This article appeared in Sunday’s Virginian Pilot (original article here). As the sidebar indicates, Korea is the most wired nation on Earth, with more than 90% of the homes connected to the internet. With that availability has come the inevitable addiction:
Compulsive Internet use has been identified as a mental health issue in other countries, including the United States. However, it might be a particularly acute problem in South Korea because of the country’s nearly universal Internet access.
It has become a national issue here in recent years, as users started dropping dead of exhaustion after playing online games for days on end. A growing number of students have skipped school to stay online, shockingly self-destructive behavior in this intensely competitive society.
Up to 30 percent of South Koreans younger than 18, or about 2.4 million people, are at risk of Internet addiction, said Ahn Dong-hyun, a child psychiatrist at Hanyang University in Seoul who just completed a three-year government-financed survey of the problem.
They spend at least two hours a day online, usually playing games or chatting. Of those, up to a quarter million probably show signs of actual addiction, like an inability to stop themselves from using computers, rising levels of tolerance that drive them to seek ever longer sessions online and withdrawal symptoms like anger and craving when prevented from logging on.
The article details the case of a 15-year-old, who spent 17 hours a day online. By anyone’s standards, 17 hours a day is excessive.
But what constitutes an addiction? Are the folks who check their Blackberries every few minutes addicted – or do they just have a need to respond quickly to emails? Are the folks whose first move every morning is to grab the newspaper and read it cover to cover addicted – or do they just want to catch up on the news? Is watching 9 hours of football on Sunday an addiction – or just the actions of a football fan?
I guess you could say that political bloggers are addicted – to politics. What else would make us follow campaigns and political news? And, are we not hoping that others get afflicted with the same disease?
Is addiction always a bad thing? Inquiring minds want to know 😉
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
To me, everyone has an addiction. Some are not as good such as alcohol. Some are as benign as collecting Beanie Babies. The addiction becomes a problem when it interferes with your life and has an affect on how you perform in the real world. Do you neglect your responsibilities because of your addiction? Does your family suffer because of your addiction? Have you compromised important functions of life because of your addiction? If you say “yes” to any of these questions, I would have to say there’s a problem and it needs to be examined more closely.