Some Scholars Question Research Methods of Expert on Internet Addiction

By VINCENT KIERNAN

Ms. Young, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, is the world's most prominent -- if not necessarily the most widely respected -- researcher into the issue of Internet addiction. She is widely quoted on the topic by the popular media, and two months ago she published a self-help book for those who believe that they are Internet addicts, and for their friends and families. The book, Caught in the Net (John Wiley), has drawn scathing criticism from some therapists and researchers, and raves from others.

Ms. Young argues that the Internet is powerfully addicting for some "onlineaholics," who ignore family, work, or classes to follow the Net's siren song. She estimates that five million Internet users already may be addicted.

"Caught in an on-line underworld of nonstop chat rooms, fantasy dungeons of monsters and mayhem, and electronic bulletin boards with more listings than a small city's telephone directory, these Internet addicts are engrossed in a very different experience than the one you might imagine exists for eager learners and dedicated information seekers," Ms. Young warns in the book.

"Rather than becoming the technological savior of our times, the Internet just might be emerging as the addiction of the millennium, surpassing even TV with its pervasive grip on our minds and souls."

Her conclusions are based on a survey of 496 Internet users, conducted from 1994 through 1996, and on her interviews with people who believe that they -- or those they know -- have a problem with the Internet. Many of the people she has interviewed have learned about her from popular news accounts or from Usenet newsgroups.

In her view, the Internet is potentially addictive because it allows a user to interact with many other people. Like individuals who suffer from eating disorders, she says, Internet addicts must address the emotional or psychological problems that have made them susceptible to their addiction. She believes they can learn to curb their computer use.

As her fame has increased, some other researchers in the field have started to question the validity of much of the research upon which she bases her conclusions and advice. They note that she has published little of her work in scholarly journals. Some also question Ms. Young's ethics, citing practices such as her offer to consult by e-mail, for a fee, with Internet addicts.

Malcolm R. Parks, an associate professor of speech communication at the University of Washington, says Ms. Young's research methods are deeply flawed. For example, he strongly criticizes the tests for Internet addiction that she has included in her book and on her World-Wide Web site (http://www.netaddiction.com). "They count things as addiction that cannot be counted as addiction," he says.

As an example, Mr. Parks cites a test that claims to help a parent determine if a child may be addicted to the Internet. One question asks: "How often does your child disobey time limits you set for on-line use?" That question is flawed, he says, because children routinely disobey all kinds of time limits imposed on them by parents.

And he cites a question from a test that is supposed to help people decide if they are addicted: "How often do you form new relationships with fellow on-line users?" Mr. Parks says the question wrongly assumes that all on-line friendships are pathological, and he worries that Ms. Young's research will discourage Internet use among people who otherwise might forge important relationships through the medium.

Ms. Young defends her tests, saying she patterned them after the symptoms that are commonly used to identify alcoholics and compulsive gamblers. Those symptoms are listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a standard reference work.

Mr. Parks and others say that if Internet addiction does exist, Ms. Young's book does little to illuminate it, because she presents little more than case studies of individuals. She does not use statistical procedures that would compare Internet addicts with non-addicts in order to produce an estimate of how common Internet addiction is, he says.

Statistics aren't everything, responds Ms. Young. She insists that much important mental-health research has been conducted through case studies of individuals. "Freud had only 12 people," she says. "I have more than 1,000 people."

She ascribes much of the controversy about her work to differing scientific views on the nature of addiction in general. Some researchers, such as Mr. Parks, prefer a narrow definition, according to which addiction is a chemical dependency. But others, including Ms. Young, rely on a wider definition, which also includes addictions to such behaviors as gambling.

Maressa Hecht Orzack, a lecturer in psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, says the use of the term "addiction" is entirely appropriate for Ms. Young's purposes. "She got the symptoms from talking to the patients," says Ms. Orzack, who also has started a computer-addiction clinic at McLean Hospital in Cambridge, Mass. "My patients tell me the same things."

"She is addressing a problem which is there, and a lot of people don't want to admit it," says Ms. Orzack.

"She's a brilliant person," says Storm A. King of Ms. Young. He is a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology in Palo Alto, Cal., where he studies on-line support groups. He defends Ms. Young and the general thrust of her research, but does feel that she defines Internet addiction too broadly. Her definition covers many people who spend a lot of time on line only in the first weeks or months after they start using the Internet, he says.

Kathleen M. Scherer, a psychologist in the Counseling and Mental Health Center at the University of Texas at Austin, endorses the notion that some individuals can feel that they have lost control of their use of the Internet. "We certainly have people coming in for counseling, concerned about their Internet usage," she says.

Two years ago, Ms. Scherer conducted a mail survey of students on the Austin campus, in which she asked if they had experienced any of 10 symptoms of Internet addiction during the previous 12 months. These included cutting back on social activities and being unable to fulfill responsibilities because of their Internet use.

Her results seem to dovetail with Ms. Young's. About 9 per cent of the students reported having experienced three or more of the symptoms, which Ms. Scherer defines as "Internet dependency." Her list of symptoms, like Ms. Young's, does not distinguish various uses of the Net, such as perusing pornography as opposed to conducting library research.

But Mr. Parks takes issue with Ms. Scherer's study, arguing that it, too, yielded inflated estimates of Internet dependency. The survey does not distinguish between habitual users of the Net and those who only occasionally use it intensively, he says. For example, the survey fails to differentiate between students who canceled a single social engagement and those who are glued to the computer screen.

Mr. Parks does not deny that there are those who may misuse the Internet."There are some people out there who have some real problems with this stuff. But those people would probably be having problems somewhere else if the Internet didn't exist. The Internet is the symptom, not the disease."

"Computers and the Internet are about as addicting as work," concurs Ivan K. Goldberg, a psychiatrist in New York. "While we call some people 'workaholics,' it is clear that they are overworking because of economic necessity or to escape from some unpleasant reality in their lives. They do not overwork because of the addicting qualities of work itself."

Ms. Young is in the early years of her academic career. She received her doctorate in 1994 from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation did not deal with the Internet but examined the use of personal interviews in admissions decisions at schools of clinical psychology. In September 1995, Ms. Young joined the faculty at Pittsburgh's Bradford campus, in part to be close to her ailing father in nearby Buffalo.

She grew interested in the Internet in November 1994, she says, when she was working at the University of Rochester's Strong Memorial Hospital. A friend complained that her husband was spending $350 a month and countless hours on subscriptions to on-line services.

Ms. Young realized that Internet use had been little studied, so she posted fliers at area colleges and placed notices on Usenet newsgroups looking for heavy Internet users. She asked them to complete a survey.

In 1996 and 1997, she presented papers at meetings of the American Psychological Association, but her critics note that she has published little of her research in peer-reviewed scholarly journals.

Indeed, a list of Ms. Young's "research publications" posted on her Web site includes only 12 entries -- including a letter to the editor in The Chronicle in 1996, criticizing a news story that questioned the existence of Internet addiction. Although her list also includes several articles and book chapters that are awaiting publication, only two of the 12 entries have been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Some of Ms. Young's critics have accused her of unethical behavior. Jean Hill, an associate professor of psychology at New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas, N.M., complained in a recent posting to RESEARCH, an e-mail list dedicated to Internet-research issues, that the quizzes on Ms. Young's Web site are so defective that people would be misled by using them.

Ms. Young denies that the quizzes are unethical. "Precautions are stated in the disclaimer that these self-help tests are simply guides and are clearly not validated instruments with any proven clinical ability," she said in a response posted to RESEARCH.

Ms. Hill and others also complain about another feature of Ms. Young's site: Her offer to consult with individuals who may suffer from Internet addiction, for a $30 fee. "From the privacy of your home, office, or school, you can receive caring, confidential advice on how to deal with Internet addiction for yourself or a loved one," Ms. Young's Web site announces.

She says the arrangement is one way for her to cope with the torrent of inquiries that she receives by phone and e-mail.

By her own accounting, however, the consulting offer has attracted only about one client each week since March, when it began.

Ms. Orzack, the Harvard psychiatrist who treats computer addiction, steers clear of consultations by e-mail. "I don't treat on line," she says, explaining that she cannot be confident of whom she would be treating in an e-mail exchange. Moreover, she says, reactions and feedback from the patient are delayed, making it more difficult to judge the effectiveness of the interaction.

Ms. Young's book figured in another ethical issue this spring, when she offered extra credit to 50 undergraduates in two of her classes if they simply bought the book. No students complained, but she later withdrew the offer. "Upon further consideration, I recognized that I had made an error in judgment," Ms. Young wrote to the dean of academic affairs at Bradford. The college did not discipline her.

"Professor Young is an excellent businesswoman, and she is very effectively marketing her product," says Mr. Parks, the University of Washington researcher.

Ms. Young, for her part, says she does not understand the criticism of her and her work. She says she lost sleep after USA Today published a mildly critical article about her book in April. "How would you feel if your credentials were continually being questioned?" she asks.

"I hate the criticism. I don't know what to do about it. But I think I'm doing the right thing."

• Kimberly Young's Test for Internet Addiction