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 study based on a random telephone survey of 2,513 adults across America, researchers found 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.''
Abuse
Aboujaoude, director of Stanford's Impulse Control Disorders Clinic, quickly added 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 International Journal of Neuropsychiatric Medicine.
Dr Kenneth Skodnek, director of addiction services at Nassau University Medical Centre on Long Island, New York, said the real question is how to measure Internet overuse.
"My sense is 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.''
Good and bad
Julian Pessier, assistant director of the Stony Brook University Counselling Centre on Long Island, which provides counselling and psychiatric services to students, said that the number of people addicted to the internet is probably much higher than the Stanford study indicated.
Pessier said that 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 shouldn't 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.''
In the Stanford telephone survey, participants were asked eight key questions about their time in cyberspace, including whether personal relationships have suffered as a result from excessive internet use, whether a person went online to escape problems or relieve a negative mood, and whether a person had tried or been successful at cutting back on internet use.
The survey, conducted in the spring and summer of 2004, did not track internet venues most visited.
Those who responded on average were age 48 and middle-class, earning between $50,000 and 150,000 (Dh183,655 and 550960).
