Is spending too much time online a prevalent and damaging condition, or simply a bad habit among a select few Stanford University School of Medicine researchers have taken an important step toward (26) the debate over whether compulsive use of the Internet merits a medical (27) . In a first-of-its-kind, telephone-based study, the researchers found that more than one out of eight Americans (28) at least one possible sigh of problematic Internet use. The findings follow results from previous, less (29) studies that found a significant number of the population could be suffering from some form of Internet addiction. "Our telephone survey suggests that (30) markers of problematic Internet use are present in a sizeable (31) of the population," the researchers noted in their paper. "We often focus on how wonderful the Intemet is--how simple and (32) it can make things," (33) lead author Elias Aboujaoude, MD. " (34) " Aboujaoude, clinical assistant professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences and director of Stanford’s Impulse Control Disorders Clinic, said that (35) to cyberspace. He said these patients’ strong drive to compulsively use the Internet is not unlike what sufferers of substance abuse or impulse-control disorders experience: a repetitive, intrusive and irresistible urge to perform an act that (36) .