Addicted to the Net

Is spending too much time on the internet a bad habit or a serious addiction? Researchers at Stanford University are trying to determine just that.

In a new study based on a random telephone survey of 2,513 adults in the United States, researchers found that of the 56.3 per cent who responded, one out of eight exhibited at least one symptom of what could be classified as internet addiction.

"We often focus on how wonderful the internet is, how simple and efficient it can make things," said lead author Elias Aboujaoude in a statement. "But we need to consider the fact that it creates real problems for a subset of people."

Aboujaoude, director of Stanford's Impulse Control Disorders Clinic, quickly added that it was premature to say whether survey respondents actually had a clinical disorder because more research was needed.

"Problematic internet use, based on my clinical experience and other published studies, is not limited to online gambling or pornography, although these venues receive the most media coverage for obvious reasons," Aboujaoude said. "People can also abuse chat rooms, blogs, online auction sites, special interest websites, etc."

An estimated 160 million Americans regularly use the internet. A small but growing number of internet users, the study said, are starting to visit their doctors for help with unhealthy attachments to cyberspace. The study was published in the October issue of the International Journal of Neuropsychiatric Medicine.

Dr Kenneth Skodnek, director of addiction services at Nassau University Medical Centre, said the real question is how to measure internet overuse. "My sense is that it is not whether or not the use of the internet can be an addiction, but how big of a problem it really is," Skodnek said. "I think it is a problem for some people."

Julian Pessier, assistant director of the Stony Brook University Counselling Centre, which provides counselling and psychiatric services to students, said the number of people addicted to the internet is probably much higher than the Stanford study indicated.

Pessier said he has counselled students who have difficulty managing their internet use. But he has also counselled other students for whom cyberspace has opened up a new world of social interactions that would not have been possible otherwise.

He said internet overuse should not only be framed as a disorder. "The problem is out there but not necessarily out there in the way they define it for the survey," Pessier said. "There is good and bad."