Does spending too much time on internet cause any issues?

November 27, 2024
Educating Children, Internet

Question:

Father, my son spends many hours surfing the Internet; is that bad, and can it cause him any problems?

Answer:

To whom it may concern:

I am not a specialist in psychiatry, but I do understand that long internet sessions are not beneficial for anyone’s personality, particularly that of children and adolescents. Perhaps the following article that appeared some time ago in Zenit might be useful to you.

‘The excessive use of the Internet can degenerate into pathologies that did not exist until now, Catholic psychiatrists and psychologists warn.

Children are the most vulnerable to this new form of illness, concluded last Thursday a congress organized in Rome by the AIPPC (Asociacion Italian de psicologos y psiquiatras catolicos).[1]

The conclusion reflects the results of a study on the disorders derived from the abuse of the net carried out among 109 children between six and nine years of age.

Young adults are, in general, more prone to develop ‘tech-abuse’, i.e. the difficulty to enter into relationships with real people, according to the study.

Another of the phenomena found is ‘webcam abuse’, the propensity – or even obsession – to spy on others through sites for this purpose on the Internet.

Techno-autism, or the inability to express one’s emotions without the help of new technologies, is more frequent among children, explains the study, reported by the Sir agency of the Italian Bishops’ Conference.

15-20% of the children studied regularly surf the Internet, chat and, above all, seek friendships on the net’, the study continues.

The fact that technology is understood as a way of interacting with others’, explained the president of the AIPPC and coordinator of the research, Tonino Cantelmi.

Seventy percent of young people spend a couple of hours a day playing video games, but abuse exceeding five hours has been reported in 5% of cases.

In the research carried out on this group of children, it was also found that 5% surf the Internet for more than five hours a day.

It is therefore necessary ‘that parents accompany their children in the use of the new media; if they are left alone there is a risk that they will be crushed’, observed the president of the Italian Parliamentary Commission for Children, Maria Burani Procaccini’.

(Article: ‘Psiquiatras y psicólogos católicos: Nuevas tecnologías, nuevas patologías’; ROMA, 18 febrero 2003; ZENIT.org).[2]