It started as a joke when in 1995, a Manhattan psychiatrist named Ivan Goldberg coined something called Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD), Steve Corner writes.

Originating as a joke, many people believe they could be addicted to the Internet. Image: Mandiberg

In a post on an online mental health forum, Goldberg wrote that sufferers of IAD, amongst other less risible symptoms, were said to exhibit signs of withdrawal including: obsessive thinking about what is happening on the Internet; fantasies or dreams about the Internet and voluntary or involuntary typing movements of the fingers.

The manic-depression specialist told Reportage that his intention had been to mock his profession’s industry bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

“The original posting was designed as a parody of the DSM system and its attempt to make diagnoses by counting symptoms,” he says.

But the joke was on him.

Goldberg’s collegiate prank prompted so many emails from people claiming to be sufferers that he decided to create an online support group which he monitors to this day. IAD, as they say, ‘went viral’.

Fifteen years on, Dr Mubarak Ali knows the feeling.

Last year, after his name appeared in a Sydney Morning Herald article about research he’d conducted into adolescent Internet obsession, the Flinders University senior lecturer was swamped with calls and emails from parents in NSW concerned that their children were presenting signs of addiction.

Dr Ali claims he could do no more than refer parents back to their local GPs, a gesture he knew would prove fruitless.

“At the back of the mind, I didn’t know what the [GPs] would do.”

For Dr Ali, Internet addiction is a major public health issue waiting in the wings.

“Unfortunately, there are not many countries that are taking this matter seriously,” he says.

However, countries like China and South Korea are. In recent years, alarming cases of cyber-fatality have emerged from East Asia.

In 2005, a 28-year-old Beijing man died of exhaustion after playing the online game World of Warcraft for several days continuously. Last October, Kim Sa-rang, a three-month-old South Korean girl, died from dehydration and malnutrition because her parents were allegedly addicted to playing the game Prius Online. The couple, who pleaded guilty to negligent homicide last month, are due to be sentenced this month.

And the evidence isn’t all anecdotal.

The South Korean government estimates it has two million Internet addicts on its hands. While a 2007 Chinese study reported 10 million Chinese adolescents – out of an online population of 94 million – met Internet addiction criteria.

Both governments recognize Internet addiction as a major public health issue and have released a variety of measures to address it.

In the wake of Kim Sa-rang’s death, the South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has introduced so called ‘cut-off’ software which limits the amount of time a user can spend online, as well as imposing midnight curfews on underage gamers.

The Chinese government, which has tightly controlled the online experience of its citizens, has resorted to more drastic methods.

Afflicted teenagers are enrolled in military style Internet addiction boot-camps and only last year the Chinese Ministry of Health put a stop to treating addicts with electric shock therapy.

The Chinese Ministry of Health is moving towards recognizing Internet addiction as an actual disease.

Such a classification appears a long way off in Australia and other Western countries, including the United States, where the Internet’s status as an addictive substance is hotly disputed.

Independent practising psychologist, Les Posen, says a lack of consensus among professionals means that Internet addiction in Australia, at this stage, is something of ‘a grab bag topic’ and a ‘pseudo-diagnosis.’

“The question is what are people actually doing when they’re accessing their computers, iPhone or iPad.”

“Is it gambling? Is it spending six hours on eBay? Is that a legitimate thing to do? Is that removing them of their responsibilities to pay their bills?” he asks.

The point at which obsessive online behaviour tips over into addiction, and whether the Internet itself is addictive or not (as opposed to being a medium for addictive behaviour), is unclear.

“There’s a line somewhere, but it’s a very wavy line,” Mr Posen says.

That line could become considerably clearer in 2013 when the DSM-V, the American Psychiatric Association’s handbook which Ivan Goldberg targeted in his satiric 1995 post, is released.

Internet addiction’s tag as an official disorder in Australia hinges on its inclusion in both the DSM-V and the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th Revision (ICD-10), a classification code set-up by the World Health Organisation.

Apart from providing guidelines for mental health practitioners to diagnose and treat the disorder, this would also accord Internet addiction a legal status that would operate in Australian courts.

But Ivan Goldberg doubts that the Frankenstein’s monster he has created will make it into the DSM, preferring instead to see it included in a new diagnosis which would cover pathological behaviours that cause damage through their overuse.

“I have never seen a patient with so called Internet addiction who was not suffering from a primary psychiatric disorder” he says.

For the federal government the jury is still out.

A 2009 report from the government’s Consultative Working Group on Cybersafety found that empirical data from studies conducted so far was yet to support the idea of a fully-fledged addictive disorder.

Dr Ali, who wants Internet addiction classified no differently from drugs like heroin and alcoholic, believes the government has not gone far enough in investigating the problem.

“We don’t have a database in Australia, we have to start somewhere. The ABS checking once every five years is not good enough,” he says, referring to the Australian Bureau of Statistics Internet Activity Survey (AIS).

A spokesperson for Senator Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, told Reportage that the government was conscious of the potential harm caused by Internet addiction.

She says the government’s “comprehensive response to cyber-safety” included measures such as the setting up the Cybersaftey website, run by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, as well as establishing a Joint Parliamentary Committee to examine cyber-safety issues.

And while it may have begun as a joke, 15 years later, nobody is laughing at the punch line.