WHEN Danny Reagan was 13, he began exhibiting signs of what doctors usually associate with drug addiction. He became agitated, secretive and withdrew from friends. He had quit baseball and Boy Scouts, and he stopped doing homework and showering.
But he was not using drugs. He was hooked on YouTube and video games, to the point where he could do nothing else. As doctors would confirm, he was addicted to his electronics.
“After I got my console, I kind of fell in love with it,” Danny, now 16 and a junior in a Cincinnati High School, said. “I liked being able to kind of shut everything out and just relax.”
Danny was different from typical plugged-in American teenagers. Psychiatrists say internet addiction, characterised by a loss of control over internet use and disregard for the consequences of it, affects up to 8% of Americans and is becoming more common around the world.
“We’re all mildly addicted. I think that’s obvious to see in our behaviour,” said psychiatrist Kimberly Young, who has led the field of research since founding the Centre for Internet Addiction in 1995. “It becomes a public health concern obviously as health is influenced by the behaviour.”
Psychiatrists such as Young who have studied compulsive internet behaviour for decades are now seeing more cases, prompting a wave of new treatment programmes to open across the US. Mental health centres in Florida, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and other states are adding inpatient internet addiction treatment to their line of services.
Some sceptics view internet addiction as a false condition, contrived by teenagers who refuse to put away their smartphones, and the Reagans say they have had trouble explaining it to extended family.
Anthony Bean, a psychologist and author of a clinician’s guide to video game therapy, said excessive gaming and internet use might indicate other mental illnesses but should not be labelled independent disorders.
“It’s kind of like pathologising a behaviour without actually understanding what’s going on,” he said.
At first, Danny’s parents took him to doctors and made him sign contracts pledging to limit his internet use. Nothing worked, until they discovered a pioneering residential therapy centre in Mason, Ohio.
The “Reboot” programme at the Lindner Centre for Hope offers inpatient treatment for 11- to 17-year-olds who, like Danny, have addictions including online gaming, gambling, social media, pornography and sexting, often to escape from symptoms of mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety.
Danny was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder at the age of 5 and Anxiety Disorder at 6, and doctors said he developed an internet addiction to cope with those disorders.
“It’s always there,” Danny said, pulling out his smartphone. “I feel it in my pocket.”
Medical experts have begun taking internet addiction more seriously.
Last year, however, the World Health Organisation recognised the more specific Gaming Disorder following years of research in China, South Korea and Taiwan, where doctors have called it a public health crisis.
Reuters