With support from her parents, she entered a six- week treatment center for sex addiction, where she found others who had become hooked on the Net. By December, she was back at work, living on her own again, and staying out of chat rooms. Caught in the Net. No one knows how many people develop personal problems because of Internet misuse. In a new study of 1,500 companies asking about Internet abuse in the workplace, Greenfield found many employers have fired workers because of excessive time spent on online pornography, shopping, or gambling.
Most companies have no policies on Internet abuse, and the few experts are in hot demand.
Internet-addiction centers are popping up across the country to help bored housewives obssessed with chat rooms, husbands having cyberaffairs, students hooked on online games, and day traders turning violent when their losses mount. People say, 'I used to do drugs in high school. Now I don't need it. Skeptics say Internet misuse is usually a symptom of underlying psychiatric problems that need treatment. Gro- hol, a vocal skeptic.