Internet addiction case law

In 1995, a very renowned psychiatrist, Ivan Goldberg, M.D., created a non-existent disorder as a satirical hoax. Based on the pathological gambling patterns he crafted the Internet addiction disorder (IAD). Interestingly enough, plenty of alleged sufferers started approaching the Doctor asking for help. Although many are opposing the classification, there is nowadays a strong movement towards including the IAD into the next Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V).

While the Internet addiction is still being disputed as a disorder or addiction, some apparent sufferers use the terminology and the current state of indecision to litigate their cases in court. A plaintiff disputes the termination by IBM due to his Internet addiction caused by the post traumatic stress disorder. While he based the case on a medically acknowledged disorder, the incorporation of the Internet addiction makes this case interesting. A ruling is still pending.

Harvard University established a Computer Addiction Study Center which came to the conclusion that every ten to twenty people who surf the Web develop a Web dependency.

The Center for Internet Behaviour released a study where they argue that certain services available on the Internet display characteristics which provoke dissociation and the need for instant gratification, whereby they rather would call it compulsion than addiction.

The actual addiction to Internet can establish no case law, because it has not widely been recognized as such. But many psychiatrists now argue that the behaviour commonly called Internet addiction may be just a symptom of other serious disorders, where pathological gambling, impulse control disorders, depression and anxiety manifest themselves by the sufferer seeking gratification by use of the Internet. Under this definition, shopaholics, particularly through a manic phase, tend to shop obsessively; it is only coincidental that it happens over the Internet. A pathological gambler, if he is using the Internet for his obsession, or perhaps this fixation manifests itself in compulsive day trading, it is not Internet induced, but would have manifested itself in some other way eventually.

China, by employing the diagnostic criteria established by Dr. Goldberg, concluded that one eighth of its adolescent population is Internet addicted and restricted the use of computer gaming by declaring a low limiting it to three hours daily.

By many the television addiction was viewed as far worse and that computer and Internet addiction fades with passing time. The legislature has as of yet no juristic measures to define Internet addiction in one way or another, any laws governing the overly use of the Internet do not exist and are not likely to be implemented any time soon.