An estimated 5 to 10 per cent of internet users are thought to be addicted - meaning they are unable to control their use. The majority are games players who become so absorbed in the activity they go without food or drink for long periods and their education, work and relationships suffer.
Henrietta Bowden Jones, consultant psychiatrist at Imperial College, London, who runs Britain's only NHS clinic for internet addicts and problem gamblers, said: "The majority of people we see with serious internet addiction are gamers - people who spend long hours in roles in various games that cause them to disregard their obligations. I have seen people who stopped attending university lectures, failed their degrees or their marriages broke down because they were unable to emotionally connect with anything outside the game."
Comment: Notice how the headline says "Internet Dependency" when the actual problem is dependency on games which can also be played without being on the internet.
Although most of the population was spending longer online, that was not evidence of addiction, she said. "It is different. We are doing it because modern life requires us to link up over the net in regard to jobs, professional and social connections - but not in an obsessive way. When someone comes to you and says they did not sleep last night because they spent 14 hours playing games, and it was the same the previous night, and they tried to stop but they couldn't - you know they have a problem. It does tend to be the gaming that catches people out."
Researchers in China scanned the brains of 17 adolescents diagnosed with "internet addiction disorder" who had been referred to the Shanghai Mental Health Centre, and compared the results with scans from 16 of their peers.
The results showed impairment of white matter fibres in the brain connecting regions involved in emotional processing, attention, decision making and cognitive control. Similar changes to the white matter have been observed in other forms of addiction to substances such as alcohol and cocaine.
"The findings suggest that white matter integrity may serve as a potential new treatment target in internet addiction disorder," they say in the online journal Public Library of Science One. The authors acknowledge that they cannot tell whether the brain changes are the cause or the consequence of the internet addiction. It could be that young people with the brain changes observed are more prone to becoming addicted.
Professor Michael Farrell, director of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Australia, said: "The limitations [of this study] are that it is not controlled, and it's possible that illicit drugs, alcohol or other caffeine-based stimulants might account for the changes. The specificity of 'internet addiction disorder' is also questionable."
Case Studies: Caught in the Web:
"Xbox addict killed by blood clot after 12-hour sessions"
Chris Staniforth, 20, died of a blood clot after spending up to 12 hours at a time playing on his Xbox. Despite having no history of ill health, he developed deep vein thrombosis - commonly associated with long-haul flight passengers. Mr Staniforth, from Sheffield, had been offered a place to study game design at the University of Leicester. But he collapsed while telling a friend he'd been having pains in his chest.
"Toddler starved to death while mother played online"
A mother was jailed for 25 years after her daughter starved to death while she played an online game for hours at a time. Rebecca Colleen Christie, 28, from New Mexico in the US, played the fantasy game World of Warcraft while her three-year-old daughter, Brandi, starved. The toddler weighed just 23lbs when she was finally rushed to hospital after her mother found her limp and unconscious.
"Woman jailed after gamble fails to pay off"
A woman who stole £76,000 from a company to fund her internet gambling addiction was jailed this week. Lucienne Mainey, 41, from Cambridgeshire, was sentenced to 16 months in prison at Ipswich Crown Court after admitting fraud. The court heard she secretly paid herself by changing old invoices. Mainey turned to internet bingo following the breakdown of her marriage.
"The majority are games players who become so absorbed in the activity they go without food or drink for long periods and their education, work and relationships suffer." What? Whoever wrote this article acts like it's the computers fault for the person not getting up when they have a feeling of wanting to get up. If you are the type of person that when they find something they like, they do it to the best of there ability, you would fall into this same category and you would keep playing hard to the best of your ability and having fun at the same time.
Try to have a conversation or pull a quarterback off the field mid throw or interrupt any person playing something for money or concentrating on a strategy. Yea, have fun doing that. We are concentrating and we are using our heads to strategize. How is that not common sense to you? Oh because your just standing there watching, and not participating. Just judging. Lol, people are funny.. This just happens because uneducated parents, teachers, and everyone else that is older who thinks they know anything about computers or what they are capable of and have nothing else to pin it on. Why don't you blame the pole for being there when a drunk driver hits it? That pole has to be there, its connecting people and its the responsibility of the person not to hit it just like its the parents responsibility to make that kid understand the capability of the internet and how to respect it. This argument is stupid. Kids don't die from playing games to long or being "addicted" they die because they're parents don't have any fucking common sense to pass down. There are people like that, that do all kinds of things and die. Your sitting here penalizing kids for being thorough and concentrating to achieve a goal. That's what your doing, and these articles sound retarded to every single person under 30 that knows how to operate a computer and plays any strategic game.
All of your cases, involve people who have no common sense or are unlucky. They just happen to be on the computer. You don't see people demonizing phones when moms are on the phone and leave there kids to wonder around. The 20 year old kid gets a blood clot while he is playing x box. Ok...? Do you know how many people die randomly? Well Google it because millions at any given time are playing x box so math says its bound to happen. If this is so important, where are your stats on people sitting in front of a tv when they die of a blood clot? Oh, nothing on that? Odd. He did not die from the x box, he died from a blood clot. I have 6000 hours logged on Guild Wars and had 48 hr sessions, with breaks, regularly. It was his body, it was his time. Period. Why your taking his x box and putting it into this, is only to fit the criteria of this fail article.
Do you see how stupid this argument is yet? You believe your Communist reports and reports where at the end they talk about how internet addiction is questionable, and I and everyone else will keep concentrating and learning via this tool that people so desperately want us to stay off of In one way or another. It's to late to get people to not be on the internet learning from each other and having fun whenever we want. It's funny though that people cite things like this, knowing what they are trying to really achieve.