Construct · 4 names · 5 citations
Different names. Different fields. One construct. One map.
● jangle · one dependency, many names Nearest construct by meaningcyberdeviancecompare the meaningsEvery construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to technology addiction is cyberdeviance.
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In clinical psychology the pattern was first named internet addiction by Young, whose 1998 paper argued that heavy, out-of-control internet use could form a genuine impulse-control disorder. Young adapted the diagnostic criteria for pathological gambling into a short screen covering preoccupation with being online, a growing need for more time online, repeated failed attempts to cut back, and continued use despite damage to work, study, or relationships. She treated the condition as diagnosable rather than as a mere habit or a strong preference. The referent is the same compulsive dependency that information systems research later called technology addiction, but framed here as a medical condition and named for the internet as a whole rather than for any one application.[1]
In the study of behavioural addictions Griffiths proposed a general components model that treats every addiction, chemical or behavioural, as sharing the same six parts: salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, and relapse. Griffiths's 2005 paper set the model inside a biopsychosocial framework and applied it to technological activities such as gaming and internet use. On this account a technology addiction is not a construct of its own but one more instance of a single underlying addiction process. The referent is that general syndrome, and the clinical, communication, and information systems literatures each take a version of these six parts and attach their own name to the result for a particular technology.[2]
Communication and cyberpsychology researchers reframed the same phenomenon as problematic internet use to avoid the disease language of addiction. Caplan's 2010 model defined it as a cognitive and behavioural pattern built from a preference for online social interaction over face-to-face contact, use of the internet to regulate mood, poor self-regulation combining compulsive use with preoccupation, and the negative outcomes that follow. The label was chosen to describe a graded range of harmful use rather than a discrete illness a person either has or lacks. The referent overlaps heavily with what other literatures call internet addiction or technology addiction, and the main difference lies in whether the compulsive dependency is called an addiction at all.[3]
In information systems research the compulsive, maladaptive dependency on a particular information technology is called technology addiction or IT addiction. Turel, Serenko, and Giles's 2011 study of online auction users defined it by a small set of parts borrowed from the study of substance and behavioural addictions: loss of control over use, salience so that the technology dominates thought and time, withdrawal-like distress when access is blocked, and continued use despite harm. Turel and Serenko's 2012 work on social networking websites traced how ordinary enjoyment can harden into this dependency. The referent is a syndrome of compulsive use tied to a named technology, and it is the same dependency that clinical work calls internet addiction and communication work calls problematic use, now aimed at a specific system rather than the internet in general.[4][5]
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