By Gina Hahn See the complete Web Citations Index . A pproximately eleven million people around the world are Internet addicts, according to a paper presented by Dr. David Greenfield at the 1999 meeting of the American Psychological Association last month. Marriages are being disrupted, kids are getting into trouble, people are committing illegal acts, people are spending too much money. The survey asked such questions as whether the respondents had used the Internet to escape from their problems, tried unsuccessfully to cut back on Internet use, or found themselves preoccupied with the Internet when they were no longer at the computer. Since there are an estimated 200 million Internet users, Greenfield's study suggests that there are 11.4 million possible Internet addicts.
Bold claims require strong evidence.
If you expand the concept of addiction to include everything people can overdo, then you must talk about people being addicted to books, addicted to jogging, addicted to other people. Although Goldberg's original message was a hoax, Dr. Kimberly Young, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, soon opened her Center for On-Line Addiction . Joseph B. Walther, an associate professor of communication and information technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, reacted to Greenfield's recent APA presentation by making one of his own at the same conference. More seriously, Walther objects to the methodology of the Greenfield study. John Suler, a professor of psychology at Rider University, is another person who thinks about these issues.