Internet addiction expert, Dr. Kimberly Young delves into the psychology of Internet addiction.

KIMBERLY S. YOUNG
University of Pittsburgh at Bradford

A Case that Breaks the Stereotype

SUMMARY

This case involves a homemaker 43 years of age who is addicted to using the Internet. This case was selected as it demonstrates that a nontechnologically oriented woman with a reportedly content home life and no prior addiction or psychiatric history abused the Internet which resulted in significant impairment to her family life. This paper defines addictive use of the Internet, outlines the subject’s progression of addictive on-line use, and discusses the implications of such addictive behavior on the new market of Internet consumers.

This research note concerns the case of a 43-yr.-old homemaker whom the author recently interviewed as part of a larger study designed to examine addictive use of the Internet (Young, 1996). Media attention on the subject of "Internet addiction" has stereotyped those who become addicted as predominantly young, introverted, computer-oriented males. Further, prior research has indicated that predominantly object-oriented introverted males become computer addicted (Shotton, 1989, 1991), and educational specialists have shown that women report lower self-efficacy than men when asked about their use of information technologies (Busch, 1995). In contrast to these observations, this case was selected from the author's original study, as it demonstrates that a nontechnologically oriented woman with a self-reported content home life and no prior addiction or psychiatric history, abused the Internet which resulted in significant impairment to her family life.

DEFINING ADDICTION

The original project was initiated based upon reports which indicated that some on-line users were becoming addicted to the Internet in much the same way that others became addicted to drugs, alcohol, or gambling. The way to clinically define addictive use of the Internet is to compare it against criteria for other established addictions. However, the term addiction does not appear in the most recent version of the DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1995). Of all the diagnoses referenced in the DSM-IV, substance dependence may come the closest to capturing the essence of what has traditionally been labeled addiction (Walters, 1996) and provides a workable definition of addiction. The seven criteria considered under this diagnosis are withdrawal, tolerance, preoccupation with the substance, heavier or more frequent use of the substance than intended, centralized activities to procure more of the substance, loss of interest in other social, occupational, and recreational activities, and disregard for the physical or psychological consequences caused by the use of the substance.

While many believe the term addiction should only be applied to cases involving chemical substances (e.g., Rachlin, 1990; Walker, 1989), similar diagnostic criteria have been applied to a number of problem behaviors such as pathological gambling (Griffiths, 1990; Mobilia, 1993; Walters, 1996), eating disorders (Lacey, 1993; Lesieur & Blume, 1993), sexual addictions (Goodman, 1993), generic technological addictions (Griffiths, 1995), and video game addiction (Griffiths, 1991,1992; Keepers, 1990; Soper, 1983). Therefore, in the original study was developed a brief seven-item questionnaire which adapted similar criteria for substance dependence in the DSM-IV to provide a screening measure of addictive use of the Internet (Young, 1996). If a person answered "yes" to three (or more) of the seven questions, the person was deemed to be an Internet "addict." It should be noted that the term Internet is used to denote both the actual Internet and on-line service providers (e.g., America Online and Compuserve) in this paper.

A CASE STUDY

This subject reported that despite being 'computer phobic and illiterate," she was able to navigate easily through the on-line system of her new home personal computer because of the menu-driven applications provided by her on-line service. Her on-line service was the only application for which she used her computer, and she initially spent a few hours per week scanning a variety of social chat rooms, i.e., these are virtual communities which allow multiple on-line users to converse or "chat" instantly with one another in real time. Within a 3-mo. period, the subject gradually needed to spend longer periods of time on-line, which she estimated to reach a peak of 50 to 60 hours per week. She explained that once she became established in a particular chat room where she felt a sense of community among other on-line participants, she frequently stayed on-line longer than she intended, e.g., two hours, reporting sessions lasting up to 14 hours. Typically, she logged on the first thing in the morning, she constantly checked her e-mail throughout the day, and she stayed up late using the Internet (sometimes till dawn).