Photo by Leon Seibert on Unsplash
Maybe you have read her surgical introduction to Internet Addiction written 20 years ago, aptly titled "Internet Addiction: Symptoms, Evaluation, And Treatment." Or perhaps you are familiar with her probing clinical questionaries in diagnosing mental health disorders available on the Internet. And suppose you have read any of her papers or books regarding Internet Addiction. In that case, you already know that nobody in clinical psychology can dissect online disorders quite as deftly as Dr. Kimberly Young does.
Dr. Young, a psychologist and expert on Internet addiction disorder and online behaviour, is more than just a pioneer in discovering online mental health problems back in 1995 when few people even knew about the existence of the Internet. Her recommendations for online mental health disorder treatment have already become a de facto theoretical base for Parental Control applications:
(a) practice opposite time of Internet use (discover patient's patterns of Internet use and disrupt these patterns by suggesting new schedules),
(b) use external stoppers (actual events or activities prompting the patient to log off),
(c) set goals (about the amount of time),
(d) abstain from a particular application (that the client is unable to control),
(e) use reminder cards (cues that remind the patient of the costs of IAD and the benefits of breaking it),
(f) develop a personal inventory (shows all the activities that the patient used to engage in or can't find the time for due to IAD),
(g) enter a support group (compensates for lack of social support), and
(h) engage in family therapy (addresses relational problems in the family)
(Dr. Kimberly S. Young, Internet Addiction: Symptoms, Evaluation, And Treatment, 1999 )
Most Parental Control applications comply with Dr. Young's recommendations (a), (b) and (d). For example, imagine a kid has an established pattern of coming home and sitting in front of the computer for the remainder of the evening (or the whole night) playing online games. For that, a typical parental control application would cut off the Internet or the online game application to "practice opposite time of Internet use." However, as Dr. Young points out, "keep in mind that in the early days of recovery, the patient will most likely experience a loss and miss being online for frequent periods of time." That explains that most users of those parental control applications are outright hostile to those applications. While the Mango app's methodologies are beyond the mere time controls other parental control software vendors offer. Among other methods, the app will focus on building a positive and absorbable cultural foundation for young people to grow on, for example, telling the story about "The Old Man and the Sea" can probably give strength to those who cannot control their online time to create healthy schedules ultimately. Or, the app will remind those online gamers about their enjoyable activities taken away by the online games and thus engage with those alternative activities against the time spent online.