It is perhaps fitting that the country’s first technology rehab centre should have opened in Bangalore, given its status as India’s most wired city. The National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences’ new facility offers solace to worried parents seeking to treat their children, who they fear are so obsessed with being connected that they are withdrawing from routine social interactions in the real world and neglecting school. These are not imaginary concerns — internet addiction has been likened by some medical professionals to addiction to alcohol or drugs. But, even though some 100 scientific journals have published research, understanding the scope of the problem has proven difficult — not least because of disagreements within the medical community on whether it exists, and how to define or measure it.
Even the first diagnosis of an internet addictive disorder (IAD) was a satirical prank. In 1995, a New York-based psychiatrist, in order to mock the rigidity of the powerful and standard-setting Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), came up with a test to diagnose the condition. The latest DSM only lists IAD as a condition requiring further research — the only behavioural addiction to be identified is gambling. Thus the estimates of IAD vary between 1 and 8 per cent in the US, while the spread is between 2 and 35 per cent of adolescents in China and South Korea. Credible statistics for India are unavailable, but this is still a country with low internet penetration.
For parents faced with suddenly unsociable children, however, the task of fixing a definition and methodology to diagnose IAD that medical professionals can agree upon cannot be done too soon.
