Internet addiction? Temporality and life online in the networked society

Introduction

The recently published edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) was the first to include non-drug conditions in the category of addiction. While pathological gambling (renamed gambling disorder) was the only behavioural addiction recognised as a disorder in the manual, ‘internet gaming disorder’ was included in an appendix as a condition requiring (and meriting) further study (American Psychiatric Association (APA), 2013: 795). This entry into the DSM was a major step in the constitution of problematic and heavy internet use as a fixed, defined and reliably diagnosable disorder of compulsion—an addiction. The notion of internet addiction, the idea that people could lose control over their online behaviour in the same way that drug addicts lose control over their substance use, first emerged in the late 1990s as the internet became part of everyday life. Alongside media interest, a substantial psychological and psychiatric literature developed which quantified the condition through screening tests, questionnaires and scales, and established a discourse of symptoms, aetiology and treatment (Johnson, 2009a). Reflecting the rise in neurobiological explanation in medicine, recent research suggests that internet addiction is caused by neurochemical dysfunction in the reward system (Cash et al., 2012; Rose, 2007).

Building on earlier research which has highlighted the limitations of narrowly medicalised understandings of addiction, this article argues that the medical model of internet addiction misunderstands the lived and subjective experience of time spent online in an era in which the virtual and the real are entangled. ‘Internet addiction’ therefore tends to pathologise the practices of particular groups of heavy internet users, especially young people who are committed to online gaming as a key site of self-enactment. As a concept it directs attention away from digital dependence as a societal phenomenon which occurs in the context of dramatic global change in the social relations, technologies and economies of time and space (Rosa and Scheuerman, 2009).

This article is based on a research project which combined a comprehensive literature review of refereed journal articles on problematic internet use with a small-scale qualitative study of psychologists and adult heavy internet users. It focuses on the users’ accounts of everyday life conducted and performed via the Internet. These data suggest complex and multiple realities and behaviours that comprise social use of the internet. A productive way of understanding the users’ online activities is through recent accounts of practice which highlight the significance of time and temporality (Bourdieu, 2000; Shove et al., 2009; Southerton, 2013, 2006) and through Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow (Csikszentmihaliyi, 1990). While online, the users’ expertise, knowledge and skill are constituted and refreshed within salient social fields, in ways that establish status, meaning, worth and identity. They also experience the concentrated focus on the present moment characteristic of flow.

This article has a particular focus on the relationship between time, heavy internet use and life online. It critically examines the assumptions about time and its correct use embedded in notions of addiction and contrasts these to the multiple and networked forms of temporality illuminated in recent sociological and cultural studies of time and communication technology (Agger, 2011; Fuchs, 2014; Gregg, 2011; Hassan, 2005, 2007, 2012, 2013; Rosa, 2013; Rosa and Scheuerman, 2009). It examines the use of time by heavy internet users who others have labelled as internet addicts. It considers how time is spent, when it is spent, why it is spent and what this means. It draws on Robert Hassan’s notion of network time to provide an understanding of the experience of heavy internet users which takes account of the changed nature of time produced by communication technologies (Hassan, 2007).

It should be noted that while the article is critical of current dominant understandings of internet addiction, it does not deny that users can be deeply troubled by their inability to manage their online activities nor that attachment to online activities such as gaming can become a harmful element in people’s lives. However it does suggest that research into problematic patterns of internet use should be more aware of the local realities of user’s lives and the broader landscape of ‘the 24/7 networked society’ (Hassan and Purser, 2007).

The article is organised as follows. It begins with a brief and critical introduction to existing research on internet addiction, followed by an analysis of the crucial role a particular model of time plays in discourses of internet addiction. It then presents the main theoretical perspectives used in the analysis, including the notions of network time and flow, and ideas developed in the recent practice turn in social theory (Schatzki et al., 2001). After this, the interview-based study is described and the interviews analysed, with a focus on the participants’ understanding and use of time online.

Digitally dependent: Internet addiction

Beginning in the late twentieth century, research on internet addiction has grown into an extensive body of literature. Varied terms have been used to describe the problem of excessive internet use, including ‘Problematic Internet Use’, ‘Internet Abuse’, ‘pathological Internet use’, ‘Internet dependence’ and ‘digital pathologies’, and ‘at-risk/problematic Internet use (ARPIU)’ (Yau et al., 2014), however ‘internet addiction’ has become the most common shorthand. This range of terminology for the problem of excessive and harmful internet use supports the view that the construct remains heterogeneous and ill-defined, despite the dominance of addiction based models and their emphasis on loss of control and impairment (Spada, 2014). Keane et al. (2011) claimed “all diagnostic instruments and practices construct their objects rather than describe a pre-existing ‘reality’” rather than seeing “reality as partially produced within the scientific processes used to ‘observe’, ‘measure’ or ‘diagnose’ it” (p. 868).

Despite the attention internet addiction has received, it can also be argued that there is still little understanding of the experience of dependency on digital technologies and the meaning it has in people’s lives. The primarily quantitative nature of the research has limited its scope, while the dominance of psychiatric and psychological approaches has medicalised the problem without considering the broader social and cultural contexts of heavy internet use (Kuss and Griffiths, 2012). Thus while a great deal of data based on large scale surveys has been produced, questions about how to distinguish between normal and supposedly pathological behaviour remain unanswered. As Spada stated in a recent review of the literature on problematic internet use “we still know comparatively little about [the Internet’s] effects on our psychological functioning, mental health and well-being” (2014: 6).

In fact, most of the research in this field is based on a single questionnaire, the Internet Addiction Test (IAT) devised in 1998 by psychologist Kimberly Young. Young based the 20 item test on the diagnostic criteria for gambling addiction, which as many have argued is a problematic leap from a specific behaviour to an attachment to a technological environment (Johnson, 2009a). In addition, it is obvious that the role of digital technologies in our daily lives is vastly different from what it was in 1998. Questions from the IAT such as ‘How often do you find yourself anticipating when you will go on-line again?’ and ‘How often do you check your email before something else that you need to do?’ demonstrate the test’s origins in a time before work and social life were inescapably enmeshed with being ‘on-line’ (Johnson, 2009a). Yet, the IAT continues to be held up as a useful scale, with slight modifications (see for example, Adiele and Olatokun, 2014 (entitled the Revised IAT); Hawi, 2012, 2013; Pawlikowski et al., 2013; Stavropoulos et al., 2013; Wang et al., 2013 (entitled the Diagnostic Questionnaire); Watters et al., 2013). It also appears on many health and psychology websites as a tool for self-diagnosis.

While the IAT, with its conceptualization of internet use as a single entity comprising all forms of online behaviour from email to chat rooms, remains hugely influential, the existence of three ‘subtypes’ of internet addiction (excessive gaming, sexual preoccupation and email/text-messaging) became widely accepted in subsequent research (Block, 2008). Online games emerged as a particularly risky form of internet use as research carried out in Asia reported the rapidly increasing prevalence of excessive gaming among young people. This research also highlighted the significant social and public health consequences of this phenomenon (Hur, 2006). The compulsive gamer, usually a young male, whose attachment to virtual play leads him to lose interest in all other activities including eating and sleep became the iconic internet addict (Hussain et al., 2012; Pawlikowski and Brand, 2011; Weinstein, 2010). When internet addiction was considered for inclusion in the DSM-5, the relevant work group concluded that it was only in relation to internet gaming that enough research existed to justify the identification of a disorder.

Internet gaming disorder as it appears in the DSM-5 has nine proposed criteria which clearly show disorder’s genealogical origins in models of substance dependence and pathological gambling. The disorder is described as ‘persistent and recurrent use of the internet to engage in games’, often with other players, leading to impairment or distress. The nine criteria include symptoms of withdrawal and tolerance, preoccupation and loss of control over-use, continued use despite harms such as job loss and psychosocial problems and the use of gaming to escape or relieve negative mood (APA, 2013: 795). While they specifically target internet gaming, these criteria conform to the two fundamental features found in all conceptualisations of internet addiction, the idea of internet use as excessive, compulsive and all-consuming and the development of adverse consequences as a result of this use (Spada, 2014). In agreement with previous research, we do acknowledge that excessive use or heavy internet use is not equivalent to pathological use (Kuss and Griffiths, 2012). We also recognize that it is helpful to distinguish between excessive or extensive use and that which produces high levels of harm and suffering, and can thus be designated as a digital pathology or internet addiction. However, this distinction needs to be sensitive to the varieties of human action and diverse practices of everyday life in an advanced technological age.

As we argue in more detail in the following section, underlying dominant models of internet addiction are the culturally specific understanding of time as a limited resource which must be used productively and judiciously. While models of addiction in general deploy the temporal logic of clock time, this logic becomes particularly problematic when applied to technologies which are inseparable from dramatic changes in the social relations and economies of time (Hassan, 2005). Given the enmeshment of communication technologies with all aspects of everyday life, any assignment of the number of hours spent online deemed to be problematic or pathological can only be subjective and arbitrary (Johnson, 2009a; Leander and McKim, 2003).

Addiction and the uses of time

The idea of addiction as a condition or disease in which the sufferer has lost control over their drinking or drug use and therefore lost control of their life emerged in a particular historical and cultural context (Levine, 1978; Room, 1985). As Levine has argued, addiction as an explanation for excessive drinking came to make sense only when self-control became a vital individual and social value with the rise of the middle class in the nineteenth century (1978). The idea that success and worth were dependent on individual virtues such as discipline, hard work and restraint fostered the view that a failure of the will could lead to a man’s downfall. Thus embedded in the concept of addiction is an ideal of autonomy and controlled consumption in which desires are held in check.

Part of the ideal of controlled consumption found in the concept of addiction is a particular understanding of time. Addiction is characterised by the misuse or mismanagement of time, and this is one of the reasons it produces such pervasive negative consequences in other important aspects of life. One of the diagnostic criteria of addictive disorders is that “a great deal of time” is spent obtaining and using the substance or recovering from its effects (APA, 2013: 483). Another is that “important social, occupational or recreational activities” are relinquished because of substance use. The DSM gives the example that “the individual may withdraw from family activities and hobbies in order to use the substance” (APA, 2013: 483).

These criteria rely on and reproduce culturally specific understandings of time as a commodity or resource which must be used wisely (Room, 2003). They assume a hierarchical ranking of activities and pleasures, in which family life and wholesome and productive pursuits (assumed to be accessible and appealing to all) are placed above solitary consumption or the wrong sort of friends. Failure to order one’s priorities and use of time in this way is designated a sign of disorder.

In addition, models of addiction assume a socially specific context in which other more important and rewarding activities are in competition with substance use, rather than co-existing with it. The DSM manual states that in more severe cases “virtually all of the individual’s daily activities revolve around the substance” (APA, 2013: 483). This statement assumes a clear separation between ‘the substance’ and daily activities, because the latter are seen to ‘revolve around’ the former. A different interpretation would not necessarily see socialising while drinking as a matter of social life revolving around alcohol, but rather life as an assemblage of multiple practices taking place at one time.

The drive to understand and experience time as a scarce resource has strengthened with the rise of neoliberal discourses which closely align time with profitability and emphasise the importance of time efficiency, time budgeting and time management (Adam, 2006; Leccardi, 2007). Pushes for productivity, enhanced performance and efficiency have meant that our use of time has become highly scrutinised and “tasks… are reduced to measurable entities through the logic of rational calculation” (Sabelis, 2007: 272). As Bourdieu observes, this produces an alienated and anxious relationship to time:

… the pressure of ‘things to do’, of business and busyness, it inclines us to consider ‘time’ as a thing with which we have a relation of externality, that of a subject facing an object. This vision is reinforced by the habits of ordinary language, which make time something that one has, that one gains or wastes, lacks or has on one’s hands, etc. (Bourdieu, 2000: 206)

Therefore it is not surprising that the model of internet gaming disorder found in the DSM-5 relies on and reproduces concerns about the proper use of time and the propensity of internet games to ‘waste’ this scarce resource. As in substance addictions, internet gaming disorder is characterised by the inability to control the amount of time spent on an unproductive pastime, indeed there is “the need to spend increasing amounts of time engaged in internet games” (APA, 2013: 795). Career or educational opportunities are lost because of time spent gaming, ‘significant’ relationships are jeopardised and the addict lies about the amount of gaming to family members and therapists. The vision of the internet gamer is of a subject who is producing nothing and failing to contribute to or even participate in the social world. And while internet gaming is particularly prone to being dismissed as a waste of time as it associated with purposeless ‘play’ and the stereotype of the lazy teen, the general discourse of internet addiction is saturated with the idea of wasting time online and the use of online activity to avoid ‘real’ life (Hussain and Griffiths, 2009; Pawlikowski and Brand, 2011).

The discourses of internet addiction, as exemplified in internet gaming disorder, remain attached to binary distinctions between the real and the virtual, online and offline, work and play, production and consumption, presence and absence and even night and day. There is an attachment to a linear chronicity in which certain tasks are supposed to be completed in advance of other tasks and at certain times of day.

As many have argued, digital technologies have disrupted these distinctions and norms, and produced new forms of temporality characterised by collapsed boundaries between spheres of activity (such as work and leisure) and the possibility of combining and compressing tasks and mixing real time with virtual time (Agger, 2011; Gregg, 2011; Hassan, 2007; Laguerre, 2004). For example, the use of social media is linked to possible economic outputs resulting from advertising, usage and for-profit platforms (Fuchs, 2014). And rather than taking time away from ‘real’ friendships, for many it is social media which enables friendships to flourish and social events to occur.

As we discuss in the following sections, digital technologies and ubiquitous online access have thus enabled and produced different temporalities and practices which need to be taken into account when examining the meaning and experience of heavy internet use.

Temporalities, practice and flow

Embedded in Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice is a critique of a scientific metaphysics of time which “considers history either as a pregiven reality, a thing in-itself, previous and external to practice, or as the (empty) a priori framework for every historical process” (2000: 206). In contrast, he argues that the point of view of ‘the acting agent’ enables us to recognise that “practice is not in time but makes time (human time, as opposed to biological or astronomical time)” (2000: 206, emphasis in original).

The notion of network/ed time formulated by Robert Hassan provides one of the most compelling perspectives on the forms of temporality produced by the revolution in communication technologies. Characterised by connected asynchronicity, network time is a “context-created temporal experience” and “is disconnected from the local clock times of the users” (Hassan, 2007: 52, emphasis in original). Networked time means the clock no longer dominates and time is no longer experienced in a singular linear fashion. Connected asynchronicity means people have the capability to create their own time and different timescapes can be combined (Hassan, 2007). In 2013, Hassan extended his definition:

Network time may be seen (experienced) as a temporal fragmentation of time(s) into numberless network contexts; into the time(s) that we create and experience online and in the increasingly networked forms of work and education and leisure that fill our waking hours. In the network the zoned hour of the clock becomes more and more irrelevant as the entire planet becomes the theoretical context of our networked connections and for the experience of time. (p. 361)

As Hassan highlights, the typical adult is now a networked individual who is digitally connected globally, socially and culturally. Their daily practices are enabled by ‘networked time’ and the ubiquity of mobile devices (Hassan, 2007) even though external observers tend to view these practices in a detemporalised manner. Thus the distinction between normal and excessive ‘internet use’ becomes harder to determine, especially if we recognise that as Bourdieu argues, practices always unfold in time and indeed play with and constitute time and tempo. As he states, the meaning of practice is inseparable from its “temporal structure, that is, its rhythm, its tempo, and above all its directionality” (Bourdieu, 1990: 81).

This vision of users producing billions of different time contexts within the network and through their practice undermines the assumptions about the use and waste of time found in discourses of internet addiction. The practices involved in internet gaming, for example, enable users to create their own times and spaces through interaction with others, often across a globalised network. The context gives meaning to the engagement in the respective internet applications (Kuss, 2013). And rather than constituting a single leisure activity that takes time away from other activities it can be understood as part of an assemblage of online practices which involve self-production and self-enactment.

Another tool which can help to understand rather than simply label heavy internet use is the notion of flow. In earlier work, one of us identified the flow experience evident in a group of young people’s practice of developing and maintaining technological expertise through online activity (Johnson, 2007). Flow is distinguished by absorption in a moment and immersion in the experience, and can be colloquially referred to as being ‘in the zone’ in which clock time does not matter. In this sense, flow is similar to some experiences of network time, in which spaces of asynchronicity allow users to create and control context-dependent times (Hassan, 2007). Thus while Moneta and Csikszentmihalyi view flow as a psychological state of feeling “cognitively efficient, motivated and happy” (1996: 287), this experience is also socially and technologically mediated. As we will show in the following section, the six factors of flow identified by Nakamura and Csíkszentmihályi (2001) (including an altered sense of time) are consistent with the absorption and satisfaction experienced by heavy internet users:

Intense and focused concentration on what one is doing in the present moment;

Interestingly, a recent article suggested that adolescents with high levels of ‘flow’ and a sense of ‘telepresence’ had an increased propensity for Internet Abuse (as measured by the IAT and other measures) (Stavropoulos et al., 2013). Telepresence was defined by the authors as “a psychological state in which the virtual nature of internet experience is unnoticed” (p. 1941) and “the experience of presence in an environment by means of a communication medium” (p. 1942). From their perspective, framed by the notion of Internet Addiction, telepresence was problematic because it marked the tendency of the user to experience ‘the virtual environment’ as real while reality is neglected. But as telepresence and flow were associated with absorption and satisfaction in that study, it seems at odds with the impairment and distress implied by a diagnosis of Internet Abuse.

In order to further elucidate the nexus between networked time and flow we will now examine how a small group of heavy internet users understood their internet practice.

Experiences of time online

In a recent, small-scale, qualitative study, four heavy internet users over the age of 18 were interviewed. These four interviews constituted part of a larger project, but the purpose of this article is to provide a theoretical argument and use some of this qualitative data to illustrate theory. It is not an intention to claim this data as generalizable. After obtaining university human research ethics committee approval, an advertisement requesting participation in the research was placed on Facebook™. It asked whether potential participants considered themselves to be a heavy internet user, and then whether other friends or family had commented their use was potentially problematic. Respondents clicked on the advertisement which took them to a website providing further information, then they emailed the research assistant to express interest in participation. The research assistant then provided them the explanatory statement and consent form. A list of questions was also provided prior to the interview. After obtaining informed consent, a time to meet with, observe and interview the participants was organised. The interviewees were asked about their motivation and rationale for their high levels of internet use.

This article does not claim that these four participants were internet addicts, but the participants indicated that other family members had identified them as problematic internet users. And indeed, their attachment to online activities could easily be captured by some diagnostic measures, given the low diagnostic thresholds suggested by some. For example, the net addiction website developed by Kimberly Young states that ‘if your Internet use pattern interferes with your life in any way shape or form … you may have a problem. In addition, if you find that you are using the Internet as a means to regularly alter your mood you may be developing a problem’ (Center for Internet Addiction, 2014). This website defines internet addiction quite expansively as ‘any online-related, compulsive behavior which interferes with normal living and causes severe stress on family, friends, loved ones, and one’s work environment’ (Center for Internet Addiction, 2014).

The following interview excerpts demonstrate the generally positive interpretation the users provided of the role of the internet in their lives. However, as Bruce’s comment below reveals, there is an ambivalence or tension about acknowledging that online activities are a crucial feature of one’s life. He states they are ‘important’ but immediate qualifies this to ‘not very important’, then returns to their importance:

Well it is important to me, well it’s not very important like I am pretty sure I can survive without the internet but it is important because I like to keep up to date on all the latest news, especially gaming news I like to keep up to date with that. Movie news, I am into movies and reading about them, watching the latest trailers and everything, I probably want to be up to date with everything. There is a bit of peer pressure in the world as well because my friends will be like “Hey Bruce, come play this online game with me” or “Come get this game” and stuff like that, so I am usually, I usually say “yeah, why not?” There is peer pressure involved in it (Bruce, 22 years).

Similarly, Bob (21 years) stated his internet use was important, but not vital. His continuing use was shaped by its availability, and the lack of alternative activities to fill his non-work time:

Generally there’s not a lot on when I get home [after work] so it’s just the easier, simpler option. But if there’s something on we’d be like yes, we’d do that. But generally of late there’s just hasn’t been much on. It’s cold, rainy; people are going ah, not going to do much (Bob).

Understandings of time

The internet users interviewed were creating their own sense of time and space, based on the connected asynchronicity of network time. The clock did not matter while in the state of flow enabled by digital technology. The internet enabled their ‘free’ time to be ‘spent’ in a way that was productive and beneficial (but not in labour terms). It allowed them to relax while also maintaining and developing skills. Importantly, despite being regarded as excessive by others, their internet use was an agentic choice; they were not compelled to use their time in that way, yet their perpetual use implies a sense of full immersion and enjoyment, characteristic of flow.

As identified in previous studies (Johnson, 2009b, 2009c), the ‘refreshing’ (maintenance, development, upskilling) of their knowledge and skills was important because of the status or symbolic capital they had in their field. Many heavy users positioned themselves as experts or as people who are looked up to for advice or seniority because of their experience and knowledge (Johnson, 2014a). Therefore, in order to maintain that position in the field, they need to continue learning and continue to develop their expertise.

When Bruce was asked “What does the internet mean to you?” his reply suggests a relationship which changes in intensity over time, sometimes it is ‘addictive’, at other times, ‘boring’:

I see it as a luxury really. The same thing as reading a book or a magazine or watching a movie or playing a game, it is a luxury. You do it when you have got spare time. The internet it can get boring and you usually get sick of it after a while and then you just do something else and then you end up coming back on it again but you do something else like you might get a new game and you will be playing that online with your friends. A new website might come up and you might be addicted to that and it is just, it constantly changes just like how there might be a new downloadable game or a new movie come out and it just always changes really, there is always something new about it (Bruce).

This kind of flexible attachment, which is responsive to the other demands of life, is not captured by the model of addiction which suggests an unrelenting and progressive disorder based on compulsive behaviour. By describing their internet use as ‘a luxury’, ‘a hobby’ and ‘a vice’, the users emphasised the valuable role the internet played in their lives while also signalling its non-essential nature.

The interviews also revealed the complex relationship between the users’ experience of time online and their awareness of clock time. When asked what a ‘long period of time’ was when on the internet, Mary’s reply suggested a flow experience, in that time passed quickly when she was engaged online. However, her answer also described the way her sense of time passing was influenced by her awareness of the other demands on her time:

… it just depends on what I’m doing, if I’ve got a fair bit to do that can be a couple of hours, if there’s not quite so much to do and there’s a bit of chatting going on, I reckon it could be five or six hours yeah and the only break you have from that is to go to the toilet; make your coffee; anything like that so, and of course I haven’t mentioned the fact that you know, mum’s here most of the time and she’s had her own appointments this morning so she’s gone off to do that. But she’s here and we’ve got, like I sit in the chair and mum sits on the couch and we’ve both got stacks of magazines and she does the crosswords and I do the other puzzles so if we’re in the same room at the same time you know, she’s buried in her magazine or in control of the TV while I get caught up in the other puzzles. So it’s sort of – I was actually thinking about that this morning, it’s the other alternative to being online, I can be doing that or I can be online, what would be better? (Mary)

Rather than conceiving of time online as in competition with other daily practices, the users’ responses speak to the value of temporal diversity and the contribution that having access to different experiences of time can make to wellbeing (Clancy, 2014). However, it is also crucial to acknowledge, as Southerton (2013) observes, that different practices demand different levels of temporal specificity and coordination. Some, for example dinner parties or traditional family meals, require particular temporal conditions for their performance, while others such as reading or watching television have fewer temporal demands. One of the attractions of online activity such as gaming is that they are available 24/7 and tend to require less coordination (although this varies). But this temporal openness should not be automatically attached to a normative evaluation in which collective and coordinated activities are regarded as more worthy and meaningful than personalised time use.

The heavy internet users’ experiences also challenge the pessimism of critics of ‘fast capitalism’ such as Ben Agger who argue that the colonisation of ‘free time’ by online technologies is a form of intensified ‘time robbery’ and ‘time administration’ (2007, 2011). Agger (2007) highlights the way that networked society robs people of autonomy, sleep, affect and time to reflect, theorise and strategise about their situation. Instead they are locked into perpetual production and consumption through attachment to their “electronic prostheses” (Agger, 2007: 232).

While the internet users we studied were involved in ongoing consumption and production through viewing news, contributing to online content and playing games, these activities could also be interpreted as the kind of reflective, enjoyable and non-instrumental pastime Agger (2007) endorses as a rebellious and resistant response to time robbery. These users appear to be using the internet instead of being used by it. This distinct difference should be acknowledged. Agger (2007, 2011) theorised the labour associated with work time and free time or down time being engulfed or eliminated (or a ‘presence bleed’ according to Gregg, 2011). The heavy internet users in this study were talking about their use of the internet in their free time for down time purposes. None of the participants identified using the internet for work after hours (in addition to the Ford-era working day).

This article has pointed to the problems associated with the foundation of this field of research and has highlighted limitations associated with the continuing proliferation of the hegemonic research. The phenomenon of internet over-use is being pathologised and medicalised without having in-depth, extensive rich data to provide adequate understanding of these behaviours. As argued elsewhere (Johnson, 2014b), there is a need to engage in qualitative research to fully understand the nature of internet engagement, especially in relation to ‘over-use’. With the rise of online sports betting, the ‘age of (chronic) distraction’ (Hassan, 2012), the proliferation of gambling within online games, the prevalence of social media and the unavoidable screen time we endure in this digital age, it seems misleading to equate everyday phenomena with individual pathology and the proposition of health ‘solutions’.

Conclusion

Internet addiction has achieved high public and scholarly visibility in recent years, driven by increased preoccupation with the amount of time being spent online by children, young people and adults. In this article we have argued that over-reliance on quantitative and medical perspectives has led to labels being assigned with little understanding of the phenomenological experience of time being spent on the internet, the purposes for which the internet is used, and the temporal dimension of these activities (Rosa, 2013). In particular, we have argued that the construct of addiction is dependent on a model of linear clock time, in which time is a scarce resource which must be used productively.

We have suggested that excessive internet use needs to be examined in the context of the specific temporal conditions produced by twenty-first century digital technologies, specifically through the lens of network time. Networked time appears to enable flow, i.e. where an experience of immersion and absorption occurs. This appears to be at odds with flow being a contributor to Internet Abuse (Stavropoulos et al., 2013). Others have pointed out the need for more scrutiny surrounding the experience of flow with online addictions (Kuss and Griffiths, 2012). Instead of suggesting that this subjective experience of time is a symptom of individual pathology and producing arbitrary judgements about normal versus abnormal use of the internet, research could be focused on finding out more about how internet users’ (whether they are over-users, heavy users, pathological users, or addicted users) experience networked time.

The dominant models of internet addiction remain wedded to a binary vision of time online versus time in the real world. But there is a tension with declaring there should be time limits and restraints on the amount of time being spent engaging in internet activities. If internet immersion is engrossing, rewarding, and absorbing, are not neoliberal discourses continuing to influence the labelling of practices because these practices are not synonymous with productivity? The regulation of ‘clock time’, as a structure of industrial production (Adam, 2006) continues to impede a comprehensive understanding about the multiple ontologies (nature) of the internet users’ experiences. If heavy internet users are bound up in their bid to maintain their social status which constitutes their identity, as we have suggested, then they are not limited by network time, their agentic use of the internet is for their own purposes. They are caught up in their experience of flow and it enables them to have power in the particular field in which they are positioned.

More broadly, this article highlights the inadequacies and limitations of medicalised and individualised models of human behaviour that are routinely adopted to explain and remedy habitual, addictive or apparently ‘thoughtless’ action. The discourse of addiction in particular assumes a normal state of individual autonomy which is vulnerable to collapse, producing a state of psychological, social and moral deficit. The account of temporality developed in contemporary theories of practice and built on in this article suggests that the social (and psychological) sciences require different theoretical and conceptual frameworks to explain these kinds of phenomena of intense attachment and involvement. Concepts such as ‘flow’, ‘practices’ and ‘networked society/time’ represent useful resources in the development of such frameworks as they do not default to assumptions of individual autonomy and binary understandings of time and its proper use.