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Internet addiction 'is a clinical disorder'

The need for a better computer is one of the main tell-tale signs of ‘internet addiction’ – a public health issue that should be recognised as a clinical disorder.

Craving more software and time on computers are also pointers of internet dependency, which is typically caused by a compulsive-impulsive use of computers.

Explaining his analysis, Dr Jeremy Block, a leading psychiatrist specialising in cyber addiction, said three other elements exist when heavy internet use becomes a mental illness.

Firstly, users are so ‘always-on’ that they experience a "loss of sense of time or a neglect of basic drives," Block wrote in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Typically, the user goes onto suffer withdrawal effects, including feelings of anger, tension and/or feelings of depression when the computer is inaccessible.

Excessive use of the net has other negative repercussions, the third component of addiction, including arguments, lying, poor achievement, fatigue and social isolation.

Pointing to South Korea as a case study of internet addiction, Block said the disorder is now so common that it merits inclusion into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Ten people in the country have died from blood clots after long periods seated in internet cafes, in addition to a game-related murder.

A further 210,000 children are estimated to be affected by internet addition, of whom 80% may need prescription drugs, while up to a quarter may need hospital treatment.

Yet in the US, the world’s leading IT nation, accurate estimates of the scale of internet addiction are “lacking,” partly, Block said, because most of the activity is behind closed doors.

“Unlike in Asia, where Internet cafés are frequently used, in the United States games and virtual sex are accessed from the home,” he wrote in the journal’s current edition. “Attempts to measure the phenomenon are clouded by shame, denial, and minimization.”

Despite his call for cyber addiction to be added to the DSMMD list, which psychiatrists use to diagnose mental illness, studies by Stanford University recently found it was unknown if net and computer game addiction is, in fact, a clinical disorder.

Supporting Block’s view, Keith Bakker of Smith& Jones, a cyber addiction expert, has told FreelanceUK that most of the teenagers at his Dutch clinic “eventually see that gaming and chemical dependency are very much the same.”

Mar 26, 2008
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