A few minutes on Google yields even more lurid anecdotes. In 2007 an Ohio teenager shot his parents, killing his mother and wounding his father, after they took away his Xbox. This year a South Korean couple let their real baby starve to death because they were spending so much time caring for their virtual baby in a role playing game called Prius Online.
On a pound - for - pound basis, the average World ofWarcraftiunkie undoubtedly represents a much less destructive social force than the average meth head. But it’s not extreme anecdotes that make the specter of Internet addiction so threatening; it’s the fact that Internet overuse has the potential to scale in a way that few other addictions do. Even if Steve designed a really cool - looking syringe and started distributing free heroin on street corners, not everyone would try it. But who among us doesn't already check his email more often than necessary?As the Internet weaves itself more and more tightly into our lives, only the Amish are completely safe.
As early as 1996, Kimberly Young was promoting the idea that the American Psychiatric Association (APA) should add Internet addiction disorder to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Mental Disorders (DSM). In February, the APA announced that its coming edition of the DSM, the first major revision since 1994, will for the first time classify a behavior - related condition — pathological gambling-as an “addiction” rather than an “impulse control disorder.” Internet addiction disorder is not being included in this new category of “behavioral addictions,” but the APA said it will consider it as a “potential addition . . . as research data accumulate.”
If the APA does add excessive Internet use to the DSM, the consequences will be wide - ranging. Health insurance companies will start offering at least partial coverage for treatment programs such as reSTART.