America is the world's first connected nation. Some 70 percent
of households are now wired. Universal connectivity is predicted by 2010. Only the homeless and the jobless will be Webless.
Poor them. A recent "Internet Deprivation Study" of 1,000 households by Yahoo! explored the horrors of Weblessness in modern America. It was significant that Yahoo! found it "incredibly difficult to recruit participants for this study, as people weren't willing to be without the Internet for two weeks."
Those brave souls who enrolled for a fortnight's abstinence suffered classic withdrawal symptoms: sleep disturbance, anxiety, mood swings, and "phantom computer syndrome." Some found life "impossible, because the Internet was so firmly ingrained in their daily lives." It was, they reported, the "disconnectedness" which upset them most. The net wasn't a utility -- like electricity, or water -- it was their life-support system. Some would say their drug of choice.
According to Dr Kimberley Young, the country's leading cyberpsychologist, an epidemic
of Internet addiction is sweeping America. Not to worry. Her Center for Online Addiction (www.netaddiction.com) offers, for a fee, "comprehensive information and recovery resources including online counselling for those who suffer from cyber-triggered problems such as online sexual addiction, virtual adultery, compulsive e-auctioning, and obsessive day trading."
How long before computers, like liquor bottles, carry a health warning?
Healthy or unhealthy, this national dependence on the Web has happened in the 10 short years since IBM targeted the domestic consumer with PCs powerful enough to connect with the Web. The automobile took three times as long to become a necessity of American life. More significantly, children don't drive the family car. Young people are the heaviest users of the home computer.
By the time they get to college, America's young people are net veterans. Campuses are 24/7 online communities. Connection costs nothing, every student dorm is hard wired, there is no parental snooping, and the university supplies state of the art equipment. According to some pessimists, Web-addiction is up there with binge drinking as a campus problem. Young is currently touring universities lecturing (for the usual fee) on the evils of the Demon Web.
America, from kindergarten to old folks home, is caught in the net. It's likewise hooked on pills. A new survey revealed that 44 percent of the population take at least one prescription drug on a long-term basis. One-in-six pops three or more. We're not talking baby aspirin but cholesterol-lowering, diabetes-controlling, and mood-stabilizing chemicals. Powerful stuff. There's probably a medication for Internet addiction somewhere in the national pharmacopeia.
It's great news for the manufacturers. National expenditure on prescription drugs has risen 15 percent a year for the past decade, as has the gross national dosage. A quarter of Americans under 18 are on long-term medication. Most started in childhood. Universities, if they are honest, will testify to the terrifying intake of anti-depressants among the student community. They walk up to collect their scrolls on chemical crutches. The lifelong prescription drug user will, on present trends, soon make up half or more of the American nation.
And then, of course, there are the burgers, sodas, and french fries. According to the National Institutes of Health, two-thirds of Americans are overweight or clinically obese -- that too is on the increase, particularly among the young. Morgan Spurlock, the endearingly self-abusive glutton of "Super Size Me," is currently touring schools in Los Angeles, urging kids to kick the fast-food habit. His movie may win an Oscar (no hope, after Election 11/2, for supersized Michael Moore) but Spurlock isn't going to disconnect kids from their favorite grub. The profits of McDonald's swell every year and with it the American butt.
There are two ways of looking at all this. America, with its ubiquitous fast-food, universal net connectivity, and wholesale chemical fix is the first nation fully to embrace the 21st century. It's the future. A future in which total self-indulgence is the rule.
Alternatively, you can see the Big Mac, AOL, and Prozac as what the warm bath was to Rome -- the unmistakable signs of an empire in decline. If so, the solution is obvious: "Only disconnect" (as E.M. Forster didn't say).
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