I was a bit mystified at Alice G. Walton’s piece on Forbes today about the “new” mental disorder, Internet Addiction Disorder (traditionally called IAD, but the DSM-5 draft has confusingly renamed it the unfortunate Internet Use Disorder, or IUD).
As readers of World of Psychology know, Internet Addiction has been around since 1996. Indeed, we published our Guide to Internet Addiction back in 1999.
Here it is 13 years later, and there’s still no clear answer on whether this disorder actually exists.
Indeed, the DSM-5 working group on addictive disorders wasn’t convinced either. That’s why it is not going to be included as a diagnosable disorder in the new DSM 5, out next year.
Yet the Forbes piece makes just the opposite claim. So what’s going on?