Due to the pandemic, the whole world has been trying to stay in our homes for a while, and we are physically socializing. When we need to go out, we leave a few meters of social distance between us and other people who are outside with us. Looking back, we've all tried to get used to an order that affects and may even change all our normals. In fact, this has become our new normal for this process.
However, although we have given a break from socialization, human evolution is a social being due to its evolutionary nature. It needs regular communication and interaction with other people in order to survive. Our ancestors formed small groups in order to meet their basic needs such as shelter, protection and nutrition in time and thus survived against external factors.
We have carried this strong interaction instinct to this day and we are here now. When this is the case, it can be quite challenging to completely break off communication with other people. For this reason, although we cannot physically socialize, we continue to maintain this communication through online platforms. We continue our business online, talk to our environment on the internet, maybe even continue our sessions with psychologists and psychiatrists as online therapy.
Has Internet and Technology Usage Increased During Pandemic Process?
It is very normal that we find it difficult to find an event for the time we spend at home during the coronavirus process. Trying to find a different activity each day after the past two months, forcing ourselves to be productive can be overwhelming. Therefore, we try to fill the gaps in our days with social media, games and internet.
For example, when we look at the rates, we can see that the use of Netflix has increased by 3 million. On the other hand, we see that the use of zoom exceeded the usage rate of the whole year in just a few months of 2020. This is to a certain extent nice and can be a useful way to have fun and spend time. In this way, we can communicate with our environment through online channels, play games with them, make video conversations, and organize many activities such as these. However, the longer the process, the stronger our ties with these technological tools. Although we can see that such technologies are nice and useful tools for socializing, when their use goes beyond the necessary measures, they can create addiction and harm us.
How Does Internet Addiction Affect Us?
Under normal circumstances, we can count the many effects of internet addiction and talk about the damages on us. The effects such as restricting our social relations and distancing us from our daily life can be given as examples. However, when there is a coronavirus pandemic, it would not be right to evaluate these effects on our social relationships. Because the reason why the use of the internet has increased so much is actually to provide our social relationships and to meet our needs.
For this reason, I would like to talk about the physiological and behavioral effects of internet addiction. According to a literature review conducted in 2012, internet and game addiction causes changes in our brain structure and behavior. When we first look at chemical changes, internet addiction causes a decrease in dopamine levels.
This leads to a decrease in your sense of being rewarded. Prolonged occurrence of this situation may cause psychological disorders such as depression. In addition, when we look at our neural circuit level, we can see that internet and game addiction causes long-term increase in activity in the brain areas associated with addiction and, as a result, structural changes in the brain. For its behavioral effects, it is possible to say that it limits our cognitive functions.
