So what is this Internet addiction thing anyway?
Is it really possible for someone to spend so much time surfing the Web that he forgets to eat or sleep? For someone to get delirium tremens if his PC goes into the shop for a couple of days?
To the average home surfer, whose biggest problem is the frustration of waiting for Web pages to download, it sounds pretty silly. And to many in the medical and computer communities, it has become controversial.
But to Kimberly S. Young and a few other clinical psychologists, it's a real mental disorder, with a name - Internet Addiction Disorder, or IAD - and support groups.
Dr. Young, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, even has a Web site for IAD victims, the Center for On-Line Addiction (http://www.pitt.edu/~ksy/) - where you can take her survey to see if you're addicted.
Believers in IAD say Internet addicts get hooked on the emotional ''high'' experienced while surfing. The result is excessive and ever-increasing time spent on the Web, eventually replacing food, sleep and earning a living. The addict isolates himself from people and becomes obsessed with the Internet.
It's similar to addictions to work, eating, sex or exercise.
Or so they say. But wait, is this for real, or just an elaborate joke?
Like-minded people
Visit the Mental Health Net, an excellent and reputable site for links to self-help on the Net, and you'll find information on the disorder (http://www.cmhc.com/guide/iad.htm), including an official-looking description of symptoms.
But that document was written by a New York psychiatrist and Internet surfer as a parody of the diagnostic criteria given for some questionable behavioral addictions.
Ivan K. Goldberg (http://www.psycom.net) even started an Internet mailing list as a part of the perhaps too-clever joke.
And there's the ''World Headquarters of Netaholics Anonymous'' (http://www.safari.net/~pam/netanon/), which is a list of inside jokes about Net obsession (You know you're hooked on the Internet if . . . You know you're really really hooked on the Internet if . . .).
It's an interesting read, but it's not psychology - or even self-help.
And the ''Webaholic Support Group'' is just a place for folks who spend lots of time online to trade stories and links to favorite sites.
You can even find a 12-step program for curing Internet addiction (http://members.gnn.com/acbaird/index.htm) - but it's a parody too, of the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program.
Gullible media
So what's going on here? Perhaps Dr. Goldberg's joke was too clever because the mainstream media took the bait.
Many newspapers, including The New York Times, have published articles warning of IAD. (The Times article was used on this page Dec. 8.) Even PCWeek last month published an article (http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/content/pcwk/1348/pcwk0096.html) that portrayed IAD as a real affliction, only mentioning that IAD started as a joke in the Internet community. And in an interview published in the Jan. 13 edition of The New Yorker, Dr. Goldberg dismisses the disorder he named.
''Internet Addiction Disorder, except in some rare, extreme cases, likely does not exist as people popularly understand it,'' says John Grohol, an Ohio psychologist who maintains Mental Health Net (http://www.cmhc.com).
''Can spending too much time online lead to negative consequences in one's life? Sure it can. So can spending too much time with your favorite hobby or job. Some people are more prone to such excesses than others, but that speaks more to their personality (and perhaps some problems there) than it does to this specific behavior,'' Dr. Grohol says.
The problem with media reports, say the anti-IAD doctors, is they portray the Internet as inherently addictive, like alcohol or drugs, rather than just another place to lose yourself if you have an unhappy life.
And as any veteran surfer knows, it's very easy to get lost in 100 million Web pages.
E-mail Charles Brewer with questions, comments and suggestions at cbrewer@enquirer.com