What is Internet Addiction?
The internet is the most widely used and cheapest tool for learning and exchanging information. While it allows access to social networks like Facebook and Twitter, it also provides access to very negative sites (pornographic, violent, bomb-making, etc.) and computer games. Internet use can turn into addiction.

Studies have shown that internet use for two years or more, especially among boys and those who are aggressive, increases the risk of addiction.

Looking at the signs of addiction, activities outside the internet gradually cease to give them pleasure, and they even begin to feel very empty without the internet. When they cannot access the internet, they exhibit very restless and aggressive behavior. Although they may have thoughts of cutting off excessive internet use on their own, they cannot put them into action. As time progresses, there is a decline in academic performance and social communication with school, friends, and family.

Internet addiction is seen in 2% to 20% of adolescents who use the internet. Internet addiction is also considered a type of drug addiction, but it starts at a much earlier age. Internet addicts spend 40-80 hours a week online. This creates negative physical, social, and psychological consequences. Psychiatric disorders seen in internet addicts include depression, Attention Deficit Disorder, Impulse and Behavioral Disorders, Anxiety Disorders, Sleep Disorders, Eating Disorders, Drug Use, and Epilepsy.

Adolescents who do not receive sufficient emotional and psychological support from their families are at a higher risk of internet addiction.

Internet addiction affects the reward center in the brain, responsible for pleasure, increasing the release of dopamine. Increased dopamine leads to increased release of morphine and other substances. Over time, this increase becomes insufficient, tolerance develops, and longer brain stimulation is required to achieve a greater increase in dopamine and morphine, leading to an inability to quit the internet. Like other addictions, internet addiction affects the nucleus accumbens, the deep brain region responsible for dopamine release.

 

Everything addictive is recorded through the connection between the frontal lobe and the amygdala; the hypothalamus, responsible for memory, records it. When a person sees or thinks about it, or experiences stress, it creates a craving. The nucleus accumbens, the center of the brain's reward system, becomes oversaturated with dopamine. The hippocampus briefly remembers this pleasurable event, and the amygdala records it through conditioning. This overstimulates dopaminergic regions, and the dopamine center in the nucleus accumbens is stimulated. The brain compulsively turns to the addictive substance.

How to Treat Internet Addiction?
Children and adolescents need extensive education on how to protect themselves from the use of social media networks like Facebook and Twitter. It is known that girls, especially those with public Facebook accounts, are at increased risk of sexual harassment by malicious individuals. It should not be forgotten that some virtual friendships formed through the internet can lead to serious problems later on.

We also read in the news that the use of Twitter put some people in very difficult situations during the Gezi Park protests.

It is also true that many families do not know how to use internet technology as well as their children. We can recommend that families limit their children's internet use to 1-2 hours a day, and that families learn how to use the internet themselves. This way, they can monitor where and how to control their children's use, identify potential dangers, and track their computer activities.

Furthermore, psychological and pharmacological treatments are known to be beneficial in treating internet addiction. Families seeking a drug-free treatment method with no side effects can benefit from biofeedback, which the American Academy of Pediatrics (AOC) considers highly effective in treating Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), for the treatment of internet addiction. Furthermore, since the effectiveness of biofeedback has been proven in drug treatment, anxiety disorders, and epilepsy, it is also effective in treating psychiatric illnesses related to internet addiction.