Internet Addiction a Problem in U.S.

More than one in eight American adults shows signs of Internet addiction, according to a new study. Those signs include spending an inordinate amount of time each week on non-work-related Internet use, hiding Internet use from a partner, and using the Internet as a form of escape.

Of more than 2,500 respondents to a phone survey, nearly 14 percent said staying away from the Internet for several days is difficult; nearly 6 percent believe their Internet usage hurts their relationships.

The October issue of CNS Spectrums: The International Journal of Neuropsychiatric Medicine reported on the study:

United States household Internet penetrance has reached 74 percent, with the number of active Internet users continuing to grow. However, a problematic side of this new tool is emerging. Accumulating data point to a growing number of individuals for whom the medium becomes a consuming habit with significant negative consequences for their personal and professional lives. Preliminary phenomenological studies of this problem have described the typical affected individual as a college-educated single white male in his fourth decade, with substantial psychiatric comorbidity, who spends ~30 hours/week on computer use that is not essential to his work or well being, resulting in significant subjective distress and functional impairment. E-mail, chat rooms, auction houses, gambling casinos, the “blogosphere,” and pornography sites are only a few of the Internet venues that have been associated with problematic use.

This says a typical afflicted person, a college-educated single white male in his 30s, spends around 30 hours a week on non-essential Internet use—over four hours a day—and suffers “significant” problems as a result. So there are likely far greater percentages of Internet users who spend less time online yet still exhibit some addiction-related qualities, but who largely do not register in this study. The report continues:

Problematic Internet use—variably termed Internet addiction, compulsive computer use, compulsive Internet use, pathological Internet use, “internetomania,” and computer addiction—shares features with the impulse control disorders recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV): The affected user experiences a repetitive, intrusive urge to perform an act that is pleasurable in the moment but that causes subsequent distress or functional impairment.

The study cited a 2002 survey in which 6 out of 10 American companies had disciplined employees for misusing the Internet, and over 30 percent had fired employees for that reason.

According to the lead author of the study, Elias Aboujaoude, problematic online usage takes many forms. DailyTech reported,

“Not surprisingly, online pornography and, to some degree, online gambling, have received the most attention—but users are as likely to use other sites, including chat rooms, shopping venues and special-interest websites,” [Aboujaoude] said. “Our survey did not track what specific Internet venues were the most frequented by respondents, but other studies, and our clinical experience, indicate that pornography is just one area of excessive Internet use.”

In a bbc article, Aboujaoude was quoted as saying, “The issue is starting to be recognized as a legitimate object of clinical attention, as well as an economic problem, given that a great deal of non-essential Internet use takes place at work.”

The Internet has opened up unprecedented resources for research and human connectivity, but, like all technology, it comes with dangers. Scripture enjoins, “Let your moderation be known unto all men” (Philippians 4:5). Allowing ourselves to fritter away hours in worthless—or worse, destructive—pursuits is failing to obey the biblical command to “walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15-16).