Mental and Emotional Effects of Computing

Sensation and Interest

"Computer use is...a competition between sensation and interest. While the person is engaged, sexually evoked or intellectually interested then sensual discomfort is overpowered. When topics recycle, the threshold of engagement lowers, and discomfort is more noticeable. The effort to increase the engagement might explain some of the attractions of flaming or netsex, as these diminish registering of background sensory distress. People do not approach the net erotically or angrily, but become erotic or angry to maintain an approach".

The Online Body Breaks Out? Asence, Ghosts, Cyborgs, Gender, Polarity and Politics [1] Jonathan Marshall http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue3/issue3_marshall.html

Internet Use and Depression

A Leeds University study found that people classified as internet addicts were more likely to be depressed than non-addicted users.

Excerpt: "Our research indicates that excessive internet use is associated with depression, but what we don't know is which comes first – are depressed people drawn to the internet or does the internet cause depression?" the article's lead author, Dr Catriona Morrison, said.

"What is clear is that, for a small subset of people, excessive use of the internet could be a warning signal for depressive tendencies" [1].

Non-Will and Abulia

Too much choice offers painful and increasingly frequent purchasing decisions with more precise and fractal vocabularies, to the point where purchases are communities and all speech becomes about a product or service. All terminology turns one into a citizen of that product. Abulia increases in a modern condition of too much input.

And in Japan, there becomes an increasing number of 20 somethings with the inability to decide on a career - the inability to settle into stable self. The external self morphs, upgrades and changes so much that the internal self has no time to solidify.

Aboulia or Abulia (from the Greek "αβουλία", meaning "non-will"), in neurology, refers to a lack of will or initiative and is one of the Disorders of Diminished Motivation or DDM. Aboulia falls in the middle of the spectrum of diminished motivation, with apathy being less extreme and akinetic mutism being more extreme than aboulia.[1] A patient with aboulia is unable to act or make decisions independently. It may range in severity from subtle to overwhelming. It is also known as Blocq's disease (which also refers to abasia and astasia-abasia).[2] Abulia was originally considered to be a disorder of the will http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboulia.

Akenetic Mutism

Akinetic mutism is a medical term describing patients who tend neither to speak (mutism) nor move (akinesia). It is the result of severe frontal lobe injury in which the pattern of inhibitory control is one of increasing passivity and gradually decreasing speech and motion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akinetic_mutism

Twixter

Twixter is a neologism that describes a new generation of Americans who are trapped, in a sense, betwixt (between) adolescence and adulthood. This Western neologism is somewhat analogous to the Japanese term parasite single.

Twixters are typically young adults who live with their parents or are otherwise not independent by other means, primarily financial. If they are employed, they often have unsteady and low-paying jobs. They may have recently left college or high school, or recently embarked on a career. Living with parents represents a cultural shift in Western households. Historically, whenever a member of the nuclear family became an adult, he or she was expected to become independent.

These young adults also typically marry later than usual and gain more college or career training. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twixter