NETUCATION Blog

Tag: technology addiction

  • Warning over child ‘addiction’ to smartphones and gaming devices

    BY NICOLA ANDERSON – 23 APRIL 2013

    More young children are showing signs of becoming “addicted” to gadgets such as smartphones and gaming devices, psychologists have warned.

    Children are having problems concentrating in school and have motor skills worryingly below their appropriate age because they are spending “hours” playing computer games each day.

    One professional recently treated a 10-year-old who had gashes on his knuckles after lashing out in his sleep as a result of becoming agitated and aggressive after hours of playing the violent 18-rated ‘Grand Theft Auto’.

    Educational psychologist Dr Catriona Martyn, who is based in Dunmore, Co Galway, said there were also concerns about concentration levels in school but parents are often surprised when it is linked with the use of gadgets.

    Educational psychologist Anne Staunton warned that research had to begin “sooner rather than later”, saying she had noticed evidence among schoolchildren that gaming and playing on devices “can become an addiction”.

    This comes as research in the Britain reveals how young technology addicts experience the same withdrawal symptoms as alcoholics or heroin addicts when the devices are taken away.

    A technology addiction programme was set up three years ago by Dr Richard Graham, of the Capio Nightingale clinic in London, who said the condition prevented young people from forming normal social relationships, leaving them drained by the constant interaction.

    source: Belfast Telegraph

  • Put your smartphone away and read this article

     In 2009, the life of Levi Felix, a young Jew of 25 and a graduate of the University of Santa Barbara, looked quite glamorous. He was the vice president of Causecast, a startup that helps not-for-profit organizations gain exposure and organize activities, he earned a handsome salary, had a fine apartment and was looking forward to seemingly limitless possibilities of advancement.

    “I was one of the first employees in Causecast, which began as a small startup and grew fast into a company with a few hundred employees,” Felix told me during an interview in San Francisco. “I was in charge of the website’s design and content. Like everyone else, I worked around the clock and was connected to the Web at all times.”

    If this were a more conventional success story, it would have ended like this: The company exits, Felix rakes in millions, starts his own company and lives happily ever after. But that’s not what happened.

    “In 2009, on the way to the SXSW technology conference, I felt like I was about to pass out,” Felix relates. “I was working so hard that I had already become used to my body collapsing occasionally. I would go to the ER, ask for an IV and carry on. But this time, when I got to the hospital the doctors found that I was suffering from serious internal bleeding of the esophagus. If it hadn’t been discovered in time, I would have been dead within days. No one could say what had brought it on, but a few doctors said it was related to tension, improper nutrition and sleep deprivation. It’s usually said that ‘work kills you,’ but in my case I killed myself by leading a completely insane way of life.”

    Brooke Dean, 30, who was born in Montana and grew up in Colorado, became Felix’s partner shortly after his hospitalization. She persuaded him to accompany her to the Burning Man Festival later that year. The thousands of participants in the event, held every year in the Nevada desert, build temporary structures and create art without the use of electricity or technology.

    “We attended the festival five months after I got out of the hospital,” Felix recalls. “It was the first time I had ever felt free. Brooke and I then decided to travel around the world, and because I am from a traditional Jewish home and my brother was doing a residency in Israel, we decided to start the trip there.”

    It’s amusing to think that a future history of the Slow Tech movement ? of which Felix and Dean are two unofficial representatives ? might state that it had its genesis in the Holy Land.

    Click here to read the full article

    source: haaretz.com /  Neta Alexander