In a new study conducted in England, researchers found that Internet addiction was linked to depression.  In a 1997 study using the Beck Depression Inventory, I found the same results.  We found specifically that in moments of depression, online users turn to Internet relationships to feel better.  They found online relationships less threatening and easier to maintain than those relationships formed offline.  Interestingly, over a decade later, the same findings have emerged.  Here is a sample of the paper's conclusions, which find IA to be linked to depression and poor real-life social skills.

Conclusions from Paper: The concept of IA is emerging as a construct that must be taken seriously. Moreover, it is linked to depression, such that those who regard themselves as dependent on the Internet report high levels of depressive symptoms. Those who show symptoms of IA are likely to engage proportionately more than the normal population in sites that serve as a replacement for real-life socialising. Further work needs to be done on validating this relationship. Future research is needed to corroborate the existing evidence and address the nature of the relationship between IA and depression: there is comorbidity between these conditions that needs greater investigation.

Overall, we continue to find Internet addiction is linked to serious psychiatric problems in much the same way other addictions to alcohol and drugs have been correlated.  We need to better understand how addiction and psychiatric illness relate to one another, especially in light of the rapid pace technology has grown over the decade.  The mobile and immediate access to technology and Internet applications must be better understood in terms of compulsive disorders and psychiatric illnesses.  More can be done with prevention if we did cultivate this understanding.