Twenty years of Internet addiction … Quo Vadis?

Byline: P. Dalal, Debasish. Basu "A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. " -Albert Einstein THE BEGINNING In 1995, when the New York based psychiatrist Dr. Ivan Goldberg posted a sincere-looking but satirical note on the online psychiatric bulletin board PsyCom.net (no longer available now) taking a dig at the rigid diagnostic criteria of the newly released 4 [sup]th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) by "creating" a fictitious disorder called Internet addiction disorder (IAD) and cooking up its "diagnostic criteria" as per DSM style for substance dependence, little did he know that he had opened the proverbial Pandora's box. [sup][1] He and his bulletin board were flooded with people narrating their tales of woe of "remaining caught in the Net" and seeking help for their condition. This was one condition he did not intend to create (he himself did not believe that there could be a true "addiction" to Internet but rather excessive or pathological use), but there it was whatever name you gave it! In 1995, a clinical psychology student Ms Kimberly Young, then in Rochester, USA, got interested in the psychological factors behind computer use and independently conceived of "addictive use of the Internet" as a pathological condition. [sup][2] It is interesting to hear of this story from the author herself 20 years later: "Internet addiction began as a pet project in a young researcher's one bedroom apartment in Rochester, New York. I was that young researcher. It was in 1995, and a friend of mine's husband was seemingly addicted to AOL Chat Rooms spending 40, 50, and 60 h online at a time when it was still $2.95/h to dial into the Internet. Not only did they suffer financial burdens but also their marriage ended in divorce when he met women in online chat rooms. " [sup][3] The rest, as they say, is history, with her first illustrative case report published in 1996 having been cited 755 times, and her first definitive research article titled, "Internet addiction: Emergence of a new clinical disorder," published in 1998, having been cited a phenomenal 3144 times as on December 15, 2015! [sup][4] In 1995, a clinical psychologist Mark Griffiths, working at Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK, who had been interested in research on gambling, computer use, and use of various machines or technology by humans in general for a few years at that time, published an article named, "Technological addictions. " [sup][5] The next year, in 1996, he published on Internet addiction, conceptualized by him as a subset of the broader term technology addiction. [sup][6] This was the beginning, 20 years ago. As the freelance writer Michael OReilly, reporting in Canadian Medical Association Journal in 1996, (who, himself, interestingly, declared that "he may be at risk for developing IAD") titled his article as "Internet addiction: A new disorder enters the medical lexicon," where he mentioned Young's still unpublished research on Internet addiction. [sup][7] Truly, a PubMed search on "Internet addiction" pegs this short report as the very first article included in PubMed on the topic. The Accolades… Now, in 2015/6, as on December 15, 2015, there are 1561 articles cited in PubMed on "Internet addiction. " What is more interesting is a look at the acceleration rate of publication. While there were only three articles in 1996, there were 32 in 2005, 275 in 2014, and 296 (and still counting) in 2015! Thus, while the growth rate of publications was not hugely impressive in the first decade of its life, Internet addiction is now a robust young adult in its postteen year with a sizeable growth spurt in its second decade. Not many "new" terms can boast of such growth in just 20 years in the PubMed! As an aside, it is to be noted that the term "Internet addiction" has many competing contenders; some of the important ones are pathological Internet use, problematic Internet use (PIU), compulsive Internet use, Internet use disorder (IUD), and pathological use of electronic media among others. …