Sending a last-minute email to your boss, checking if you’ve won the bid on that online auction site, watching another version of Psy’s crazily popular song Gangnam Style or finding out the winning score of your favorite NBA team has become a regular nighttime ritual for most gadget users, be it on their smartphone, tablet, or laptop. However, this seemingly innocuous habit is really doing more harm than good.
Gadgets Before Bed
This infographic from OnlinePsychologyDegree.net shows you what really happens when you turn off the lights (but not your gadgets):
Technology Addiction
Psychologists are still learning about the effects of technology addiction. However, recent studies have shown that users who’ve developed this form of gadget addiction are experiencing declining health and quality of sleep. Not only has it been associated with sleep disorders, but it has also been linked to stress, depression, and loneliness.
Technology addiction may come in various forms, such as computer addiction, video game addiction, and Internet addiction. Since gadget users tend to go online before sleeping, Internet addiction is probably a close cousin to their addiction to gadgets (although Internet addiction has not been included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it may be included in 2013 when the fifth version comes out).
According to a study entitled “Internet Addiction: Metasynthesis of 1996–2006 Quantitative Research,” Internet addiction disorder (IAD) is broadly defined as an addiction to the Internet “to such a degree that cessation causes severe emotional, mental, or physiological reactions.”
In other words, being forced to go offline for a prolonged period of time may lead to a nervous breakdown (this may sound familiar to some people). Ironically, the Internet and the gadgets which aid us in communication and networking may also be the culprits in our isolation from society.
Activities considered to contribute to Internet addiction fall under Internet social interaction (instant messaging, social networking, and blogging), virtual society addiction (online shopping and gambling), and gaming (MMORPGs or Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games). At this point, almost anyone who goes online engages in at least one or all of these activities throughout the day.
One Last Thing Before You Go
Just in case you’re reading this in bed and you’re about to head on over to YouTube (before going to sleep), try checking out this video where “at least a thousand inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) entertained guests with their ecstatic adoption of the Guinness World Record holder for the ‘Most Liked in YouTube.'” CPDRC’s Gangnam Style version:
(Featured Image and Infographics Credit: The Fairfield Mirror)
