Leader: Reality check the only cure for internet addiction

PARENTS have long recognised the symptoms of internet addiction in their teenage offspring – the withdrawal, the breakdown of verbal communication and the obsessive fiddling with keypads.

And what appeared at the start to be little more than a text message often extends to a work comparable in length to Gibbon’s Decline and Fall…

Withdrawal from computer screens and keyboards can apparently result in tremors, obsessive thoughts and involuntary typing movements of the fingers. The syndrome – Internet Addiction Disorder – was a condition just waiting to happen. Now scientists in China have identified disruption in the nerve wiring of the brains of teenagers, similar to the brains of users of cocaine, alcohol and cannabis.

As yet there is no known cure, other than going “cold turkey”: enforced withdrawal over a period of days until the shaking and finger-typing stops. The problem is now so widespread offices could be stripped of staff and the country brought to a standstill. New technology does not cure the condition, as users simply transfer their condition from one gadget to another.

Radical solutions have been known to include resorting to pencil and paper and, in the most extreme cases, holding conversations with parents, using real words.