That overwhelms us Internet? If you look at the numbers, you are inclined to agree with Frank Schirrmacher's thesis. But is that really true?

The fairy tale of internet addiction: time traps, alleged excessive demands & productivity miseries

Byte stress, laziness and deprivation of love

Alone with Facebook 98.000 friend requests are confirmed worldwide every minute, 74.200 event invitations are sent, 66.150 photos are tagged, 135.000 photos are uploaded, 510.400 comments are made, 382.850 likes are made, 50.000 likes are shared, 231.600 private messages are sent, 79.350 wall entries and 92.550 Status made updates. Phew, it can make you dizzy at times. How on earth are you supposed to do all that? If you follow the figures presented by the British edition of the men's magazine Esquire, ours sees it Future bleak with the internet and mobile phones: If you assume that 33 million professionals leave their mobile phones switched on 16 hours a day in order to be reachable, then you arrive at 256 million hours of stand-by time per day or 61 billion hours of stand-by -Students per year (with 240 working days per year being assumed. In addition, a study from 2008 showed that around 20 of the working people also use their mobile phones and smartphones for the eMail-Use traffic. According to the Esquire, it can be assumed that this number has now risen to 50 percent. Now if you assume that everyone has at least five eMails reads a day and takes about five minutes for each and about 20 eMails answers every week and it takes a total of 40 minutes, then, Esquire calculates, we spend 55 hours a year with ours alone eMails to.

Sound terrifying, right? But guess what? The numbers aren't even realistic, they're just drawn out of thin air to reflect our overwhelmed by internet and mobile Technology to prove. The number of mobile phones, for example, is far too high: it may be true of managers or editors that they believe they have to be available 16 hours a day. But the cashier in the supermarket? The eMailNumbers, on the other hand, are set far too low: There are people who do 50 instead of five in a day eMailget s. But what is even worse: Here the impression is purposefully conveyed that modern means of communication inevitably lead to such a high workload and excessive demands that would not exist without modern technology. A big mistake. But the opposite is the case: it actually helps to work more productively. Provided you can handle her properly.

Does the network overwhelm us?

Because nobody is forced to leave their mobile phone switched on 16 hours a day. Not even by bosses or customers. More on why many still believe they have to do this below. And also from the mass of news that is pouring in on him every day, eMails, tweet, facebook-Messages, etc., anyone can filter out exactly what interests them. For example, by making friends in social networks and thus only subscribing to the messages of certain users. And by using filters such as RSS readers, which deliver the desired information precisely. It's quicker and more effective than reading three newspapers from cover to cover a day - assuming you have the necessary tools. Because that's exactly where the house is in the pepper: We learned to read in school, we can flip through a newspaper intuitively. The large number of new tools and tools that are available on the Internet, on the other hand, seems so difficult and complicated to many that they prefer to leave it as is. This is about something else first: namely the mistake in reasoning that many self-proclaimed enemies of the Internet commit: like the ostrich Head to be stuck in the sand after the moth "Everything was better in the old days!" Nonsense! It would be better to actively deal with the admittedly rapid technical innovations, to try them out and to check which tools and networks work for you useful are - and which ones are better left alone.

But of course having your head in the sand is so much more comfortable and calm! And relieves that Brain. That's what wears it Debt in the way of thinking: It wants to act as economically as possible and the multitude of information that bombards us every day, so fast sort or discard as possible. Good thing, otherwise we would probably perish from information overload. However, our brain primarily selects information that it can integrate into existing thought patterns. And even stimuli that trigger strong feelings are processed faster and better than information that you are not emotionally involved in. Of course, this has the disadvantage that we primarily perceive what influences our previous beliefs, experiences, attitudes, feelings and preferences. So we manifest our own prejudices and practically only confirm what we already believed.

The big mistake

Like the New York Times Executive Bill Keller, who immediately demonized the entire Internet after his emotional shock experience with his own daughter. Maybe also because he has not had a particularly pleasant experience with it before. And who proves one thing above all: his brain is not overwhelmed by the Internet, but is apparently overloaded anyway. There is no other way of explaining his undifferentiated laziness of thinking. Or like Christian Stöcker, head of the Netzwelt department Spiegel Online, analyzed so aptly: “People over 50 have a decisive disadvantage compared to those under 40 (roughly speaking) when it comes to the communicative Internet:

The majority of them only got to know it as an initially joyless work tool; they wrote their first eMails to colleagues or the boss, not the girl they were secretly in love with. You are at Facebook, because they feel it would be better that way, not because their friends are talking to each other there. And they communicate, for example via Twitter, with total strangers. The fact that this results in conversations that some experience as 'flat', 'non-social' or 'trivial' is not particularly surprising. The fact that such people may feel they are not having enough good conversations themselves probably has more to do with their workload than with the internet.” Even people who are well acquainted with the Internet and have become well-known feel obviously overwhelmed in him. So overwhelmed that they even write books about it - like the communication scientist Miriam Meckel.

The logic of the illogical

She is also not a blank slate: first a journalist, at 1999 the youngest professor in Germany, 2001 State Secretary and government spokeswoman for North Rhine-Westphalia, today Professorin and Director at the Institute for Media and Communication Management University St. Gallen and also partner of TV presenter Anne Will. In 2007, Meckel also admitted that she was overwhelmed by modern technology and wrote about "The Happiness of Unreachability". In it, Meckle shows herself as a slave to her Blackberry, to which she constantly goes Communication forces, does not give her time for necessary rest breaks and also intrudes into every private situation. On page 139, she aptly characterizes where the journey is headed: “Step by step, neo-nomads are becoming the norm in our working and living environment. Work is becoming more and more 'virtualized', keyword conference call. We can take everything we need to work with us wherever we go. On the one hand, this makes mobility easier and, for example, allows you to go home on Thursdays or to the office on Tuesdays Office to drive. On the other hand, being at home didn't mean that privacy begins, but the work continues under different auspices and in a different environment.” Meckel is such a good example of her own thesis precisely because she came up with it a short time later Burnout fell ill. The logical consequence of a social development in which only those who are constantly available and can react as quickly as possible stay on the ball?

That sounds frighteningly logical – and yet it is the wrong conclusion. Because when reading Meckel's book, it always shines through that the actual Problem not the technology, but above all how we deal with it: Because, to put it simply, the basic dilemma is our desire for love, social recognition and Success. Sarina Pfauth has Meckel's problem in the Süddeutschen newspaper aptly analyzed: “How can someone even retire after a burnout if they have previously lived in such a speed frenzy?…Does such a person want to disappear into the apparent insignificance of a petit-bourgeois life? No. Goldmund doesn't want to be Narcissus anymore? No."

Inaccessibility as a status symbol?

What Miriam Meckle describes also applies to many other users of the Internet: They try very hard to be significant - and then wonder about their own work overload. Because worse than a crowded one eMail- For many people, the mailbox is one in which there is a yawning emptiness. Because that means, for heaven's sake, that we are completely insignificant and nobody needs us! And maybe even your job is in danger and your livelihood threatened? A horror show! Practically love withdrawal! So it's no wonder that we keep coming across people who loudly emphasize their own importance at the airport or on the train with their cell phones. Every fourth mobile phone user has even had a cell phoneConversation simulated to stand out in front of others, as found by James E. Katz. To put it simply, one could say: work overload due to mobile internet and social media results primarily from the desire for recognition and Respect by boss, colleagues, acquaintances.

The Federal Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media eV, or BITKOM for short, has put the horror of constant availability in numbers: BITKOM surveyed 1.000 people aged 14 and over and found that the boundaries between work and private life are becoming increasingly blurred due to modern means of communication . 88 percent of the employed people surveyed can also be reached outside of their regular working hours by customers, colleagues or superiors via the Internet or mobile phone. In 2009 it was only 73 percent. But there is still more to come: 29 percent of the employees are at any time for professional purposes by phone or by eMail available. After all: 45 percent can only be reached at certain times outside of working hours, for example in the evening or on the weekend. And 15 percent state that they can only be reached in exceptional cases. There are mainly differences in the level of availability between men and women Women. 34 percent of male workers can be reached at any time, compared to 24 percent of women.

Want to please everyone?

However, being constantly available to please everyone is simply the wrong way to achieve this. Other people quickly get used to and rely on the always-on-call Yes Man to do everything. They take you for granted. And the Anxiety from rejection, from which one is still on vacation eMails checks, other people can literally smell it, even at a great distance. Career nobody does that. On the contrary: over time it becomes more and more difficult to say "no" - and at the latest when you collapse from sheer overload, that's the last bit Trust and respect playful. In any case, this is not the way to demonstrate leadership qualities, as a study by the RespectResearchGroup at the University of Hamburg shows.

Luis Suarez, who works as a knowledge and community manager at IBM, shows that you can certainly educate your communication partners on the Internet to behave as you wish. However, not in an office, but in the home office on the Canary Islands. More than three years ago, Suarez decided to go without eMails to live. To dissuade his fellow men from continuing to do so eMails, he announced his plan large and from then on, no longer responds eMails. His interlocutors were thus forced to use other channels. In fact, Suarez has the number in more detail in this way eMails reduced to 95 percent.  He uses eMail only for calendar entries and confidential one-to-one discussions. Above all, he uses social software tools such as chats, wikis, blogs and Twitter. And he calls more.

So if you are smart, you simply say “no” to being torpedoed by all kinds of communication junk. And what's more: with occasional periods of inaccessibility, you even increase your reputation. Because when everyone is available at all times, it becomes a rare luxury not to have to answer all the time. And those who allow themselves the luxury of communicative absence are showing: “Look here, I can afford it!” Absence as a status symbol. An example: Anyone who wants to prove their leadership skills as a manager today goes on vacation for 10 weeks - and is simply not available! Aside from that of his own health and In doing so, he shows something completely different: that he understands his job because he has organized the shop so well that it can be done without him, while he not only relaxes, but also hatches good ideas for the future. On the other hand, a manager who is constantly under stress and is always on call has no time left for his actual managerial task and innovative thinking. The Harvard Business Manager even recommends as a deterrent: “Every time a manager calls his office during this time, his year-end bonus should be reduced by 20 percent. Every time an employee has to call the manager, 10 percent of his bonus would be deducted. "  So just drive away and turn everything off. But if only it were that easy with letting go!

Does the internet make us sick?

A prejudice against internet and social media that is often brought up is that it makes us sick. The most recent example is the research of Betsy Sparrow, a psychologist at Columbia University, who concluded from a simple color test that the computer, which we use as an external memory store, impairs our own memory performance. Leaving aside why we should actually remember everything when the Internet gives us access to far more information than our brains could ever store, Sparrow is taking the same line as Frank Schirrmacher or Bill Keller. And she's far from the only one. For example, when government spokesman Steffen Seibert writes on Twitter “Back from vacation. Forbidden me to tweet in between, you don't want to get addicted. Information about politics again starting tomorrow”, then it shows one thing above all: the fears of becoming too strong in the brave new Internet world verlieren and becoming totally dependent on her are great. You are quite justified, because the danger is there. But the real causes usually lie deeper. And switching off completely is simply the wrong way!

Napier University in Edinburgh surveyed around 200 students about the use of Facebook. Twelve percent think so Network scary. 32 percent of the respondents feel guilty if they reject friend requests, 63 percent delay their response as long as possible and ten percent could very well do without such requests altogether. The really interesting thing about this study: The more Facebook-Friends someone has, the more he obviously feels overwhelmed. The stressed ones had an average of 117 “friends”, the more relaxed ones significantly fewer, namely only 75.

The Stress stems in large part from the fact that feelings of anxiety, stress and insecurity are little positive Factors that could neutralize the negative associations. Reason: Many of the respondents feel compelled to use Facebook to be, because that's how you do it - but they haven't yet recognized the benefits of doing so. Much more you log in again and again because you don't want to miss anything good and then find yourself in a kind of neurotic limbo in which you don't know whether to hold out for a while or not in order not to miss anything. It is precisely this unproductive endurance that causes anxiety or dissatisfaction. FacebookAccording to the study, users with a large number of friends, from 500 upwards, also have a problem with their self-perception: They consider themselves small stars and believe that they constantly have to send news about themselves. The more contacts, the bigger it is Audience and with it the pressure to present yourself.

The social media-Zwang

Another danger is that the virtual world offers the Internet all too convenient ways to escape from the difficulties of everyday life. To a certain extent a completely normal one Behavior. The apparent anonymity of the Internet makes many feel more open and find it easier to find “friends” that they might not find as quickly and in much smaller numbers in real life. That can be positive, but becomes a problem when the network is supposed to compensate for deficits in personal relationships: when people make friends, awareness and are looking for love that they don't get in normal life and therefore communicate with complete strangers, then it can happen that in their euphoria they mistake virtual identities for real people. Ultimately, the “real” social relationships, work and ultimately life as a whole suffer as a result.

An interesting experiment was carried out at the University of Maryland: 200 students completely avoided digital media for 24 hours and then blogged about their experiences. The results were surprising: For many, doing without it is not a question of will, but of ability. The students reported desperate need to go online, restlessness and extreme nervousness. Especially with social networks and SMS, it was difficult for many to let go. But where does the intensive use of social networks end and where does the pathological addiction begin? Is it still normal user behavior if I keep on mine even while on vacation? eMails look? Is someone who works at Facebook surfs, already addicted or does this only apply to people who surf the net all night? And from how many tweets, SMS or eMails per day is there a risk of addiction?

That is exactly the difficulty: there is no clear classification: the technical term for internet addiction is internet addiction disorder. But it is disputed among experts whether network dependency is an independent addiction at all. The Term himself was in 1995 by the New York psychiatrist Dr. Ivan Goldberg - to show in an ironic way how quick and frivolous in our Society mental disorders are diagnosed: His reasoning: “I don't think that internet addiction exists, any more than tennis, bingo or TV addiction does exist. People can overdo anything. Calling this a glitch is a mistake!”

The fairy tale of internet addiction

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the American Psychiatric Association, which has been published since 1952 and in German since 1996, is the bible for the classification of mental disorders. Objective is to make diagnoses reproducible in order to facilitate healing, which is why the DSM is used today in clinics and insurance companies. In 2010 a research group led by Todd Elder from Michigan State University showed how fatal such classifications can be: In the past few years, one million children and adolescents in the USA have been mistakenly, so to speak accidentally, fidgeted as fidgety people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (also known as ADHD for short ) have been diagnosed and treated appropriately - usually with Ritalin or other medication. For this purpose, two national health surveys and the data pool of a private insurance company were evaluated. The striking thing is that it only affects 20 percent of all ADHD diagnoses. If Elder and be Team are right, there are plenty of ADHD misdiagnoses in Germany too.

By the way: Of course, a term has now also been created for ADHD that is triggered by the Internet: namely Internet Attention Deficit Disorder (IADD) or Divided Attention Disorder (DAD) – ok German like digital attention disorder. But times Fun aside, what does this classification madness tell us about internet addiction? That here, too, the boundaries between excessive use and the risk of addiction are fluid – as is so often the case. As with many other addictions, whether someone actually becomes addicted depends heavily on other factors. Many of the so-called Internet addicts can also be diagnosed with other disorders, such as depression, anxiety or lack of impulse control. Narcissistic people can live out their penchant for self-expression and fantasies of power uninhibitedly on the Internet. The Internet offers shy people with social phobias faster opportunities to make contacts and thus supposedly escape isolation. The Internet offers controlling and jealous people the opportunity to monitor their friends and partners at every turn. The list could be continued ad nauseam. Only one thing is almost always true: The actual causes are usually in the Family or to look for the social environment of the people. Ultimately, the Internet is just a symptom: It's a bit like eating disorders: we all have to eat to survive. However, people with eating disorders compensate for other mental defects with their eating habits. Simply keeping your hands off the food is not possible. We must look for other solutions to deal with the problem.

The logout trap

Katharina Borchert is also someone who became known through the Internet: Award-winning blogger with Lyssas Lounge, editor-in-chief since 2006, responsible for the website of the WAZ group, since 2010 managing director at Spiegel On-line. Internet, social media, facebook, Twitter are her life. To get down, however, she drives into the African bush again and again - without reception. Suffering for three days, then she realizes how well the self-imposed internet abstinence is doing her; for your inner balance and to clear your head, as she told journalist Iris Ockenfels for medium magazin.

Now not everyone has the time and that Moneyto disappear straight to Africa. So there are people who team up with friends to protect themselves from their own login madness. However, not in a discussion group where you lament together about your own addictive behavior and then continue at home: no, we actually act together. If people want to lose weight, it works better in a group! For example, you make a mutual promise to only log in on one day a month. With sanctions if someone does, of course. Others simply ask their friends to change their own password - but of course this is a question of trust.

Journalist Alex Rühle also stayed in Germany and at work: However, he simply switched off. From the Internet and cell phones. For half a year. And wrote a book about it. Rühle is not someone who can simply afford to log out of the Internet: he is Feulliton editor at Süddeutschen Newspaper. And the internet is his daily work tool. In the evening he deposited his Blackberry on the shoe cupboard so that he could sneak out quickly before going to bed eMails could check. On a quiet day, he got 68 mail and answered 45. An internet junkie, then.

Abstinence is not that easy

The abstinence turned out to be correspondingly difficult: dictionaries are used as a translation aid, the lecturer receives water level reports by postcard and ancient technologies such as faxes are brought back to life. His colleagues joked about the cave dweller, he became a favorite customer for directory inquiries and research that he would do in a few minutes via Google took hours because he had to search for a suitable contact abroad by phone. After the six months, however, Rühle did not want to do without the Internet entirely: Today he no longer uses an Internet-compatible cell phone and works with two computers - one on which he writes and one with which he purposefully connects to the Internet and then afterwards stop surfing for a maximum of two hours.

What sounds like a nice story is actually the result of a rather irrational overreaction. Rühle, who apparently saw himself as a plaything for his internet addiction, tried to treat it by coming up with the exact opposite. That is psychological about as useful as a diet where you don't eat anything for a week: You lose weight, but afterwards you eat all the more because you can eat again, and you have all the more fat on your ribs. And anyone who starts using the Internet again after a period of offline time runs the risk of falling back into old behavior patterns. A logout trap! Going from one extreme to the other has never been a good one Solution.

Force of habit

Especially not with inventions that, provided they are used correctly, make our lives more practical, easier and better. And which are therefore indispensable in normal everyday work. Or have you ever thought about giving up your bed, bike, car or coffee maker because you use these items all the time and don't want to become dependent on them? No, and that would probably be pretty absurd. The IdeaOn the other hand, I often hear that it is better not to have internet or at least no internet on your cell phone. It's just as silly and ultimately only shows one thing: that the user is not able to use modern technology with moderation and purpose. Total renunciation as a result of a lack of self-control! And when we Honestly it is even easier to simply give up the addictive substance altogether than to expose ourselves to the danger of addiction every day!

Just so we don't get it wrong: There is nothing wrong with not using certain technologies. Anyone can use the technical achievements that they consider necessary. Personally, for example, I've never got a driver's license and that's why I'm often looked at crookedly. However, one should leave the church in the village and not make an ideology out of it: It is not the cell phone or the Internet that are to blame for the misery, but all of you alone. Perhaps Internet junkies and teetotalers should just think about how to use a computer and that Use the network for what it is: As an efficient information and communication medium, both privately and professionally. What helps is not compulsive abstinence, but smart use of social networks. For that to work, you have to understand what is happening inside of us.

Alarm in the almond core

According to the latest findings in brain research, our social behavior is controlled neurologically via the limbic system, more precisely via the so-called amygdala cores, technically the corpus amygdaloideum or amygdala. These evaluate what we see, feel, smell and taste and then tell us what is good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant. Therefore, they also have a decisive part in how we react to other people. Psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldmann Barett researches human emotions in Boston. In one study, Barrett and her team examined the brains of 58 men and women im Age between 19 and 83 with different circles of friends and acquaintances. Not only the number of regular contacts was examined, but also from how many different circles they were recruited.

The researchers found that if you have a large circle of friends and acquaintances, your amygdala is larger than that of less sociable people. Magnetic resonance imaging showed an average size of 2,5 cubic millimeters in people who have fewer than five to fifteen regular contacts. In good networkers, the amygdala was sometimes twice as large. The researchers explain it like this: The more social contacts a person has, the greater the demands on the brain in order to process and cope with the associated information. This requires an equally complex data processing center with a correspondingly large number of neural links. Or in short: people with larger almond kernels can apparently better assign names, faces and events to specific people. The size of the amygdala, however, seems to indicate another difference: Masahiko Haruno and Christpher Frith were able to prove that people who pay more attention to fairness than to their own gain in action also have the more active amygdala.

It has not yet been finally clarified whether the increased brain activity leads to a more open-minded behavior in the first place or whether one can really train openness and thus change the size of the almond kernels. However, it only seems logical to transfer the results of the two studies to social networks as well: The fact that some people move there more openly and with more joy probably has something to do with their brain activity and experiences. Conversely, people who quickly feel overwhelmed by the interaction of the Internet may have smaller tonsils and are more introverted. This is supported by the fact that the amygdala not only manages data processing in social relationships, but also something else:

Help, a happiness hormone!

The almond kernels also control the release of happiness hormones, so-called endorphins, when we are having fun and enjoyment - for example because we are communicating with our friends. And of which we want more, from which the risk of addiction described above can arise. Because joy and sorrow are known to be close together. Because this region of the brain is also known as the fear center: If we feel overwhelmed or threatened, the amygdala in the body triggers the corresponding stress reaction at lightning speed. The pituitary gland is stimulated via the nerve pathways in the brain. This in turn activates the adrenal cortex via the bloodstream, which releases the stress hormone cortisol, which puts the entire body on alert. Blood pressure and breathing rate rise, the heart beats faster. In the large muscle groups, the blood vessels widen, preparing the body for a fight, flight, or freezing response. If a threatening situation turns out to be harmless, the hippocampus gives the all-clear - and the amygdala calms down again.

That in itself is not a problem: Such a stress reaction can occur a hundred times or more in our bodies every day - and so weakly that we don't even notice it. It only becomes difficult when we constantly expose ourselves to stress and excessive demands that we are not able to cope with. Then stress hormones such as cortisol are no longer broken down in the body. With unpleasant side effects: because the cortisol is released because it is supposed to protect the body from overexertion. Therefore, among other things, it blocks memory and increases blood sugarspiegel, acidifies the blood and weakens the thyroid function. Our ability clear thinking and judging situations sensibly decreases the more negative stress we have. And unexpected events scare us even more than they already do. A vicious circle.

There is only one piece of advice to break through: just switch off. Even if you miss one or the other important message or the “next big thing”: Your own Health should be more important. For this it is necessary to take a critical look at your own behavior when dealing with social networks. As long as it's fun, you enjoy it and don't suffer from social contacts, it's okay. But the ridge we are walking is a very narrow one: the initial euphoria can quickly turn. At the latest when feelings such as stress, fear or insecurity predominate, you should pull the emergency brake and let go for a while - until your emotional state has normalized again. Above all, however, one must free oneself from the compulsion of always wanting to be aware of everything. That doesn't work anyway. For everything else, there are tools and filters that make life easier – or should make it.