Chocolate. Gambling. Alcohol. … Too much “enjoyment” of one or all of these can lead to problems—even addiction. What is arguably the newest addition to that list of guilty pleasures? The Internet, according to a new study.
It seems that between 5 percent and 10 percent of Web surfers suffer a “Web dependency,” according to experts like Maressa Hecht Orzack, director of the Computer Addiction Study Center at Harvard's McLean Hospital. A story on Forbes.com highlights the fact that Web addicts experience the same cravings and withdrawal symptoms as, say, a compulsive gambler might en route to Vegas.
Web-aholics Anonymous might not be too far off. Orzack refers most of her Net-addicted patients to psychiatrists for prescriptions for antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds.
The report also points out that last spring Hong Kong launched a public service campaign regarding the matter. Its deputy government chief information officer warned that 40 percent of his city's youth were addicts. And here in the U.S., Internet addicts at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and the University of California, Irvine, provided on-campus counseling for incessant clickers.
All that for a medical condition that you can't find in the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases or in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the bible of the American Psychiatric Association.
The porn connection (or lack thereof)
What’s interesting in the research on Web addiction is that pornography was mentioned a total of zero times. Quite peculiar, considering that pornography runs rampant all across the Web.
"I wouldn't be surprised if a large portion of Net addiction was directly related to adult content,” Jonathan Silverstein, owner of www.thecontentstore.com, tells AVN Online. “Considering how readily available high-speed access has become and the fact that the Internet has replaced TV for a lot of people—it makes sense that a portion of the population would use it in excess.”
He added, “Also, when anonymity is factored in, it would be very logical that surfing porn would play a huge role in that addictive behavior.”
But just shutting off the computer might not be the obvious, be-all serum to this Web-based problem. Most experts are warning that true Internet junkies, faced with no computer access, will simply score their next Web fix from their cell phones.
