Content area
Full text
Virtual Addiction: help for netheads, cyberfreaks, and those who love them
DAVID GREENFIELD
Oakland, CA, New Harbinger Publications, 1999
227 pp., $12.95 ISBN 1 57224 172 1
Virtual Addiction is the latest self-help book targeting self identified Internet addicts. It provides ambitiously broad coverage of the ways in which the Internet can have adverse effects, including separate chapters devoted to online sexual addiction, marital/relationship problems caused by online affairs, online compulsive shopping and the effect of the Internet on children. Despite the author's claims of impartiality, its tone feels alarmist when describing the dangers supposedly inherent to the Internet-and documented with abundant case examples. The book's primary focus is to provide commonsense advice on reducing usage and its consequences by restoring online/offline balance. By providing specific advice addressing specific...