Caught in the WebMore People Say Heavy Internet Use Is Disrupting Their Lives, and Medical Experts Are Paying AttentionA few months ago, it wasn't unusual for 47-year-old Carla Toebe to spend 15 hours per day online. She'd wake up early, turn on her laptop and chat on Internet dating sites and instant-messaging programs -- leaving her bed for only brief intervals. Her household bills piled up, along with the dishes and dirty laundry, but it took near-constant complaints from her four daughters before she realized she had a problem.
"I was starting to feel like my whole world was falling apart -- kind of slipping into a depression," said the Richland, Wash., resident. "I knew that if I didn't get off of the dating sites, I would just keep going," detaching herself further from the outside world.
Toebe's conclusion: She felt like she was "addicted" to the Internet. She's not alone.
Concern about excessive Internet use -- variously termed problematic Internet use, Internet addiction, pathological Internet use, compulsive Internet use and computer addiction in some quarters, and vigorously dismissed as a fad illness in others -- isn't new. As far back as 1995, articles in medical journals and the establishment of a Pennsylvania treatment center for overusers generated interest in the subject. There's still no consensus on how much time online constitutes too much or whether addiction is possible.
But as reliance on the Web grows -- Internet users average about 3 1/2 hours online each day, according to a 2005 survey by Stanford University researchers -- there are signs that the question is getting more serious attention: Last month, a study published in CNS Spectrums, an international neuropsychiatric medicine journal, claimed to be the first large-scale look at excessive Internet use. The American Psychiatric Association may consider listing Internet addiction in the next edition of its diagnostic manual. And scores of online discussion boards have popped up on which people discuss negative experiences tied to too much time on the Web.
There's no question that there are people who are seriously in trouble because of the fact that they're overdoing their Internet involvement," said Ivan K. Goldberg, a psychiatrist in private practice in New York. Goldberg calls the problem a disorder rather than a true addiction, which Merriam-Webster's medical dictionary defines as a "compulsive physiological need for and use of a habit-forming substance."