Digital Addiction, An Infographic

The infographic below, created as an assignment for my Teaching, Learning and Assessing in the Digital Age class, displays facts and figures I found related to digital addiction.  During my research, I discovered that there is a lot of debate among psychologists as to whether or not digital addiction is real.  Many recognize that some people do portray addictive behaviors when online, but hesitate to call this a true addiction.  The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – V listed Internet gaming addiction as an area for further research.  I also discovered that there are many terms used for digital addiction, including Internet addiction disorder (IAD), problematic Internet use (PIU), compulsive Internet use (CIU), pathological computer use, screen addiction and more.  

The infographic I created shows facts about digital addiction from around the world.  This problem, whether is should be considered a true addiction/disorder or not, is clearly prevalent across the globe.  Much of the research conducted to date has been on young Chinese males, where the government has taken a serious interest in the problem of digital addiction.  The video at the end of the infographic shows just how extreme the problem can be for some.  

I created this infographic using infogr.am, a free online tool.  I found it very easy to learn and use.  You can log in with a Google+ account, or create a separate login.  There is a wide variety of themes and other ways to personalize your infographic.  All of your work is automatically saved.  Sharing and posting the final product is very simple.  

There were just a few drawbacks I encountered while using the program.  The first was that all of the information is posted in a linear format, from top to bottom.  While it is easy to move information around, the only options are to put each part above or below another part.  I would have liked to have the option of placing some items next to each other.    Another issue was that I found it difficult to portray some information I found in the infographic.  Some sites were text-based and had no data, which does not translate well into an infographic.  Other sites had excellent videos or charts, but they were not in the correct format to be used on infogr.am.  Finally, the main problem I had was in formatting the sources at the end of the Infographic.  I spent considerable time trying various methods to get the sources to list properly.  Every time I saved my work, the formatting would change, some sources would be left out, or extra punctuation would appear.  The only way to solve this was to paste an additional list of works cited below the infographic.

Seeing more and more infographics online nowadays, I am glad to have created my own.  I think teachers could easily use this format to present information to the class.  Students can easily learn how to create their own infographics based on research.  Infographics are another way to students to practice digital literacy.