“The fact that it is unpredictable is what compels the brain to keep checking over and over and over,” said Dr. David Greenfield, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine.

“When people are afraid of not having their PDA or a phone with them, then it’s addictive,” Greenfield said.

Benny Evangelista of the San Francisco Chronicle writes that the question still remains: When does an addiction to technology become a problem?

Dr. Kimberly Young, founder and director of the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery of Bradford, Pa., said it depends on individual circumstances.

“It’s not a time limit,” said Young, who has been studying Internet addiction since 1994. “You can’t diagnose alcoholism by how much someone drinks.”

“It’s a generational thing,” she added. “Go interview a 15-year-old, a 45-year-old, and a 75-year-old, and you’ll have different views of technology. For 15-year-olds, it’s their lifeline.”

Some of the warning signs include being so preoccupied with online activities that it affects real relationships. There’s a problem with “someone who is always having to get up in the middle of the night to check e-mail and not having sex with his wife,” Young said.

According to the center’s website, NetAddiction.com, the most common type of Internet addiction is online pornography, but many people also have problems with online gambling, auction sites, and multiplayer role playing games. Surveys indicate that half of Internet addicts are also addicted to something else, such as drugs, alcohol, smoking, or sex.

Dr. John Ratey, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, said a physical addiction can form from the chemical reaction in the brain—a “dopamine squirt”—that comes from a rewarding Internet experience.

“We condition ourselves to need it, and after a while, it becomes a physical need like any other constant practice,” Ratey said. “It’s worse now because we’ve got all these devices.”

Greenfield said that 10 years ago there was more debate among mental health professionals about whether Internet addiction was an actual malady or a symptom of more recognized problems such as depression and social isolation.

In fact, a Pew Research Center study released last month concluded that the rise of Internet and mobile phone use has not made Americans more socially isolated.

“Personally, I have some doubts about the notion that there can be an Internet addiction,” said sociologist Keith Hampton, the Pew study’s lead author and an assistant professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

“We can’t forget that we had media before the Internet,” he said. “Husbands have been sitting at the dinner table reading the newspaper for a long time. Just because the devices change doesn’t necessarily mean that the overall social pattern has changed.”

Around the world, however, experts say they are just starting to measure the effects of Internet addiction. In China, which has almost 300 million Internet users, the government has declared Internet and video game addiction a public health problem.

Studies have found that anywhere from 2.4 to 15 percent of people in China are addicted to the Internet, said Dr. Cheng-Hua Tian, professor of psychiatry at the Peking University Institute of Mental Health. In an e-mail, Tian said he and other senior psychiatrists are developing diagnostic criteria to more accurately measure addiction, which affects teenagers more often than adults.

In the United States, Greenfield said, studies have estimated that anywhere from 3 to 6 percent of Internet users have a problem. The nation’s first inpatient “detox” center focusing on Internet and video game addiction opened in Fall City, Washington, in July.

The reStart Internet Addiction Recovery Clinic, which charges $14,000 for a 45-day recovery program, has treated three men and one woman who sought to kick serious video game habits that left them unable to complete school or hindered their ability to form real-world relationships, said clinic co-founder Dr. Hilarie Cash.

In serious cases, technology “can be more immediately gratifying than the labor of building an intimate relationship,” Cash said. “That is one of the biggest prices we pay by letting ourselves get seduced by all this technology.”

Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, assistant director of the Stanford School of Medicine’s Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Clinic, said there’s no question in his mind that technology can cause problem addictions.

“From a clinical experience, I’ve seen plenty of people whose primary problem is an Internet problem,” he said. “They’re not gamblers, they’re not pornography addicts, they’re not necessarily depressed. And there are real offline consequences that we are just starting to appreciate.”

“What we’re seeing is that people with social anxiety are gravitating online as a substitute, and that can be OK to a certain point,” he continued. “There’s nothing wrong with having these connections, unless your real-life relationships begin to suffer, and that’s when it becomes problematic. Some of them truly have difficulty forming real-life relationships.”

If you think you might have a problem with Internet addiction, ask yourself these questions:
– Do you spend excessive time online, or more than you intended?
– Do you feel more depressed or lonely the more time you spend online?
– Do you have a heightened sense of euphoria while online or using a computer?
– Is your time online interfering with your job or school performance?
– Do family members or friends complain about the time you spend online?
– Do you frequently choose spending time online over going out with other people?
– Do you hide, lie, or become defensive about online activities?
– Do you feel depressed, restless, moody, or nervous offline and fine again when online?
– Do you spend too much time with online pornography, multiplayer games, or gambling sites?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, unplug yourself completely from technology for at least a few moments each day. Keep track of how much you use technology, and moderate overuse. If needed, seek counseling and support groups.

Researchers collected data from 51 Iowa State undergrads ages 18 to 33, about half of whom reported playing less than a couple hours of video games a week, and about half of whom reported playing an average of 43 hours a week.

Researchers monitored brain activity while participants performed the Stroop Task, a standard measure to determine attention levels. Participants had to identify the color of a word when the color and word matched, and when they did not match. (It typically takes longer to indicate the color when the word does not match.)

They found that the ability to pay attention reactively (i.e. when prompted by a trigger, such as being shot at) is similar across both types of gamers, but brain wave and behavioral measures of proactive attention (i.e. anticipating a mechanism, such as collecting pots of gold) are significantly diminished in the 43-hour-a-week gamers.

Elizabeth Armstrong Moore of CNET asks whether the propensity to play video games several hours a day is the cause or the effect of proactive attention issues. She writes that the study shows a correlation, but that more research is required to identify the true culprit.

“Right now the data we’re reporting in this study is really susceptible to the chicken and egg problem,” said Rob West, an associate professor of psychology and director of the Cognitive Psychology Program at Iowa State.

“It might be that playing the games is actually producing this effect, but it could also be that individuals who, for whatever reason, like to play 40 hours a week also have this mode of attending to this kind of information in the world.”

“The amazing thing is that, like cell phones, nobody seems to notice the vast amount of time and energy—at work, at home, and now while on the move—people are devoting to Facebook. It has become a given,” Fenichel writes in an online post titled “Facebook Addiction Disorder—A New Challenge?”

FAD could be classified under the broader “Internet addiction disorder” or Internet overuse.

Academic papers have already posed theories on Internet addiction and social networking addiction, in addition to cell phone addiction.

“Like most activities, moderation and integration are key. Those that may seriously label and treat FAD as a behavioral addiction will clearly need to use context in determining if a behavior has become demonstrably harmful to overall social, work, or face-to-face interpersonal efficacy,” Fenichel added.

Joanna Lipari, a clinical psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, told CNN about several signs of addiction to Facebook:

1. You stay up late at night on Facebook (rather than sleeping), causing you to be tired the next day.

2. You spend more than an hour a day on Facebook. Lipari said it is difficult to define how much is too much when it comes to Facebook usage, but that an average person should only spend about half an hour on the site.

3. You become obsessed with old loves or exes you’ve reconnected with on Facebook.

4. You ignore work in favor of Facebook.

5. The thought of getting off Facebook leaves you in cold sweat. If you try going a day without Facebook and it causes you stress and anxiety, this means you need help.

According to the same report by Elizabeth Cohen, Senior CNN Medical Correspondent, Facebook addiction is not yet an actual medical diagnosis. However, the report notes that several therapists in the United States have noticed a rise in the number of clients who get hooked on social networking to the point of social dysfunction.

The National Addictions Management Service (Nams) received 2,415 calls to its help lines, 1,518 of which were related to a gambling addiction. Two counseling centers – Thye Hua Kwan Moral Society and Care Corner – saw 600 clients for problem gambling as of March last year.

Attendance at support group sessions for gambling addicts and their families is overflowing at the One Hope Center. Three years ago, 12 to 15 addicts and their families attended bi-weekly meetings at Geylang Methodist Church. Now, the crowd swells to 80.

“I think problem gamblers and their families are worried about the new casinos,” says One Hope Centre’s executive director, Reverend Tan Lye Keng. “So, there is an urgent need for them to get better.”

The recreational gambler is experiencing problems when he or she wages more than he or she can afford to lose. Pathological gamblers persist in their habit at great cost to their personal, family and work lives. An individual chases losses suffers most from unexpected wins as they are spurred on to spend even more in the hope of recouping losses quickly.

For those struggling with a gambling addiction, the temptations to partake in the activity are growing. For instance, in China, there are more than 200 soccer matches one can bet on daily. According to a 2007 IMH study, gambling addicts are overwhelmingly male, Chinese, married, employed and with secondary school education. Their main habits are soccer betting, 4-D, casinos and horse-racing.

Studies also show that many with gambling addictions also suffer from substance abuse issues.