University Times

Three years ago, Kimberly Young, assistant professor of psychology at Pitt's Bradford campus (UPB), first noticed how difficult it can be to access the Internet. She was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Rochester Medical Center at the time and never seemed to be able to use that school's computer labs because they were always packed.

One night about the same time, a friend read a humorous article about obsessive Internet users and called to suggest that Young conduct a study on Internet addicts. Although the idea intrigued Young, she didn't do much about it until another friend called to complain that she could not get her husband off the Internet. She said he acted like he was addicted. "He was spending something like 40 hours in the evenings and weekends on-line," Young says. "They stopped doing a lot of things together. He wouldn't take her out to dinner. He didn't want to go out at all. He didn't want to talk to her. He just hibernated in the study with the Internet." America On-Line was then charging $2.95 an hour, so it was costing the couple hundreds of dollars a month in charges. They could not save for a home or even put a few dollars into the bank for emergencies.

"She was really upset," recalls Young, who joined the UPB faculty two years ago, "which made me think about addiction. Could people in some shape or form get hooked on the Internet?" Hoping to answer that question, Young visited the library only to find nothing available on Internet addiction. That led her to develop a survey on the subject. She adapted the substance dependence criteria used by psychologists to identify individuals addicted to alcohol, drugs and gambling (see accompanying story), and posted the survey at the University of Rochester, other local institutions and on various Internet news groups.

"Overnight my e-mail box, which usually had two e-mails, had 30 or 40 from people who didn't just answer yes or no to the questions," Young says, "but told me stories of near divorce because of the Internet, how they flunked out of school because they couldn't get over their habit or had lost jobs because of it." The volume and extent of the responses shocked Young. She began gathering information on such things as the amount of time people spent on-line, what kinds of problems developed, whether they were mild, moderate or severe problems, and what they were doing on-line.

Meanwhile, so many people began calling and writing Young that she had to set up an e-mail line and a voice mail line dedicated to her Internet research. Then one day she received e-mail from a reporter in England who was writing a story on addiction for an Internet magazine in that country.

After interviewing Young and writing his story, the English reporter passed her name on to a colleague at The New York Post, starting what has proven to be an endless series of calls from media around the world.

At a recent psychology convention in Chicago, Young returned to her room to find more than 10 messages from such big-time media as CBS, ABC, Fox, USA Today and The Chicago Sun Times. A check of her voice mail revealed another 18 calls from organizations and individuals wanting to talk about Internet addiction. Even Penthouse magazine called.

"My girlfriend was laughing that I was going to be in Penthouse," Young jokes. "I was kind of taken aback by that. I told her if they want me to pose I am not doing it." As might be expected, the Penthouse writer was calling to discuss a cyber sex story he was working on. The media situation has gotten so bad, though, that Young avoids answering her home telephone. She leaves that up to husband Jim O'Mara, a member of the UPB Advisory Board. He has intercepted a number of journalists who have called pretending to be old friends of his wife.

"My whole life has kind of flip-flopped because of this research that started off as a little pet project and blossomed into this headline news," Young says. "It's overwhelming. I must get a dozen calls a week, every week, and I can't respond to all of them." Japanese and Swedish television crews have even made the trip to Bradford to interview Young. American networks –after learning that Bradford does not have a television station — have gotten her to visit their affiliates in Buffalo, N.Y., something that she has done because she is a native of the city and her father still lives there.

After talking to hundreds of Internet addicts and their spouses, and repeatedly hearing about fruitless searches in bookstores and libraries for material on coping with Internet addiction, Young finally decided to write a book on the subject. "Caught in the Web" will be available early next year.

"Whatever their problems are," says Young of Internet addicts, "it's not as simple as clicking off the computer. There is something that makes them keep going back to it. In a way it is very much a sort of escapism." Young has learned how much more difficult it is to define Internet addiction than addiction to alcohol, drugs or gambling. The reason is that the Internet offers so many benefits as a tool and there are so many different types of Internet addiction. According to Young, some people get hooked on chat rooms, others on interactive games, cyber sex or obscure pornography, and still others on meeting people via e-mail. For shy people with low self esteem, shut-ins with few social outlets, people who travel a lot and people who need approval but fear rejection, the anonymity of the on-line world is custom made.

Young feels such real-time activities as chat rooms and interactive games foster addiction because they allow a person to create a new persona and an on-line fantasy life that is more fulfilling than their real lives. She sees it everywhere she goes.

"There is obviously this phenomenon occurring," Young says. "I am not saying it is widespread and we need to be scared of the Internet. It's not that it's an evil thing, but it can be misused. People can get obsessed.

"It's not bad that people are using it," she continues. "I think it's bad when they rely on it to the exclusion of any human contact. A few drinks at happy hour is fine, but what happens when it gets out of control? It's all a matter of moderation and that's all I am a proponent of." In her research, Young has met people who have given up everything they used to enjoy for the Internet. She knows men who have stopped playing golf and going out to dinner with their wives or girlfriends because they can't bear to be away from the Internet for any length of time.

"I've talked to mothers who ignore their kids," Young says, "don't play with them, don't put them to bed, don't get them up for school, forget to pick them up at school, don't make dinner for them, don't buy food for them.

"There are guys who cruise the chat rooms like little pick up bars looking for cyber sex," she continues. "It's very reinforcing. That's the thing about this. There is a constant and immediate reinforcement. You don't have to wait and drink a six pack before you begin to be inebriated. Ten minutes on line and you could be having a sexual relationship with somebody that can lead to phone sex and even real sex." Among the people who have begun regularly contacting Young are divorce lawyers. They want her to testify that Internet addiction exists and is not something imagined by the spouse of an addict. She also gets numerous calls from drug and alcohol counselors looking for advice on how to treat Internet addiction.

Although Internet addiction is a new problem, treatment centers already have sprung up at Harvard and at Proctor Hospital in Peoria, Ill. Young's research itself has been endorsed by Howard Shaffer, an authority on addictive behavior at Harvard. Like Young, he too believes that the on-line world of the Internet can be very addictive.

"We need to help people take that new identity they find [on the Internet]," says Young of her work, "and generalize that to their real life and find avenues for them to use their new-found personality traits."

–Mike Sajna