Internet Addiction Gets Your Out Of The Military?

from the amazing dept

Tue, Aug 3rd 2004 10:31am — Mike Masnick

Many stories about "internet addiction" have been based on some random psychologist who was mostly trying to drum up some new (and potentially lucrative) business. However, people continue to take it seriously. The latest, amazingly enough, is that the Finnish military is letting people get out of military service if they're addicted to the internet. Apparently "young men miss their computers too much to cope with their compulsory six months in the forces." However, the Commander-Captain of conscription doesn't seem to have much of a problem with young men staying home and playing games instead of serving their country: "For people who play (Internet) games all night and don't have any friends, don't have any hobbies, to come into the army is a very big shock." Of course, they're not completely out of it: "They get sent home for three years and after that they have to come back and we ask if they are OK ... they will have had time to grow up." I wonder if the cases of "internet addiction" will increase, now that kids know they can skip out on service and play games instead. Of course, with the growth of wireless technologies and and portable computing, maybe they just need to outfit all these new soldiers with some of those new "handtop" computers and a 3G connection card, and the problem will be solved.

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5 Comments

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dorpus, 3 Aug 2004 @ 11:25am

Toy Militaries
Some European countries have anachronistic traditions that require all young men to serve, for a hypothetical situation where Europeans would actually defend their own soil. Everyone knows the real job of defense will be done by Americans, so military conscription is treated like a summer camp. I knew a Hungarian guy who, during his conscription, got drunk every day and refused to wake up, so his drill sergeant got fed up and told him to spend his time in town. So he went on a drunken tour of Eastern Europe, having slept in a puddle of his own urine in every major city's railroad station, and spent a month in detox in Poland.

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aNonMooseCowherd, 3 Aug 2004 @ 8:38pm

addicted to addictions?
What about people who are addicted to reading news articles about Internet addiction?
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- Anonymous Coward, 4 Aug 2004 @ 12:44pm
  
  Re: addicted to addictions?
  What about dorpus's addiction to posting crap that rarely touches on the subject @ hand ?
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lJ0RVwYT9d, 5 Jul 2006 @ 3:52pm

lJ0RVwYT9d
TdHxxGlzNjk1M1 qTnoGRrYkq5 grEL8kcvLxl1
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joseph romero, 9 May 2008 @ 9:54am

im a kid that goes to harney middle school in las vegas nevada and i think that porn is the SHIT....!!!!!
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