In John Suler's article Computer and Cyberspace Addiction , he discusses computer or internet addiction. He prefers the term cyberspace addiction because it encompasses video game addiction, people's addiction to chat rooms or social networking, and many other subgroups including those addictions that are not even associated with the internet, like people's addictions to their computers doing word processing, etc.
He talks about two criteria that determine if this cyberspace addiction can be classified as a disorder. He asks, "Is there a consistent, reliably diagnosed set of symptoms that constitutes this disorder? Does the diagnosis correlate with anything - are there similar elements in the histories, personalities, and future prognosis of people who are so diagnosed." So far, researchers have been able to come up with a set of symptoms that are related to cyberspace addiction, but haven't agreed on whether the this addiction relates to any elements in the history or personality of the person who has these symptoms.
This article was written in 2004, so I am not sure if more recent research had addressed this second criterion. With no official psychological or psychiatric definition of what constitutes computer or internet addiction, it is difficult to say that someone is addicted and someone isn't. The other question that I had after reading this article was how many symptoms on a list would one have to have before being diagnosed as a compter addict. I know I spend lots of time on the computer, but according to the article I read, I probably am not addicted YET.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N3lVltkPWk
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