Online Media Cultist

If a text message is magically sent from a forest with no one in it to another forest with no one in it, did it really happen?

So it goes that “compulsive e-mailing and text messaging could soon become classified as an official brain illness.” That is, if the American Journal of Psychiatry has anything to say about it.

We then learn that “86 per cent of Internet addicts have some other form of mental illness, but that unless a therapist is looking for it, Internet addiction is likely to be missed.”

So, I get it. Communicating online is fun, ensnaring, even “addictive” in the non-psychiatric use of the term. You can certainly overdo it if you don’t take some care, such as with watching television, eating, reading books, power bowling, lawn darts, etc. etc.

But “brain illness”? Really? Seriously?

Engadget at the least says “we’re not surprised one iota.” However, Duncan Riley at TechCrunch says that “Block’s definition is rather broad, but taken on face value would probably mean that most working in the Valley have a mental disorder.”