Do you know the causes of Internet addiction? Do you want to know how to overcome Internet addiction? At 15:50 on October 22 in classroom 5229 of teaching building No. 5, Madam Shuqin Ma from the psychological center gave a lecture on Internet addiction.

First, Madam Ma introduced a keyword—tolerance adopted by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV) and the World Health Organization in the definition of addiction. Tolerance refers to enhancement of dependence on certain thing featuring a continuous and regular behavior. Addiction can be classified into substance addiction and mental addiction according to the sources of addiction. Their common point is that all addictions have varying degrees of mental and physical dependence.

Then Madam Ma showed a set of statistics for the year 2005 indicating that the adolescent Internet addicts account for 13.2 percent of all adolescent Internet users, and the proportion of boy addicts is higher than that of girl addicts. Addicts aged between 13 and 17 make up the largest group among the addicts aged between 13 to 35 years of age. Also observed is the trend that the elder group has lower addiction rate than the younger one. It is worth noting that the proportion of college students' Internet addiction account for 14% of the total, and it’s mainly caused by maladaptation to college life and the lack of career planning.

Next, Madam Ma explained Internet addiction disorder from the perspective of physiological and psychological mechanisms. In terms of humanistic theory, Internet addiction is a symbol of self-realization, an alternative of self needs, and the consequence of missing identity. The ideal that cannot be actualized in reality is realized in the virtual world. And Internet addiction is the accumulation of conditioned reflexes, and an autistic fortress when viewed from the behaviorist perspective. People who are highly sensitive, depressive, introverted, and highly anxious are susceptible to Internet addiction.

The Classification and intervention of Internet addiction is what most students are concerned with. Internet addiction can be classified into the online game addiction and online information addiction. Therefore, addiction intervention should be the integration of medical treatment, psychological therapy, health education, military training and social experience activities—a "five in one" intervention model. The intervention should not be directly enforced, but has to be enforced after all. We should strengthen emotional connection with the patient during the treatment. We should use different methods to treat patients of different characters. Madam Ma also introduced some tips to prevent Internet addiction, such as finding the target in real life, and playing some simple and repetitive games.

In response to the question how to avoid addictive use of mobile phones, some students offered some advice at the lecture, such as putting the phone in a place that is out of reach. Madam Ma praised the students' advice and said that we should adopt some mandatory measures to help us control our addictive behaviors.

In short, we should have a correct understanding of Internet addiction. When we or our fellow students are inclinedto the Internet addiction, we should pay enough attention to it. We should try our best to enhance self-control and use the Internet rationally.