Dopamine jolt behind internet addiction

Financial Times

A 24-year-old woman arrives at the psychiatric clinic of the University of Athens school of medicine in Greece. Her symptoms: mild anxiety, sleep disturbance and a loss of interest in hobbies. Instead, she spends five hours a day on Facebook. She was even fired from her job as a waitress because she compulsively left her post to go to an internet café. Her diagnosis: social media addiction. For lots of people – as many as a quarter of youngsters in one Polish study – internet use has grown to the point where they cannot stop themselves from obsessively emailing, advancing to the next level of a FarmVille game or trawling for shoe deals on eBay. Researchers have outlined five different types of internet addiction: computer games, gambling and shopping, pornography, web surfing and online relationships.

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