By Mark O’Neill

Bad news geeks. A psychiatrist is pushing for internet addiction – “excessive gaming, sexual pre-occupations and e-mail/text messaging” – to be classified as a mental illness which means the most serious cases could warrant medication or even a stay in a hospital, like all those gamers in China.   Do you get broadband in hospital?

“Like other addicts, users experience cravings, urges, withdrawal and tolerance, requiring more and better equipment and software, or more and more hours online”, according to Dr. Jerald Block, a psychiatrist at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. Dr. Block says people can lose all track of time or neglect “basic drives,” like eating or sleeping. “Relapse rates are high”, he writes, “and some people may need psychoactive medications or hospitalization”.

With China and South Korea already doing something about their internet addicts, Dr Block wonders if it is about time that the rest of the world starts doing something too. But colleagues are deeply sceptical, wondering if internet addiction is still in its early stages to be called a mental condition and they argue that it is extremely difficult for a doctor to determine when someone’s internet addiction has crossed over from being normal to being unhealthy.

If internet addiction is an illness, I’m a terminal case!

But don’t worry boys and girls. The next edition of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” isn’t due out until 2012. Until then, I think we’re safe. In the meantime, you can go back to your World of Warcraft. Play on.

By Mark O’Neill

A new survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that more Americans would prefer to give up the television than lose their internet connection by a margin of 45% to 43%.

It also found that losing their internet connection for a sustained period of time would make people think they had been transported back to the Dark Ages. This leads to the best quote of the article :

“I suspect for a lot of people, if you cut that cord, they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves,” said Bob Papper, a media professor at Hofstra University on Long Island, N.Y. “They’d be paralyzed without the internet. They might have to read.”

As well as being funny, it is also very startling.   It makes you realise how much the internet has penetrated our lives to the point that we’d be ‘paralyzed’ without it.    That losing the internet would force us to do something as basic as read a book.    That’s why I chose a man and a noose as the illustration for this post – because losing their internet connection and their computer would probably make a few die-hard net surfers choose the ultimate way out.    It’s sad but it’s probably true.

What about you? Being a geek, I’m sure the TV would be history if you had to choose but if the internet connection went down, how long is too long? How long before you started chewing the sofa or ripping the wallpaper in frustration?  How long before you considered picking up that book and starting to read?    How long before you declared Holy War on the internet provider?