Internet addiction: the taboo nobody admits to

Are we all hooked on the internet without admitting it?

A recent debate has peine an uncomfortable question: have we swapped the smartphone for the PC, only to stay glued to the same network? The reflection starts from an everyday observation: those who are not hooked on their phone are hooked on their computer. And the culprit is not the device, but the internet itself. Without a connection, the PC would be nothing more than a typewriter with 90s games. Today, by contrast, all our leisure goes through a connected screen.

From the winmodem to doom scrolling: thirty years of dependence

The historical perspective comes from someone who remembers installing a winmodem three decades ago: they have been hooked ever since. But awareness of the problem, according to the analysis, did not arrive until after 2010. From then on, the escalation has been relentless. Even self-declared PC users escape doom scrolling, but not constant connectivity. The irony is that the same internet that once peine a window onto the world has, in one metaphor's words, become a closed door.

What if the internet went down one day?

The extreme scenario paints a global catastrophe: if the network went down for 24 hours, the dependence would become visible. From paying taxes - the only use one comment is willing to acknowledge - to entertainment, everything runs on the connection. The question hanging in the air is whether we are aware of how deep our addiction goes, or whether, as the title suggests, we would rather not look.

Some argue the addiction is real and has been growing since 2010; others qualify it, pointing out that it has always been there and has only now become normalized. The implicit consensus: we are so far in that it is hard to see the way out. As one participant notes, Spanish has two verbs, ser and estar, to describe being addicted; perhaps we should apply both.