“Psychiatrist Jerald Block believes heavy use of computers, video games and the Internet can either cause mental illness or, at the very least, be a destructive manifestation of pre-existing behavioral disorders. Writing in the American Journal of Psychiatry, Block argues there ought to be an entry in the next version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness called ‘pathological computer use.”
I remember when I got my first computer, a little Compaq tower with maybe a 6GB hard drive. There was a serious problem with the OS installation, and Windows 95 wouldn’t boot up without some sort of manual intervention. I so hated the idea of taking it back to CompUSA that I was willing to do that – tapping F8 or whatever.
After a couple of days, Windows wouldn’t load at all. I wound up having to reload Windows from the stupid little Compaq restore disc. It took hours, in the middle of the night. I couldn’t get up from the table and go to bed, even though I had to work the next day. I just sat there, my eyes glued to that tapping drum icon. Gosh, how I despised that thing.
I felt a little like a parent whose newborn baby was struggling to survive. A completely indefensible perspective.
I’m still pretty caught up with it all, after about a dozen years. And I often complain about how much time and spirit the computers I use seem to suck out of my life.
Where’s the balance, for those of us who are technologically inclined, perhaps to a disordered degree? How do we make use of the tools we need, and get their benefits, without our minds and souls being flushed away into cyberspace?
Metaphor 
Addictive behavior comes in many flavors.