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ADDICTION In July 1996—only two years after the introduction of the Netscape web browser—Columbia University psychiatry professor Ivan Goldberg posted a notice to an online bulletin board he founded, intending to par- ody the language of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disor- ders (DSM), the profession’s encyclopedia of mental disorders. Goldberg announced criteria for a new diagnosis: internet addiction. The astute might have noticed the word “humor” in the announcement’s URL or the odd symptoms listed: “voluntary or involuntary typing movements of the fingers.” Even so, folks appeared on the bulletin board, claim- ing they suffered the ailment he had just concocted, so he kept the joke going by creating the Internet Addiction Support Group, even though he believed that “support groups for internet addiction made about as much sense as support groups for coughing.” Goldberg regretted the coinage of internet addiction disorder. “I.A.D. is a very unfortunate term,” he told The New Yorker. “It makes it sound as if one were dealing with heroin, a truly addicting substance that can alter almost every cell in the body. To medicalize every behavior by put- ting it into psychiatric nomenclature is ridiculous. If you expand the concept of addiction to include everything people can overdo, then you must talk about people being addicted to books, addicted to jogging, addicted to other people.”®