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A passion adds value to one's life, an addiction takes away value. When the line between these two is crossed, the addict is often the last to know, due to their denial. A family and social history will reveal that the subject is being evaluated by close friends as actually suffering a great loss from their activity.
Internet Addiction Disorder is the term first proposed by Dr. Ivan Goldberg for pathological, compulsive Internet usage
. The criteria for this disorder are listed in appendix 1 and are based on similar criteria for substance abused disorders found in the DSM-IV. It is ironic that Dr. Goldberg was not serious about proposing this as an official diagnostic category, yet this term became used extensively. Dr. Goldberg recently revised his suggestion to change the term for this condition to Pathological Computer Use, and changed several of the criteria.
Pathological Computer Use Disorder was proposed by me as the name for a disorder in which people overuse computers to the extent that (A and/or B):
A. Such use causes them distress;
B. Such use has a detrimental effect on their physical, psychological, interpersonal, marital, economic, or social functioning.
A parallel unofficial disorder would be 'workaholism" and the parallel official DSM-IV diagnosis would be "Pathological Gambling."(Goldberg, 96)
In another note posted to the Internet, Dr. Goldberg refers to this condition as one that causes "Decreased occupational, academic, social, work-related, family-related, financial, psychological, or physiological functioning." For this study, the term Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) will be used to designate a pathological use of computers, to engage in social interactivity. The term Pathological Computer Use (PCU) will be reserved for the broader category in which someone is pathological about any aspect of computers, and includes uses that are not social in their nature.