Study on excessive Internet users reveals that they suffer from physical side effects such as blurred vision, sleep deprivation, family conflicts to increased class truancy or breaking appointments showing disrupted daily activities.

On 14th, MIC (Ministry of Information and Communication) and KADO (Korea Agency Digital Opportunity & Promotion) released findings of their joint case study, a national survey conducted last year against 3500 internet users to reveal internet addictions. It showed drop in addiction level in youth, most risky to potential risk, 2.6% to 2.1% and 12.7% to 11.9% respectively for years 2005 and 2006. It also revealed decrease (1.3%) in overall age groups from 15.3% to 14% compared to previous year.

However, looking into more detailed analysis revealed 4.2% increase in people with worsening vision, lack of sleep causing health and family problems, affecting much of their daily routines. In addition, frequent use of the Internet has caused 6.3% increase in students missing classes or not keeping up their appointments. Meanwhile, most serious signs of internet addictions remained unchanged.

Further, in overall youth, self assessed figures show that at-risk Internet use went up 5.8% (from 26% to 31.8%) and 12.2% (from 23.7% to 35.9%) increase in those who answered unable to control the urge to get online. The findings indicate seriousness of how much help and counseling is needed from parents and professionals for the teens.

The first ever self-survey of cell phone addition among teens and adults revealed 10.1%, 4.1% of addiction level respectively. The findings further indicate need for implementation of preventive measures, and the development of treatment approaches for the addicted cell phone users.

MIC plans to more than double the annually provided professional counseling sessions from 3 to 7 with greatly expanding treatment centers from 5 to 32. In addition, it plans to continually provide on-campus internet addiction prevention programs (counseling and education) along with cooperation from youth commission and related agencies to take further steps and measures against the internet addiction problems.