Internet Addiction and Online Gaming (Cybersafety)

This is a dreadful book. Even making allowances for the fact it was obviously written for the young adult market,it adopts a preachy, smug tone that insults the intelligence and makes it all but unreadable.In the first place the authors acknowledge that there really is no such thing as Internet addiction-it is not listed in the DSM as a genuine mental disorder. They then ignore this and proceed to discussparticipation in online gaming as though it were proven to be addictive.They also play fast and loose with the definition of addiction itself.They then proceed to conflate "gaming addiction" with problem gambling conducted online,conveniently ignoring any research that does not support their preset point of view.Even online browsing is described as a pathological activity.In each doubtful case the authors load the dice by beginning with a corny tearjerkerhypothetical, supposedly based on a true story, although they never do identify the true story.And of course,each detail of the sorrowful stories give the authors a soapboxfor allegations and conclusions which are simply not backed up, bibliography notwithstanding.In the end what we have here is a bad Sunday school sermon, dressed in semi-scholarly drag.No doubt it will be used as a building block for some preposterous "public policy" foundation,one of those curiously lucrative "non-profits" so beloved of meddling politicians generally.I never throw books away. But in this case I'm going to make an exception.

Contrary to the previous reviewer's point of view, I believe this book is valuable for all of the stated reasons within the book's Introduction. It's apparent that addiction to any medium is real and knowledge is the first step to liberation. Those that are negatively affected to any degree have a tendency to negate any reference to such addictions. We all have a risk to some addictive behavior with various products; however, behavior presented within this book exemplify new frontiers faced by today's society.This is an excellent resource to help those prone to such behaviors, and although the target audience is 6-12 graders many adults will likely find useful information within. My 13 year old daughter used this resource for a school project relating to such addictions, and found it to be very helpful.