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HOOKED ON THE WEB
While Internet addiction is not yet recognized by psychiatrists, cyberspace compulsives obviously need a large dose of reality
Vicki Haddock, Insight Staff Writer

Sunday, December 10, 2006


A young mother logs 12 hours a day on her laptop, perusing chat rooms and dating sites while neglecting her children until she loses custody of them. Teenagers turn down invitations to real social events in order to pull Red Bull-fueled all-nighters playing fantasy warcraft games online. An IBM employee -- reportedly fired for spending work hours visiting a sexually explicit chat room -- sues the company for failing to provide counseling for his "Internet addiction."

But is the Internet really addictive? Do some people come to regard the frenetic clicking as seductive hits on the cyberspace crack pipe?

Or is this mere psychobabble, evidence of our tendency to label any outside-the-norm behaviors as a pathology, and our willingness to proclaim addiction to almost anything: chocolate, or foreign oil, or shoe shopping.

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