New research on Internet addiction coming from Canada

Psychologists at the University of Montreal will soon begin study­ing Internet addic­tion.

Their study will focus on teens who don’t leave home, who don’t have rela­tion­ships with other human beings and who “only speak in the lan­guage of the char­ac­ters they play iwth in net­work video games” — no doubt a sub­tle prod at MMORPGs, such as World of Warcraft, and their copi­ous jargon.

Professor Loise Nadeau, head of the university’s new addic­tions cen­ter said, “There is no reli­able study or clin­i­cal data on the issue. ... We are start­ing from scratch.”

It seems to me that Internet addic­tion was a big deal about a decade ago when peo­ple, you know, first started study­ing it. (for exam­ple) The Chronicle of Higher Education linked to three arti­cles from its archives on Internet addic­tion, one pub­lished as early as 1998.

Perhaps Nadeau and her col­leagues are look­ing at Internet addic­tion in a dif­fer­ent way, tak­ing a path that hasn’t been aca­d­e­m­i­cally trod yet. I don’t know. But it’s a bit unfair and inac­cu­rate for her to say that the University of Montreal is “start­ing from scratch” on this.

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