In 2000 when I started reading books and looking at research on internet addiction I saw this as a growing problem but at the same time I could not imagine how much of a problem it would be when I am writing this in 2008. Now it is estimated that around 10% of people using the internet are having some problem in their life related to the overuse o the internet. Even though it so new we are not seeing the statistic I would think internet addiction are one of the main reason of kids dropping out of schools today.
It is now not just the drugs that are our main concern on the issue of kids dropping out of schools, now we also need to worry about e.g. those kids playing MMORPG (Massive multiplayer online role playing games). We could hope those problems will not getting worse. But if we look at what is happening in the game industry and the internet in general we are seeing more game developers are turning their games into multiplayer games. Multiplayer games are played 24/7 the game cannot be paused and you cannot finish the game.
Game developers are not different from newspaper and paid TV, that relay on monthly sub scri ption, they do not want you to drop out of the game and stop paying for it and the probably have more people spending time on avoiding this dropout than the schools have avoiding dropout in schools. Other game consoles like Xbox and Wii are also hooking up to the internet which will get the problem bigger and we can continue on and on about more and younger kids are chatting and spending more time chatting that affects their schooling.
So what we are seeing possible just a beginning of a ongoing rising problem with younger kids getting addicted to the internet. We need to spend more effort in educating teachers and parents about the problem and what can be done to avoid it. We need to focus as soon as a child starts to use a computer and playing with video games to limit their time using the computers.
