A psychiatrist on Monday said that Internet users could be sacrificing important activities, such as sleep, exercise and social interaction, after a study showed that Taiwanese spend an above-average amount of time online.
While the global average for time spent online per day was six hours and 42 minutes, Taiwanese spent seven hours and 49 minutes daily, according to the study conducted last year.
People are spending an increasing amount of time online, but bad Internet habits could trigger a “crowding out” phenomenon whereby users spend all of their time and energy on the Internet, and ignore important activities, including maintaining a healthy diet, sleep, exercise, verbal communication and emotional interactions, said Huang Yen-hsun (黃彥勳), a psychiatrist at Taipei City Hospital’s Songde branch.
The behavior could affect users’ physiological and psychological well-being, and hurt their social relationships, he said.
Long-time Internet overuse could cause people to develop a dependency on the Internet, as well as anxiety, depression, irritability, and conditions related to the eyes, muscles and joints, or cardiovascular disease, he said.
To help avoid these risks, Huang suggested using the phrase fu chou zhe lian meng (復籌者連盟), or the Chinese translation for the popular movie franchise The Avengers.
Fu stands for hui fu (恢復, restoring) as in restoring a routine; chou stands for “health is not a chou ma (籌碼, bargaining chip)”; zhe stands for “be a shi fan zhe (示範者, example) for proper Internet use”; lian stands for lian tong (連同, join with) to join friends and family to develop correct Internet habits; and meng stands for lian meng (聯盟, ally with) as in planning outdoor activities with friends and family, he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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