Is Internet addiction real?

If you believe what you read, "Internet addiction" is about to make us a nation of derelicts. Men drooling over online pornography, women abandoning their husbands for chat-room lovers and people losing their life savings on gambling Web sites are just a few of the stories peddled in today's press.

But 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 pa ssion for using the Internet is long-lasting."

But more psychologists are plunging into Internet addiction research, fascinated by its emotional, psychological and social implications. In their work, they are finding a subset of people who spend so much time online, especially in sexual encounters, that they report problems in their marriages, families and work.

In addition, researchers speculate that certain unique aspects of the Internet may lure people into trouble they might otherwise avoid.

"The Internet is unlike anything we've seen before," says David Greenfield, PhD, founder of the Center for Internet Studies (virtual-addiction.com). "It's a socially connecting device that's socially isolating at the same time."

Who's vulnerable?

Greenfield has conducted one of the largest surveys on the topic to date: a 1998 study of 18,000 Internet users who logged onto the ABC News Web site, abcnews.com. He found that 5.7 percent of his sample met the criteria for compulsive Internet use. Those findings square with figures from smaller studies done by others, which range from 6 percent to 14 percent. Study participants who met Greenfield's criteria (adapted from criteria for compulsive gambling) were particularly hooked on chat rooms, pornography, online shopping and e-mail, he found. About a third said they use the Internet as a form of escape or to alter their mood on a regular basis.

In addition, the "addicted" people were far more likely to admit feelings of losing control in their dealings on the Net than "nonaddicts." Greenfield believes that the loss of control is just one indication of the potency of the psychoactive nature of the Internet. Other signs include time distortion, accelerated intimacy and decreased inhibition. For instance, 83 percent of those who fit the addiction criteria reported a loss of boundaries when they used the Net, compared to 37 percent who didn't meet the criteria.