'internet dependency', 'cyber addiction'

One might hesitate
to draw conclusions about the prevalence of pathologies on the basis of such a
small sample.

John Grohol criticised other research, commenting
that
<blockquote>
I don't know of any
other disorder currently being researched where the researchers, showing all the
originality of a trash romance novel writer, simply "borrowed" the diagnostic
symptom criteria for an unrelated disorder, made a few changes, and declared the
existence of a new disorder. If this sounds absurd, it's because it
is.</blockquote>
In 2006 Elias
Aboujaoude, Lorrin Koran & Nona Gamel gained attention for claims in CNS
Spectrums: The International Journal of Neuropsychiatric Medicine that the
internet may be 'addictive' for 14% of the US online population. 13.7%
supposedly found it hard to stay away from the net for several days at a time
and 8.2% used the net as a way to escape problems or relieve negative mood.


Aboujaoude said "In a sense, they're using the Internet to
'self-medicate'". That comment provokes questions about whether watching
television, reading a book, walking the dog or visiting a cinema is 'self
medication' and thus an indication of addiction. Psychologist Mark Griffiths
challenged email from parents worried that their kids are addicted because they
use their computers three hours a day. Griffiths sensibly commented
<blockquote>
That isn't
addiction. People will spend hours cyberchatting with long-distance friends or
partners and it's said they're addicted. That wouldn't be said if they were on
the phone.</blockquote>
US academic Sara
Kiesler characterised 'net addiction' a "fad illness", commenting that
problematic use can be self-corrective and that characterising it as an
addiction
<blockquote>
demeans really
serious illnesses, which are things like addiction to gambling, where you steal
your family's money to pay for your gambling debts, drug addictions, cigarette
addictions.</blockquote>
Margaret Shotton's
Computer Addiction? A Study of Computer Dependency (London: Taylor
& Francis 1989), arguably more cited than actually read and based on study
of a mere 75 'addicts' reported that those hobbyists were
<blockquote>
some of the most
fascinating people of my life. They were intelligent, lively, amusing, original,
inventive, and very hospitable. True, they rarely spend much time communicating
with people for reasons explained within this book, but when interest was shown
in them and their activities it would be difficult to find more interesting
conversationalists. True, many of them were unconventional and unconstrained by
society's 'mores', but who would not like the freedom and courage to act without
recourse to others? True, some of their relationships were problematic and their
activities bewildering and distressing to their partners, but they were no more
likely to have failed marriages than
the rest of the
population.</blockquote>
That description
would fit many academics and police personnel.

one disorder or many?

If you
are not a true believer one puzzling aspect of cyber addiction is its
definition. Is it one disorder or many? Is the label too broad to be meaningful?
Where does 'normal' use stop and pathological use begin? What are its causes and
appropriate therapies? There is no expert consensus and the disorder is not
recognised in standard diagnostic manuals.

Jennifer Ferris' Internet
Addiction Disorders: Causes, Symptoms & Consequences argued that IAD is
<blockquote>
a
psychophysiological disorder involving tolerance; withdrawal symptoms; affective
disturbances; and interruption of social relationships.</blockquote>
In seeking to
define the disorder she refers to a range of criteria that include
<blockquote>
1. Tolerance - the
need for increasing amounts of time on the net to achieve satisfaction and/or
significantly diminished effect with continued use of the same amount of time on
the internet.
2. Two or more withdrawal symptoms developing within days to
one month after reduction of Internet use or cessation of Internet use (i.e.,
quitting cold turkey) and these must cause distress or impair social, personal
or occupational functioning. These include: psychomotor agitation, i.e.
trembling, tremors; anxiety; obsessive thinking about what is happening on the
Internet; fantasies or dreams about the Internet; voluntary or involuntary
typing movements of the fingers.
3. Use of the Internet is engaged in to
relieve or avoid withdrawal symptoms.
4. The Internet is often accessed more
often, or for longer periods of time than was intended.
5. A significant
amount of time is spent in activities related to Internet use (e.g. Internet
books, trying out new World Wide Web browsers, researching Internet vendors,
etc).
6. Important social, occupational, or recreational activities are given
up or reduced because of use.
7. The individual risks the loss of a
significant relationship, job, educational or career opportunity because of
excessive use.
</blockquote>
All in all, those
criteria could be used to identify television, telephone or other addictions.
Ferris notes that "other characteristics have been identified", including
"feelings of restlessness or irritability when attempting to cut down or stop
Internet use" and use of the net for "escaping problems or relieving feelings of
helplessness, guilt, anxiety or depression". Oops, sounds like Barbara Cartland
addiction.

[/size][size=9]What causes IAD? Given disagreement about the shape of the disorder - or
merely its existence and seriousness - there is no consensus. Christopher Bates,
commended by one of the gurus, suggests that 'cyberaddiction' is caused by "low blood
volume", presumably an advance on past explanations such as witches on
broomsticks. behaviour? substance? overuse or
preference

There is no consensus among health specialists that the
net is addictive.

One reason is that there is disagreement about
behavioural versus substance addictions, with some writers arguing that
behavioural addictions are expressions of underlying problems (eg depression or
even schizophrenia) rather than properly attributable to a particular medium or
pursuit.

Another reason is that there is disagreement about the
identification of what constitutes cyberaddiction (or addiction to things such
as mobile phones, television, iPods or reading medical journals). Proponents of
cyberaddiction often refer to 'over-use', 'excessive use' or compulsivity.
However, those proponents disagree about what is excessive, with some arguing
that anything more than three hours per day is 'excessive' (a figure that
enables glib characterisation of most office workers as actual or potential
addicts).

Critics have responded that many people pursue avocations
(such as chatting with friends online, watching television, reading books or
working on cars) because those activities are pleasurable. They can stop, but -
quite rationally - choose not to. Mere engagement with a medium such as
television or the net should not be treated as always equivalence to compulsive
behaviour or dependence.

Edward Castronova, in Synthetic Worlds: The
Business & Culture of Online Games (Chicago: Uni of Chicago Press
2005), commented
<blockquote>
When people spend
dozens of hours weekly at their computers, or on the internet, or playing video
games, it is almost certain that some other activities will suffer. The question
is, when does this behaviour warrant the label 'addiction'? Addiction is a
strong word, calling for both renunciation on the part of the subject and
forceful intervention by others ... a behaviour becomes problematic when, and
only when, it degrades other important things in life. A 60-hour-a-week
compulsive EverQuest user who fails to speak to his own children when they come
home from school is engaging in problematic behaviour. But consider the same
user, living alone, with all his friends being online and in the game - is his
devotion of time to cyberspace problematic? In the end we can only judge whether
presence in the virtual world is good or bad by reference to the ordinary daily
life of the person making the choice to go there. For some people Earth is where
they really ought to spend their time. For others, perhaps the fantasy world is
the only decent place available.</blockquote>
precedents

Despite
assertions about the uniqueness or significance of net addiction - or the
insights of particular therapists - it is merely the latest of a succession of
alarms about the physical, psychological or social effects of new media and new
technologies.

Those precedents reflected broader social anxieties
regarding virility, minorities, nationality and the lower classes.

The
advent of printing saw the emergence of warnings from educators, doctors and the
pulpit about the seductions of print. The pallid (and spotty) schoolboy whose
overindulgence in literature resulted in death from consumption was a theme for
around 400 years. It is a counterpart of claims that addiction to novels or
poetry debilitated the weaker sex, leading to frigidity, stillbirths and an
early grave. The development of mass markets for literature saw warnings that
the lower classes - in particular girls working in textile mills and other
factories - were particularly susceptible ... spending hours (and too much of
their income) mooning over trashy novels rather than devotedly tending the
looms.

Denunciation of the telegraph featured claims that the wires
altered the physiology of those in close contact (a justification for early
gender restrictions in the workforce) and curdled milk or otherwise damaged
cows. Women were believed to be particularly excited by opportunities to receive
and send telegrams, with compulsive use resulting in catch-all symptoms such as
neuraesthenia or dysmenorrhea. A few generations later we saw more subtle
warnings about anomie in the suburbs or the office, with for example stereotypes
about women "always nattering on the phone".

Such claims echoed warnings
by clergy, civil society organisations and the emerging psychology industry
about compulsive consumption of film, radio and television. Those warnings
included assertions about subliminal messages, conditioning and fundamental
changes to brain physiology.

Mencken satirised contemporary US hysteria
about television watching, warning in 1952 that
<blockquote>
no matter how good
any given television show is, to look at that tube of lights and shadows almost
invariably brings to mind such things as death, tuberculosis, cats howling on
the back fence, incest, dishes in the sink, etc.

Such a reaction ...
applies particularly to looking at television alone. A hair-in-the-mouth,
screaming-nerves sensation comes from viewing television in solitude, an act of
the same category as drinking in solitude or taking morphine while shut up in a
closet, but much worse.

Furthermore ... to look at it for any length of
time, even in the company of others, causes sexual impotence, shortens the life
span, makes the hair and teeth fall out, and encourages early psychosis in
otherwise normal people.
</blockquote>
The more recent
Television & the Quality of Life: How Viewing Shapes Everyday
Experience (Mahwah: Erlbaum 1990) by Robert Kubey & Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi conceded that the term 'TV addiction' is "imprecise and laden
with value judgments" but claimed that it "captures the essence of a very real
phenomenon".

Their 2002 article Television Addiction Is No Mere Metaphor noted
that
<blockquote>
Psychologists and
psychiatrists formally define substance dependence as a disorder characterized
by criteria that include spending a great deal of time using the substance;
using it more often than one intends; thinking about reducing use or making
repeated unsuccessful efforts to reduce use; giving up important social, family
or occupational activities to use it; and reporting withdrawal symptoms when one
stops using it. All these criteria can apply to people who watch a lot of
television.</blockquote>

Courts and much of
the media have been less generous. In 2004 for example Timothy Dumouchel gained
momentary notoriety through small claims litigation against a Wisconsin cable
television service. He said <blockquote>
I believe the
reason I smoke and drink every day and my wife is overweight is because we
watched the TV everyday for the last four years... I'm definitely addicted. When
I'm home, it's on. I wanted to talk to my family. When you're watching TV, how
much do you communicate with your family?</blockquote>
Anxieties about
'SMS addiction' or 'mobile addiction' are highlighted later in this note.

We have pointed
elsewhere to waves of anxiety about railways, film, radio and even comics. A historical perspective is provided by
Avital Ronell's The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric
Speech (Lincoln: Uni of Nebraska Press 1991). Joseph Walther offered a
parody in his 1999 paper 'Communication Addiction Disorder: Concern over Media,
Behavior and Effects' (PDF).

orientations and
polemics

The literature on internet addiction is at best uneven and
is often distinctly polemical, with an emphasis on anecdote at the expense of
rigorous statistical analysis.

Young has been echoed in works such as
Hooked On The Net: How to say goodnight when the party never ends
(Grand Rapids: Kregel 2002) by Andrew Careaga - marketed as "a solid,
Christ-centered take on the controversial subject of Internet addiction -
written by a self-admitted Internet aficionado" - and David Greenfield's
Virtual Addiction: Help for Netheads, Cyberfreaks and Those Who Love
Them (Oakland: New Harbinger 1999) or In the Shadows of the Net:
Breaking Free of Compulsive Online Sexual Behavior (Center City: Hazelden
2004) by Patrick Carnes, David Delmonico & Elizabeth Griffin. It has also
been echoed in numerous undergraduate papers, replete with labels such as 'MUD
& IRC: The Heroin of the Internet?'

There is a more analytical
account in Richard Davis' paper A Cognitive-behavioral Model for Pathological
Internet Use (PIU) and Mark Griffiths' 'Internet addiction: Does it really
exist?' in Psychology & the Internet, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and
transpersonal implications (San Diego: Academic Press 1998) edited by Jayne
Gackenbach and in Narelle Warden, James Phillips & James Ogloff's 2004
'Internet Addiction' in 11 Psychiatry, Psychology & Law 2, 280-295.


John Suler's 1999 paper Healthy & Pathological Internet Use
attempted to differentiate between good and bad consumption. Nicholas Yee's 2002
paper
Ariadne - Understanding MMORPG Addiction considers addiction to massive
multiplayer online roleplaying games; there is another perspective in the 2007
presentation The LAN Game Ate My Brain, Dude: 'MMORPG Addiction' and
Australian Law (PDF) and the
forthcoming paper A Label in Search of Liability: CyberAddiction and the
Law.

Two outcomes from early alarms were the APA paper on
Sexuality on the Internet: From Sexual Exploration to Pathological
Expression by Alvin Cooper, Coralie Scherer, Sylvain Boies & Barry
Gordon and Carla Surratt's Netaholics? The creation of a pathology (New
York: Nova Science Publishers 1999).

Points of entry to the literature on
identification and treatment of addiction per se include Addiction:
mechanisms, phenomenology and treatment (New York: Springer 2003) edited by
W Fleischhacker & D Brooks, The addiction-prone personality (New
York: Kluwer Academic 2000) by Gordon Barnes and Addiction: evolution of a
specialist field (Malden: Blackwell Science 2002) edited by Griffith
Edwards. A perspective on diagnostics is provided by papers in Rethinking
The DSM: A Psychological Perspective (Washington: American Psychological
Association 2002) edited by Larry Beutler & Mary Malik.

A more
detailed bibliography is provided on the final
page of this note.


issues

Most studies of cyberaddiction are deeply problematical
because they

• draw on small
  (sometimes ludicrously small) and often self-selected populations
  
• have no
  independent oversight
  
  
• involve serious
  uncertainties about questionnaire structure and data handling or about the
  interpretation of figures and answers
  
• are not
  benchmarked against widely recognised independent research
  
• fail to
  differentiate between time spent online at work and non-occupational use.
  

An APA journalist
gently noted in 2000 that
<blockquote>
despite the topic's
prominence, published studies on Internet addiction are scarce. Most are
surveys, marred by self-selecting samples and no control groups. The rest are
theoretical papers that speculate on the philosophical aspects of Internet
addiction but provide no data.

Meanwhile, many psychologists even doubt
that addiction is the right term to describe what happens to people when they
spend too much time online.

"It seems misleading to characterize
behaviors as 'addictions' on the basis that people say they do too much of
them," says Sara Kiesler, PhD, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University and
co-author of one of the only controlled studies on Internet usage, published in
the September 1998 American Psychologist. "No research has yet
established that there is a disorder of Internet addiction that is separable
from problems such as loneliness or problem gambling, or that a passion for
using the Internet is long-lasting."
</blockquote>
Another asked "is
the internet addictive or are addicts using the internet?". Others have wondered
whether some 'victims' are scapegoating the net: if your career is on hold, kids
have bad taste in music, love has flown away and washing the dishes does not
excite you it must be the fault of the all-powerful internet. That perception of
potency is an echo of some of the more utopian claims that going online will
make us all wiser, richer, happier and - of course - connected.

US
academic Ivan Goldberg, whose 1995 spoof of the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders is sometimes cited as spawning the disorder, commented
that
<blockquote>
I don't think
Internet addiction disorder exists any more than tennis addictive disorder,
bingo addictive disorder, and TV addictive disorder exist. People can overdo
anything. To call it a disorder is an error.</blockquote>
That was endorsed
by Mark Griffiths, characterising much 'cyberaddiction' as comparable to 'star
trek addiction'. Other writers have wondered about the implications for law,
asking whether 'internet addiction' is different from the 'twinkie defense',
'tobacco deprivation syndrome' or 'UFO survivor syndrome' highlighted later in
this note.