Are gadgets, and the Internet, actually addictive?
The debate over whether technology addiction, and especially Internet addiction, is a real mental disorder has been going on for years, but it seems to be gaining ground. At its annual conference last month, members of the American Medical Association considered a proposal to label excessive video and online game playing as an addiction, but decided to table it until further study.
A survey conducted late last year by researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine found that more than one out of every eight users of the Internet in the United States reported having at least one of these and other possible signs of “problematic Internet use.” Almost 6 percent, for example, said that “their relationships suffered” as a result of their overuse of the Internet. The researchers called for more study of this “little-studied, negative by-product of the Internet revolution of the last decade.”
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