What is internet addiction: Re-thinking the digital and addiction in relation to each other

Internet addiction has attracted significant public concern, but remains poorly understood. I will spend a year living in an internet addiction rehabilitation centre in the US to document the lives of the people who live with it, but also to understand the internet's effect on all of us. I will ask what being online does do to embodied experience that causes it to become the object of compulsion, and question how far this embodied experience is shared by all of its users. And I will investigate what the social and cultural context of extreme internet use is. I will also ask, does internet addiction, a condition with no obvious physiological cause, provide information that changes the way we think about addiction and mental illness. I will use its results to raise awareness and understanding of internet addiction, but also to advise charities, healthcare facilities, and individuals dealing with it.