Net addiction: New study

In their first-ever attempt to quantify "Internet addiction" in a study released this week, Stanford University researchers looked for signs of "compulsion," the San Jose Mercury News reports. That's not vacation planners who surf sites on travel destinations during lunch breaks. Examples they gave the Mercury News were more like when "social interactions" in alternate-reality games substitute for face-to-face interaction, deadlines at work are missed, sleep is lost, and – when online time is reduced - a person becomes anxious, irritable, or restless. Psychiatrist Elias Aboujaoude, who led the research team, "grew interested in the problem when he started to see a small but growing number of habitual Internet users visiting the university's Impulse Control Disorders Clinic," according to the Mercury News. In its "random survey of 2,500 adults," the team "found that between 6% and 14% of computer users said they spent too many bleary-eyed hours checking e-mail, making blog entries or visiting Web sites or chat rooms, sometimes neglecting work, school, families, food and sleep."