Communications - November 2009

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DOI: 10.1145/1592761.1592767
David Roman

internet addiction:
it’s spreading, but is it Real?

Communications’ news stories cover a lot of ground and sometimes raise a provocative question. A recent case in point: “Is Internet Addiction Real?” I was sure the answer to this question was ‘no’ after reading a story posted on the site that told of a 15-year-old boy who was beaten to death at an Internet addiction treatment center in China ( http://cacm.acm.org/news/41829) that sounded more like a re-education camp. That impression wasn’t lessened by the Chinese government’s estimate that 10% of its Internet users under the age of 18 are addicts.

But I wavered when I learned that Internet addiction centers are growing outside China as well, in South Korea, Taiwan, and the U.S. We published a story about ReSTART, an Internet detox center located a laser shot from Microsoft’s headquarters ( http://cacm.acm.org/news/42675). It treats behaviors worthy of a

intRoDucinG acm’s muLtimeDia centeR

are you interested in watching a short video about social robots using Facebook? What about an instructional video on the uses of PenLight, which combines a mobile projector and a digital pen to create a dynamic visual overlay? how about a 23-minute discourse on articulated mesh animation from multiview silhouettes? These videos and others are currently available from aCM’s Multimedia Center, http://multimedia.myacm.org/, which is offering free access to a collection of videos about a multitude of areas of computing.

The aCM Multimedia Center will feature a total of 10 videos, with a new video replacing an existing one each week. The current selection of videos range in length from nearly two minutes (video-based emergent storytelling) to an hour and two minutes (Frances e. allen’s 2006 a. M. Turing award lecture), with most videos ranging in length from a few minutes to 20 minutes. Visitors can learn more about the context of each video by clicking on the link to its source in the aCM digital Library. (access to the source’s full text requires an aCM membership and a digital Library subscription.)

12-step program, such as a monomaniacal desire for online time, an inability to disconnect, and lying about Web habits. But it’s also true that many overworked software programmers would fail ReSTART’s survey on Internet addiction (http:// www.netaddiction.com/resources/internet_addiction_test.htm). As a corrective, neither the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders nor the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases recognize Internet addiction as a disorder, and the Indian Journal of Psychiatry reports that Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) may have started as a satirical hoax ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.ni h.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2738353/).

Addictions are destructive. Smoking kills 438,000 people in the U.S. each year, reports the Centers for Disease Control. And it’s difficult to imagine how the problems that what IAD brings to individuals, relationships, and families could ever match alcoholism’s rain of pain.

Addiction? Without stronger evidence, the jury is still out.

sco9

The premier international conference on high performance computing, networking, storage, and analysis, sCo9 will take place Nov. 14–20 in Portland, or. sC09’s theme is “Computing for a Changing World,” and will also include special focus discussions on bio-computing, sustainability, and 3d internet.

The sC09 technical program will include featured speakers such as intel senior Fellow and CTo Justin rattner, who will deliver an opening address; Leroy hood, president and cofounder of the institute for systems Biology, who is an invited plenary speaker; and former u.s. Vice President al gore who is the conference keynote speaker.