Really the Internet is a tool that today cannot be disregarded. The proposals of the Network are now so numerous that the "life on line" is an almost indispensable to the work, for the pastoral care for the community and the Church. The impossibility of doing without something is connected to a concept that seams like negative and insidious, the concept of addiction. Being "addicted" is a condition inherent to our lives in every aspect. We need to eat and sleep, as well as having a social and emotional life. Without it we would not be good about ourselves. In this sense, the Internet allows us to meet important needs, from those related to the desire to learn, to those related to relationships with others. For those who have chosen the consecrated life the Net is another ground on which to sow and increase the Gospel’s teachings. This, without underestimating, however, the risks that we can encounter: the possibility of developing a pathological addiction to the Internet is just around the corner for all of us. Even in communities of consecrated men and women. We are now, step by step, in a clarification that might seem difficult, but it is essential to understand all the weight and the severity of excessive use of the Web.

What is this?

When we feel the irresistible need to repeat compulsively, repeatedly a specific habit with a aim to change our mental state, resulting such a condition as the manifestation of craving (abstinence and addiction), we are in the field of pathological addiction¹. The craving highlights the characteristic of coveting and uncontrollable desire that is initially associated with a state of wellness and quickly became the only way to experience pleasure and avoid negative feelings such as anxiety and depression. The moment you realize they can not live without that behavior and try to avoid it, one experiences a state of abstinence which manifests itself through symptoms such as irritability, anxiety, tremors and insomnia.

Our body develops a threshold of psycho-physics tolerance, which is variable and takes the name of addiction, a condition that leads the person to increase the intake of the substance or recurrence of the behavior to achieve the status of well-being². Within the context of pathological addiction recognize two distinct areas whose definition has problematic aspects, at least for the Italian language. Our language, in fact, translates the same word two English words that indicate two different phenomena. If it refers to the dependence with physical dependence and a chemical substance, without which an organism is not able to carry out its functions with addiction emphasizes the dependence on experiences, behaviors, or objects. These helping us to avoid anxiety, promoting the implementation of sequences of behavior that we perceive as rewarding, but that are gradually replacing to face-to-face human relations³. The Internet addiction falls into this second category -where there are compulsive shopping, addiction to video games, games of chances and others- which is defined categories of new addiction or new dependencies, because addiction has not as an object a chemical substance⁴, but not less dangerous.

Do not be trapped

The first to speak of Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) was Goldberg in 1995. He described the trouble highlighting all aspects of addiction, but he was obliged, in 1999, to further clarify the concept and coined a new acronym: Pathological Internet Use Disorder (PIU)⁵ or pathological disorder due to use of the Internet. This "disorder" is characterized by an impairment of work (school for students, professional for adults, pastoral and community for us) and relational activities. In Italy, many of the considerations on this subject are due to Cantelmi⁶ which emphasizes that "retomani" can be affected with or without other prior psychopathology, and highlights in particular how it is the technical features of the Network to promote the onset of the disorder. The Author acknowledges, in this condition, two main parts: the toxicofilia, characterized by obsessive attention to e-mail, looking repeatedly at several Internet sites, by a perceived discomfort when you aren’t online, and toxicomania as drug addiction, serious phase seems to be associated with psychopathological situations already present in person and occurs in those who make excessive use of the Internet.

Cantelmi believes that it is simplistic to talk exclusively with IAD (Internet Addiction Disorder) and proposes, instead, to call the disorder psychopathology linked to the use of the Internet (Internet Related Psychopatology - IRP), because he believes that the complex nature of the Net and the multiplicity of human needs which find satisfaction in the use of the Internet, need more precise distinctions. For this reason, he recognized within the context of "addiction and Internet" certain categories such as compulsive gambling online, cyber-sex addiction, dependence on cyber-relationships, dependence on excessive information and addiction to compulsive shopping online, to exemplify. Pitfalls to watch out for are numerous and are "inside" our communities, comfortably installed in the network cable or wirelessly hovering. It is essential to become aware. Having a correct behavior is not simply do not visit sites that, for the contents proposed, are negative. It also means not to be trapped by the abuse of cyber-relationships, while uplifting, if you lived at the expense of building relationships face-to-face in your community. What, then, good practices to be implemented?
 

Prevention: good practice

The pathological addictions may involve those who voted their lives to God? Yes, of course. We are not immune to the fascination that new technologies have on the mind and heart, especially since cyber pass through the communication of human relations that today many weave. Often, even the evangelization lives of the communication we have with others, lives of reflections around the Word of God that we exchange through all means available to us, lives for message on our charisma that commits on the Internet as well as other means of mass communication. The enthusiasm we put into this mission can sometimes overpower leaving us as prisoners of the medium that makes us forget the purpose we had in mind and heart when we started using the new technologies. We have to be on the alert, for ourselves and those around us. Let's talk with the children in our schools, with their families, with young people who work with us in the pastoral and education. Especially children and adolescents risk of being sucked into the vortex of new technologies and their enormous power of attraction. Let's look at some behaviors that help preventing the risk of addiction.

The strategies to be implemented are varied. To intersperse moments of technological enjoyment with reading, indeed, the more one is forced to use the Internet to work, the more you have to immerse yourself in reading, enriching activities, away from the screens, puts us in touch with our inner cyberspaces. We make it even more intense meditation and prayer renewing contact with the vitally that nourishes our consecration. Rede in te ipsum, this is the invitation of St. Augustine, who goes by inviting us to transcend ourselves for the Truth and for God. Reading, meditation, prayer and community life savored in all its fullness prevents Internet addiction and allow us to exploit the incredible potential without getting blinded. Intelligent use of technology, always. Abuse, never.

Prevention for ourselves and the others, they said. With the watchful and loving eye let us look at the behavior of the children which we take care in catechism classes, at school, in training sessions. Just we leaf through the results of recent surveys Eurispes and Telephone Azzurro⁷ to realize how high is the risk of "addiction". Nine out of ten teenagers use the Internet and as many as 50.7% of respondents said to have started to connect to the network between six and eight years of age. Our kids are important to us and then talk about it with them. Illuminate children, teens and parents on how and when to use the Internet to avoid developing dependence, as well as for us to be our duty, is a mission.

1V. CARETTI-D. LA BARBERA (a cura di), Le dipendenze patologiche. Clinica e psicopatologia, Raffaello Cortina Editore, Milano 2005; V. CARETTI-G. DI CESARE, "Psicodinamica delle dipendenze", in V. CARETTI-D. LA BARBERA (a cura di), Le dipendenze patologiche, 11-32.

2C. PRACUCCI, All in. Il gioco d’azzardo patologico, Alimat Edizioni, Cesena 2010.

³Cf C. GUERRESCHI, New Addictions. Le nuove dipendenze, San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo 2005; M.VALLEUR, Le condotte di addiction, in U. NIZZOLI-M. PISSACROIA, Trattato completo degli abusi e delle dipendenze.I. Storiografia - Fenomenologia - Epidemiologia - Aspetti legislativi e giuridici nei reati di abuso enelle situazioni di dipendenza, Piccin Nuova Libreria, Padova 2004, 265-268.

4C. GUERRESCHI, New Addictions. Le nuove dipendenze, San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo 2005.