Are we facing an epidemic of "Internet addiction"? Apparently so.

There are more and more studies like this warning of dire dangers, which are said to include depression and the risk of suicide:

Study leader Dr Catriona Morrison, from the Institute of Psychological Sciences at the University of Leeds, said: "The internet now plays a huge part in modern life, but its benefits are accompanied by a darker side."

The scientists employed the internet to carry out their research.

An online questionnaire was used to assess levels of internet dependency and depression in 1,319 individuals ranging in age from 16 to 51.

In general, the longer people spent online the more depressed they tended to be, the scientists found.

"There was a high correspondence between the amount of time spent on the internet and levels of depression," said Dr Morrison. "If you look at how dependent people feel they are on the internet that is likely to correspond with how happy or sad they feel."

Her team identified a small group of 18 hard-core internet users who spent many hours online each day and were classed as "internet addicted".

Their average depression score was more than five times higher than that of non-addicted users, and they were more likely to be moderately or severely depressed.

The addicts spent proportionately more time browsing porn sites, gaming sites and online communities. They also tended to be young, having an average age of 21.

Although they only made up 1.2% of the total number of participants, this was a higher fraction than the 0.6% of people in the general population who are addicted to gambling.

"While many of us use the internet to pay bills, shop and send emails, there is a small subset of the population who find it hard to control how much time they spend online, to the point where it interferes with their daily activities," said Dr Morrison.

"Our research indicates that excessive internet use is associated with depression, but what we don't know is which comes first - are depressed people drawn to the internet or does the internet cause depression?

"Now we need to investigate the nature of that relationship and consider the issue of causation."

Incidents such as the spate of suicides among teenagers in the Welsh town of Bridgend in 2008 have led to questions about the psychological dangers of social networking sites. Some experts are worried about their potential for fuelling depressive thoughts in vulnerable teenagers.

As to the correlation between the Internet and depression, it wasn't that long ago that I read about another study linking television watching to depression. It should come as no surprise that depressed people (as well as people with various anxiety disorders which might make them not want to leave the house) would tend to engage in passive forms of entertainment. It's all too easy to say that this is what "caused" the depression, but is there any reason to suppose that taking away their TV and Internet would make them happy? Depression has been with humanity for a long time. Winston Churchill called it "my black dog" and he used to build brick walls in his garden. (Today that would probably be called an obsessive building addiction or something.)

Since Internet addiction seems here to stay, I thought I'd take an unscientific look at the popular addictions and see how they compare on Google.

Because it's where the addiction word came from, drug addiction ought to to be the granddaddy of them all, and it does get a whopping 12,100,000 hits. Internet addiction is of course close behind and at 8,700,000 hits, I think it's fair to call it our fastest growing addiction.

However, you would have to add drug and Internet addictions together to surpass what seems to be the number one addiction -- sports addiction, which at 16,400,000 hits, seems to be the top-rated addiction.

At 9,770,000 hits, music addiction is only slightly ahead of Internet addiction. But that may change. As to which addiction is "better for you" (more "wholesome" perhaps), that would seem to depend on your point of view.

EDITORIAL NOTE: It might be Google, or it might be my error, but music addiction seems to have done down to only 6,350,000 since I first wrote this post. Are people that fickle about such serious matters?

Maybe it's a form of addiction nostalgia, but today I pity poor television addiction. A much-discussed topic among concerned parents when I was a child, today it seems almost left out. Only 1,280,000 hits. Even cell-phone addiction is ahead of the television, with 1,870,000 hits. Not bad, but even the ubiquitous cell phone has a little ways to go to catch up with shopping addiction -- currently standing at 2,000,000.

Anyway, I don't want into an extended debate about how wholesome or healthy (or unwholesome or unhealthy) any of these things are. My purpose here is only to look at the various addiction ratings. (Or "ratings of addictions" -- take your pick.)

Lagging behind cell phones is the
NASCAR addiction, which has 1,160,000 hits. Surprisingly, gambling addiction (despite the hype) comes in slightly behind NASCAR, with 1,020,000 hits. Go figure.

Not to sound classist or anything, but where I grew up, many a man was addicted to golf. Yet today, golf addiction doesn't even break a million -- at 919,000 hits. Slightly behind that is Skiing addiction (905,000).

Another popular (and therefore addictive) pastime is surfing, but I left out the numbers, because the activity is so hopelessly entangled with Internet addiction (via "surfing" the web or the Internet), that any number would be misleading.

It may come as a surprise to many people, according to Google, Porn addiction (939,000) is ranked more highly than either skiing or golf.

There are few things I can think of that are more "wholesome" than exercise, but even that can be addictive, and there are a number of sites devoted to combating it. However, out of fairness, I don't think it's reasonable to rate exercise addiction according to the 1,320,000 Google hits it receives, because many of them refer to exercise in the context of fighting other addictions. But if exercise can be addictive too, doesn't that beg the question of whether addicts are just substituting one addiction for another?

While I didn't mean to overlook work addiction, with 551,000 hits, the good old all-American work ethic just doesn't seem to be stretched to the obsessive compulsive proportions it was in my childhood. Perhaps Going Galt has helped people break free from these neurotic chains.

Make of these numbers what you will. But I was surprised to find so many addictions, and I am sure there are many that I overlooked. It occurs to me that if so many of us are as addicted as it seems we so obviously are, we might be in danger of becoming a nation of addicts. And if things get to the point where we are all addicted to one thing or another, doesn't this beg the question of what addiction is, and whether it is unhealthy? Who gets to decide these things? The same people who seem ready to declare that we are all suffering from one mental illness or another?

At the rate things are going, pretty soon we'll all be abnormal. I guess I can handle such a fate, but sooner or later someone is bound to ask, "if we are all abnormal, then what is normal?" And if we're all sick, what is well?