Windows 7: Web addiction and brain change

An interesting medical report
BBC News - Web addicts have brain changes, research suggests

It's obvious that there would be changes. But it's however interesting to see a definitive look at the report, especially when its very significant.

What makes you say that, how it anything "obvious" so to speak?

Seriously? Will these articles and "researches" ever just f*****g stop? Now they're comparing it to drug addiction? Again: seriously?!

There is no such thing as a web addiction, an addiction to PCs, cell phones, video games, or anything similar. There's just opportunity to make certain parts of your life easier and stupid people that drown themselves too deep into it all and don't know when to stop... Actually, let me correct myself: DON'T WANT TO stop! Embracing technology is pretty much like anything else in life, but boundaries need to be made. It's not addiction, it's human stupidity.

Is a programmer who spends at least 8 hours a day, 5-6 days a week in front of a computer making a video game, of a piece of software, of professionally design a website - an addict? I don't think so.

Gah, I could go on and on, but I don't want to rant.

You are mixing up a few things. Sure it's human stupidity to become addicted to drugs but that does not change the fact that the brain is damaged by it. A drug addict, however, never will admit it, no matter what the evidence is.
And they were not talking about working behind a computer. That is somewhat different from a web addiction.
They were simply comparing brain scans of drug addicts to those (teenagers) addicted to the web and saw the same changes. And it was also said that more investigations should be done for a definite answer.
It always pays to read the stuff carefully.

Drinking coffee, smoking and online at the same time. Three addictions at the same time. Isn't it great? Some times adding a little Jack Daniels to the coffee, now I got four of them going at the same time. Life is good.

Ridiculing it seems somewhat out of place. Besides the difference between what you are referring to and what addiction entails is that addiction is never enjoyed.

The article doesn't really give enough information for a layman to understand the issue, or if there really is an issue. At first, I thought those photos were MRIs, which display electrical activity in the brain, but apparently not these. They speak of scans of brain matter itself, which I'm not familiar with (scans, not brain matter).

It should be noted that just about any kind of activity or inactivity, will have some kind of effect on our brains and bodies, so without more information, I can't see how anyone, including physicians and researchers can truly understand how significant this is.

It interested me, that the second and third photos in the bottom row reminded me of the sign of Scorpio...at least how it was shown in the movie Split Second, which they somehow connected with the devil.

Their are many things that can be addictive and it varies from person to person. I'm addicted to reading history and it very well might be changing my brain. I'm no doctor but I would think that anything you do a lot of over a period of time will effect the way the brain works but I'm not sure that is all bad. Their are some thing one might do a lot of just for the enjoyment and their for it might not be a addiction. People who play gulf, pocket billiards, and or darts train the brain as much as their mussels. It's normally called focusing. Their for publishing a medical report with so few people involved to me is a bit foolish. That is why my last post was meant to be a little funny. Now to the subject; can using the internet be habit forming, I would believe it could be for some people. Having millions and millions of people using the internet a lot and only finding a few that might be considered addicts deserves ridiculed. Some cell phone users will stop what ever they are doing to answer it. Eating, drinking, time in bath room to making woopie they stop and answer the phone, now that is addiction. I don't have a cell phone because I don't need another addiction.

@ Layback Bear
Maybe you should print out the article, put the paper as usual parallel to the earth's surface and read it as opposed to have it displayed on a surface made of some translucid material and placed at about 90 degree to the earth's surface. It seems to make a difference.
The paper is worded very carefully: "suggests"- "indicates" and NOT "proves". In addition, it is said that more research is necessary because, and you can believe me, those people know very well that no final conclusions can be drawn from 13 persons investigated. Those are preliminary results indicating that there may be something. And that's all.