Would it work without? Without Google, Wikipedia, Facebook or Twitter , without social games like “FarmVille”? Letters instead of e-mails, phone booths instead of mobile phones, bank appointments instead of online accounts? Hard to imagine. Anyone who is not always and everywhere involved online is increasingly considered an outsider.
A few reminders warn that constant availability is too stressful. But current figures from the industry association BITKOM speak for themselves: In Germany, each of the 51 million Internet connections is used for an average of 140 minutes a day. More than every fourth German citizen owns at least two mobile phones. Facebook now has 22.1 million members in Germany. One hour of video is uploaded to the YouTube platform every minute, and the global audience watches more than four billion videos every day.
“Today, everyone carries their personal media world around with them,” says Gabriele Farke . As early as 1998, the trained industrial clerk founded the association ” Help for self-help with online addiction”, HSO for short, in Buxtehude near Hamburg. The World Wide Web was only nine years old then, and there were neither social networks nor online role-playing games. Nevertheless, the now 56-year-old fell for the new way of communication. “What was I chatting up between ’96 and ’98! For hours. No one gives you back the time,” says Farke without self-pity.
The term internet addictionnobody knew in Germany at that time. This is how HSO eV came into being “In the beginning we hardly had any audience at events”, Farke sums up soberly. “Today, 800 to 1000 people come regularly.” She is happy about that, but “Online addiction is a pressing problem. All in all, too little is happening and a lot is too half-hearted.” In the 14 years that she has been working for HSO, she has heard from hundreds of families who have been broken by online addiction: “With professional help, they might have made it.”
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Few treatment options
But this is only found sporadically in Germany: Because the health insurance companies have not yet accepted Internet addiction as an illness, only a few clinics and therapists offer treatment. The level of demand is also unclear.
A first study by the Universities of Greifswald and Lübeck showed that 15 out of 1000 Germans are internet dependent . Other analyzes come up to 50. “But the experts are still arguing whether this is an addiction at all and whether it is the cause or consequence of another mental illness,” criticizes Farke.
As a result, the numbers change depending on who or what the researchers ask. “You can argue without end,” says Farke angrily, “that doesn’t help those affected.” Serious studies have now shown that online addiction damages the so-called white substance in the brain. “Dependent Internet users also show the same behavior as addicts of substance-related addictions,” says Prof. Bernhard Croissant, chief physician at the Christoph Dornier Clinic for Psychotherapy in Münster, one of the few who offers help.
Online addicts suffer withdrawal like alcoholics. Make excuses like gambling addicts when criticized. Like heroin addicts, have to keep increasing their daily dose to get the same effect. “We also often see a splitting off of the body in Internet addicts,” adds Dr. Thomas Fischer, chief physician at the AHG Clinic for Psychotherapy in Lübstorf, another point of contact. “It is not needed in the network and is neglected.”
Those affected no longer wash themselves, ignore hunger and thirst. Florian Brand (name changed by the editors), about 1.80 meters tall, ended up weighing 62 kilos. “I stopped eating, didn’t talk to anyone, stopped paying the rent. I just played and slept,” says the 27-year-old. “Look at this.” He holds out his left hand. The little finger is arched outwards – from the repeated movements on the keyboard. At eleven, Brand starts playing “first-person shooters,” which are simply about fighting fellow players and monsters with all sorts of weapons.
At 14 he has his own internet connection. “My father was selling computers at the time. We always had the latest technology at home,” says Brand. At school he feels like a pioneer.
For two years in a row he competes against 350 other “first-person shooters”. He wins both times. “The first sense of achievement that I worked for myself,” says Brand. This is how his path to addiction begins. “I had alternatives, e.g. B. Drawn comics. My mother promptly showered me with pens and books, and I had the feeling that she was taking something away from me,” he says in retrospect. “But I had the computer to myself.”
Florian Brand sits in front of it for longer and longer, his parents approach him less and less. Huge noise when he fails to graduate from high school. During his training as a hotel specialist, he has no internet connection. Claudia and Klaus Brand, the parents, hope things will get better. “After that he joined the Air Force for two years. That’s when I thought: Now he’s finding his direction,” remembers Florian’s father. What he doesn’t know is that his son has an Internet-enabled computer in the living room. So-called LAN parties , in which the soldiers compete against each other via a network, are the order of the day. “We played ‘World of Warcraft’,” says Florian Brand, “the superiors thought it was okay.” “World of Warcraft” (WoW)is an online role-playing game that has more than ten million paying subscribers worldwide. This gives Blizzard Entertainment annual sales of more than one billion dollars. She encourages her customers to be in the fantasy world “Azeroth” in a way that they cannot supposedly be in real life. The longer a user moves online, the more successful he becomes.
WoW never ends. There is always a new task waiting to be mastered. “I can’t prove it. But I’m sure that the developers of the game will be supported by clever psychologists,” says Gabriele Farke.
Fantasy worlds – a vicious circle
Florian Brand falls for the subtle mechanisms. In the end he plays 20 hours a day. As a result, two girlfriends leave him, he breaks off his education and becomes unemployed. But the more problems that arise from playing online, the more often Florian Brand flees into fantasy worlds – a vicious circle. “It was like coming home,” says the Mecklenburger. “I could let myself go.”
Garbage is piling up in his apartment. He doesn’t answer the phone anymore. The low pointhis mother will probably never be forgotten. With tears in her eyes, she says: “We had Florian’s door broken open, the medical officer was there. Florian was very, very thin. We sat next to each other and he said, ‘I don’t see any meaning in life anymore.’” The parents apply for legal guardianship. Florian Brand agrees. He knows he needs help. Six months later, he begins his 12-week therapy at Dr. Thomas Fisher.
He has deleted all games on his PC, wants to join a volleyball club and in the summer he wants to go to technical college. He wants to make it. It would be unrealistic to demand that the Internet be switched off to prevent such cases. Unlike alcohol, total abstinence is impossible with online addiction .
“The media are indispensable nowadays,” says Prof. Croissant. “But you have to learn how to deal with them appropriately. Media competence must already be an issue in the parental home.” When Florian Brand returns to his apartment over the weekend during therapy, there is a risk of a relapse. The pressure is just too great. But instead of fleeing into his fantasy world, he calls his father. “You did well,” Klaus Brand bursts out. He gives his son a friendly pat on the thigh. It’s over.
Do you have the feeling that you are slowly losing control of your Internet consumption? Take countermeasures like this:
- Remove your computer from the living area.
- Rotate the screen so you can’t keep staring at it.
- Create a daily and weekly schedule for when you go online.
- Discuss your problem openly. Ask your family , friends and/or colleagues to support you.
- Find a new hobby or pick up an old one (e.g. sports, photography).
- Write down your “addiction history” and your internet behavior as precisely as possible.
- Ask yourself the following question: what do you (allegedly) find on the internet that you lack in real life?
- Make an appointment – offline, not online.
