intentional choice about who they want to be in cyberspace. Some are partially aware of their choice and with help or through experience become more aware. Others resist any self-insight at all. They live under the illusion that they are in control of themselves.

5. The Media Chosen
We express our identity in the clothes we wear, in our body language, through the careers and hobbies we pursue. We can think of these things as the media through which we communicate who we are. Similarly, in cyberspace, people choose a specific communication channel to express themselves. There are a variety of possibilities and combinations of possibilities, each choice giving rise to specific attributes of identity. People who rely on text communication prefer the semantics of language and perhaps also the linear, composed, rational, analytic dimensions of self that surface via written discourse. They may be the "verbalizers" that have been described in the cognitive psychology literature - as opposed to "visualizers" who may enjoy the more symbolic, imagistic, and holistic reasoning that is expressed via the creation of avatars and web graphics. Some people prefer synchronous communication - like chat - which reflects the spontaneous, free-form, witty, and temporally "present" self. Others are drawn to the more thoughtful, reflective, and measured style of asynchronous communication, as in message boards and e-mail. There are personalities that want to show and not receive too much by using web cams or creating web pages; to receive and not show too much by lurking or web browsing; and still others who want to dive into highly interactive social environments where both showing and receiving thrive.
The media chosen can intimately interlock with the degree of identity integration and dissociation, and with the extent to which a person presents a real or imaginary self. One interesting question concerning the future of the internet is whether people will want to use audio and video tools. Do they want others to experience their identity as if it were a f2f meeting, with voice and body language? Or will they prefer the alternative communication pathways in order to express their identity in new and different ways?

Teen Internet and Video Gaming Addiction

Social Consequences of Teen Gaming Addiction: Part I

Your Teen's Arousal Template

What Makes Video Games Addictive?

Teens: Why Logging On is a Turn-On Parents Need to Turn Off

Your Cyber Addicted Child's Digital Diet

A Guide to Healthy Sex for Teen Cyber Porn Addicts

Guide to Getting It On!

reSTART Visit

Interview with Wendy Maltz LCSW: The Impact of Cyber Porn on Teens

Interview with Wendy Maltz LCSW Author of the "The Porn Trap"

Being Lonely and Problematic Internet Use?

Internet Use and Its Relationship to Loneliness

Internet Use and Its Relationship to Loneliness

The Loss of Self-Reflection in a Networked Life?

The Meaning of Online and Offline Continuity

Youth Sexting: A National Study

Wilderness Day Group for Video Game Addicted Kids

Should private Social Media Communication Stop Between Students and Teachers?

Research: Video gaming youth have brains like gamblers!!

Research: Video gaming youth have brains like gamblers

Children who love video games have brains like gamblers

The neural basis of video gaming

Do Teens Have Different Types of Sex Addiction?

Ten Types of Sex Addiction in "Don't Call It Love"

Patterns of Addictive Sexual Behaviors

1. Fantasy sex

3. Anonymous sex

4. Paying for sex

5. Trading sex

6. Voyeuristic sex

7. Exhibitionistic sex

8. Intrusive sex

10. Exploitative sex

Bully Proof Your Child!

Bully-proofing My Child

STOP CYBER BULLYING - TODAY!

Responding to Bullying

How Bullying Affects a School

Additional Resources

Teen Video Game Addiction and the Loss of Social Growth.

Teen video game addiction website!

Tipe of the Day from Techaddiction.com: The Most Addictive Games

The Myth of Cyber Bullying: Sophie Prince

People who multitask actually fail at multitasking!

Study finds people who multitask often bad at it

The truth about teens and multi-tasking from The Children's Digital Media Center

a Parent's Guide to Cyber Safety: FBI Publication

Cyber Predator vs. Jerry Sandusky

10 Reasons to Cancel Your Teen’s Data Plan

from: www.phoneservice.com:

10 Reasons to Cancel Your Teen’s Data Plan

Focusing on the Self Rather than Caring for Others

A Shift Toward Self

New Porn Policy in the UK!

UK Internet Users Forced To Choose Whether They Want Porn Or Not

Teen internet addiction

Teenage Internet Addiction Symptoms Treatment Help

Children's Digital Media Center: Teens and the Internet

Social Networking Sites

The Role of Parenting in Technology Use

Threats Online

Benefits Online

References

Pornography and Teens from iKeep Safe.com

Pornography

Get Unplugged! Outdoor Recreation Program for Tech Addicted Kids/Teens

Internet gambling in teens!

The Dangers of Internet Gambling among Teenagers

Surfing porn at work?

Surfing porn still popular at work

Lauren La Rose

Toronto— The Canadian Press

Published Wednesday, May. 26, 2010 4:15PM EDT

Facebook use correlates to larger brain regions, study shows!

Biology | 19.10.2011

Facebook use correlates to larger brain regions, study shows

Scientists have found a correlation between parts of the brain related to social perception and a person's number of Facebook friends. The study is part of a set of studies examining how the brain and Internet interact.

8 Signs ﻿You May Need Help for Problematic Technology Use

8 Signs ﻿You May Need Help for Problematic Technology Use

8 Signs You May Need Help for Problematic Technology Use

8 Signs You May Need Help for Problematic Technology Use