Information Technology Reference
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factors that make a person more susceptible to addiction include a tendency to pursue
an activity to excess, a lack of achievement, a fear of failure, and feelings of alienation.
Young's studies have led her to “believe that behaviors related to the Internet have
the same ability to provide emotional relief, mental escape, and ways to avoid problems
as do alcohol, drugs, food, or gambling” [103]. She notes that the typical Internet addict
is addicted to a single application.
People who use the Internet excessively can harm themselves and others for whom they
are responsible. For this reason, excessive Internet use is a moral issue.
Kantianism, utilitarianism, and social contract theory all share the Enlightenment
view that individuals, as rational beings, have the capacity and the obligation to use their
critical judgment to govern their lives [107]. Kant held that addiction is a vice, because
it's wrong to allow your bodily desires to dominate your mind [108]. Mill maintained
that some pleasures are more valuable than others and that people have the obligation
to help each other distinguish better pleasures from worse ones [51].
Ultimately, people are responsible for the choices they make. Even if an addict is
“hooked,” the addict is responsible for choosing to engage in the activity the first time.
This view assumes that people are capable of controlling their compulsions. According
to Jeffrey Reiman, vices are “dispositions that undermine the sovereignty of practical
reason. Dispositions, like habits, are hard but not impossible to overcome, and under-
mining something weakens it without necessarily destroying it entirely” [107, p. 89].
Reiman's view is supported by Peele, who believes addicts can choose to recover
from their addictions. “People recover to the extent that they (1) believe an addiction
is hurting them and wish to overcome it, (2) feel enough efficacy to manage their
withdrawal and life without the addiction, and (3) find sufficient alternative rewards
to make life without the addiction worthwhile” [102, p. 156].
While our analysis to this point has concluded that individual addicts are morally
responsible for their addictions, it's also possible for a society to bear collective moral
responsibility for the addictions of some of its members. We have already discussed how
social conditions can increase a person's susceptibility to addiction, and Peele states an
addict will not recover unless life without the addiction has sufficient rewards.
Addiction is wrong because it means voluntarily surrendering the sovereignty of
your reason by engaging in a compulsion that has short-term benefits but harms the
quality of your life in the long term. However, if somebody is living in a hopeless
situation where any reasonable person would conclude there are no long-term prospects
for a good life, then what is lost by giving in to the compulsion? Reiman believes that this
is the case for many American inner-city drug addicts. “They face awful circumstances
that are unjust, unnecessary, and remediable, and yet that the society refuses to remedy.
Addiction is for such individuals a bad course of action made tolerable by comparison
to the intolerable conditions they face. In that face, I think that moral responsibility for
their strong addictions...passes to the larger society” [107, p. 91].
