More on Internet addiction

Citation

Andrew, A.M. (1998), "More on Internet addiction", Kybernetes, Vol. 27 No. 8. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.1998.06727hag.001

More on Internet addiction

Keywords Cybernetics, Internet, Systems

More on Internet addiction

The topic of Internet Addiction has continued to be hotly debated in the "research" (or, in full, "Psychology of the Internet: research and theory") discussion list. Strong feelings were aroused by the appearance of the book (briefly mentioned in the last commentary): Caught in the Web: How to Recognise and Recover from Internet Addiction and a Winning Strategy for Recovery, published by Wiley. The author is Kimberly Young, a psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford. She has also set up a Center for On-Line Addiction (COLA ­ see below) offering consultancy and counselling.

The suggestion that Internet Addiction is a genuine disorder, for which treatment is warranted, has aroused scepticism and antagonism, the latter mainly because it is seen as a pretext by which self-styled therapists can profit. Dr Young has become a focus for the expression of these feelings, to an extent that has produced references to internet "flame wars" and "lynch mobs". (The word "flame" is internet jargon for the sending of a vituperative message.) As well as the angry messages, though, there have been a fair number in support of Dr Young.

A central issue, of course, is the definition of "addiction". Since the Internet is a valuable research tool, a large amount of time spent logged-on need be no more a sign of pathological addiction than is a large amount of time spent in a library. On the other hand, Dr Young is able to refer to cases that show characteristics of other well-known forms of addiction, including habitual lying to friends and family about the time spent logged-on, and increasing irritability when separated from the computer.

A self-test for internet addiction is offered, in the form of a questionnaire, but there already seems to be general agreement that it is unsound. Happily, the debate has been summarised in an article in the publication USA Today, and can be found on-line at the address http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/ctc497.htm, with a link to another article in the same journal which treats the topic of addiction in general. The article is accepted by John Grohol, an authoritative and frequent contributor to the controversy, as substantially sound, though he considers it a "black mark" that it reproduces the self-test questionnaire.

Dr Young's estimates of the incidence of IAD (Internet Addiction Disorder) do not appear to be soundly based. Most of her material comes from subjects who responded to a questionnaire she posted on the Web, automatically a self-selected sample. Of those she interviewed, 52 per cent were in recovery programmes for other addictions and 54 per cent had a history of depression.

The term "Internet addiction disorder" was first used, intended as a joke, by the psychiatrist Ivan Goldberg, who was dismayed to find that it was used seriously soon afterwards. His comment on Dr Young's findings, which seems essentially sound, is that the Internet is not the primary source of trouble for these subjects. He suggests that the root of their difficulties lies elsewhere, but the Internet is the favoured avenue of escape.

Center for on-line addiction

Information on this can be found at the site http://netaddiction.com/. It is claimed that countless marriages have suffered because of IAD, and that parents are at a loss as to how to rescue children from it. As well as the offer of counselling in the family context, COLA offers corporate services to advise on reducing expensive internet abuse by employees.

The Cape Cod Institute

In discussions in this general area, frequent reference is made to this Institute, which runs week-long courses on topics that link the Internet to psychology and psychotherapy. Information on a course which includes material relevant to the assessment of Dr Young's book can be found at the address http://www.cape.org/1998/grohol.html. The course is to be run by Drs John Grohol and Gilbert Levin at the end of July and will include references to Technostress and IAD. The main focus will be on Internet resources, and the course is described both as the Fourth Annual Connected Computer Symposium, and as "The insider's guide to mental health resources online".

The website giving information on the course has a link to the home page of the Institute, which was founded in 1980 by Dr Levin, who continues as its director. The scale of its operations as a teaching establishment is impressive, since about twenty thousand psychologists or psychiatrists have attended more than three hundred week-long courses. Participants have come from North America, Europe and other continents. While this success has to be attributed primarily to the quality and relevance of the course contents, the attractiveness of the surroundings has also played a part, with a weekly whale-watch a popular feature.

One site more!

Before leaving the topic of IAD it is interesting, or at least amusing, to look at the site http://www.panix.com/~wizjd/selfscre.html. It gives a self-test for IAD that is clearly not meant to be taken seriously, except insofar as it carries an implication that the topic should not be taken seriously.

The self-test questionnaire sets three rather facetious questions allowing multiple-choice answers, and an interesting feature is that the means of computing a score, and presenting the user with a piece of text determined by it, is embodied as a short program in the Perl programming language, a forerunner of the much-acclaimed JAVA. The Perl text is open to inspection and is a valuable illustration of the use of this kind of interaction.

Alex M. Andrew