Scientists Study Internet Addiction

U.S. scientists are studying Internet addicts, trying to determine if spending too much time online is a damaging condition meriting a medical diagnosis.

Stanford University School of Medicine researchers, in what’s described as a first-of-its-kind, telephone-based study, found more than 1-in-8 Americans exhibit at least one possible sign of problematic Internet use.

We often focus on how wonderful the Internet is — how simple and efficient it can make things, said lead author Dr. Elias Aboujaoude But we need to consider the fact that it creates real problems for a subset of people.

Aboujaoude, an assistant psychiatry professor and director of Stanford’s Impulse Control Disorders Clinic, said Internet addiction is not unlike what sufferers of substance abuse or impulse-control disorders experience — a repetitive, intrusive and irresistible urge to perform an act that may be pleasurable in the moment, but that can lead to significant problems on the personal and professional levels.

The study by Aboujaoude, Dr. Lorrin Koran, emeritus professor of psychiatry, and licensed social worker Nona Gamel appears in the October issue of CNS Spectrums: The International Journal of Neuropsychiatric Medicine.