Israeli teens are addicted to surfing the web more than teens elsewhere around the globe, and almost twice as much as the runner-up, Slovenia, according to an international survey carried out by NASP, the Swedish National Center for Suicide Research and Prevention of Mental lll-Health.

The study collated data from 11,956 teenagers in 178 high schools from 11 countries as to their surfing habits, and used a psychiatric questionnaire to analyze possible addiction based on tests for identifying pathological betting addictions.

Of the 951 Israeli teenagers who participated in the survey, 100 - 11.8 percent - were diagnosed as pathological users of the Internet, indicating addiction. Slovenia was second among teenage addicts (5.8 percent ), before Estonia (5.3 percent ), Germany (4.8 percent ), Romania (4.6 percent ), Spain (4.3 percent ), Ireland (3.8 percent ), Austria (3.1 percent ), France (2.6 percent ), Hungary (1.6 percent ) and Italy (1.2 percent ). The results were published in the journal Addiction.

Internet Addiction Disorder is a psychiatrically defined phenomenon whose gravity and scope have only recently drawn the interest of professionals. Boys are more likely to be affected than girls. The results pointed out that most non-addicted surfers were online for a daily average of two hours, while surfers defined as pathological users spent an average of almost four hours surfing. Urban surroundings increased the risk of addiction by 40 percent, while unemployed parents raised the risk by 68 percent. Having parents who were hardly involved in the child's life raised the risk ratio by 2.14, and children living apart from their parents were three times as likely to develop IAD.

Oddly, teenagers in a relationship were also more likely (61 percent ) to become addicted.

Case study: addicted to hacking

A Turkish 16-year-old missed most of his 10th year of high school. Two years earlier he was still considered an outstanding student, but he soon began to spend more and more time on the web, eventually spending 20 hours a day online. His parents got rid of the computer and modem, but he refused to give up and began surfing from Internet cafes instead of attending school. Endless arguments with his father led the family to seek help at the psychiatric clinic at the Bagcilar hospital in Istanbul.

The staff, which documented the case, recalled that right from the start the patient was fully aware of his addiction. He told the staff that he belonged to a group of hackers whose mission was to bring down pornography websites and sites from enemy countries, and that he fulfilled such missions hundreds of times.

"He was completely disinterested in anything else apart from his mission and awaited new orders from the 'supreme hackers committee,'" the staff wrote.

When his father tried to deny him access to the Internet, he became furious and anxious, and told the staff he would abandon his family if his access to the web would continue to be limited.

His treatment included frequent interaction with his parents, talks with staff every two days for the first two weeks, and then weekly meetings for three months. The treatment included behavior assignments, physical workouts and the use of three different psychiatric pills. Staffers encouraged him to reoccupy himself with things that once held his interest, and gradually reduced his surfing hours.

Six weeks after beginning therapy, a behavioral improvement began, and six weeks later he could already surf the web without showing signs of addiction.