Kimberly Young was a psychologist and expert on Internet addiction disorder and online behavior. She founded the Center for Internet Addiction in 1995 and was a psychology professor at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford with a PhD in Clinical Psychology. Until her death in 2019, Young was a professor of management scientists at St. Bonaventure University. She has published numerous journal articles and books chapters and served as an expert witness regarding her pioneer research including testimony for the Child Protection Online Act Congressional Committee. Young was a member of the American Psychological Association, the Pennsylvania Psychological Association, and a founding member of the International Society of Mental Health Online. Aged 53, Young died of cancer on February 28, 2019.
Center for Internet Addiction
Young's interest in Internet addiction started when the Internet was proliferating in the 1990s, when a friend's husband was spending hundreds of dollars a month so he could participate in AOL chat rooms. At that time, many people in mainstream media were beginning to coin the phrase "online addicts" for those who spent large amounts of time on the Internet. Young identified that the United States lagged behind other nations in recognizing excessive Internet use as an addiction and was surprised at how few studies examined the phenomenon of Internet addiction. Young founded the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery in 1995 and has served as its director since its inception. In 1998, Young devised an Internet Addiction Test to assess symptoms of Internet addiction and compulsive behavior in adults.
Guidelines for Avoiding and Treating Internet Addiction
Young cautions against strictly measuring addiction to technology in terms of time, but by how disordered someone's life has become because of it. Young says that digital addiction is similar to drug and alcohol addiction, and recent research shows digital devices can affect the brain the same way that cocaine and heroin does. Young believes that it is important for parents to establish household rules about internet use to help their children avoid internet addiction, since children as young as three years old can become addicted. She recommends the following guidelines:
Birth – 3 years: Never
3 – 6 years: One hour a day/Supervised
6 – 9 years: Two hours a day
9 -- 12 years: Two hours a day/some independence on social media
Young has published more than 40 articles on the impact of online abuse, and has had her work featured in media outlets such as The New York Times, CBS News, Fox News and The Times. Youngs most discussed work is perhaps her 1998 book Caught in the Net where she offers pragmatic solutions to peoples problems to what she calls "Internet addiction."
Books and book chapters
Caught in the Net: How to Recognize Internet addiction and A Winning Strategy for Recovery.
Evaluation and treatment of Internet Addiction, in Innovations in Clinical Practice: A Source Book.
Tangled in the Web: Understanding Cybersex from Fantasy to Addiction.
Internet Addiction: The consequences of a new clinical phenomena, in Psychology and the New Media.
Controlling Internet Abuse in the Workplace: A Framework for Risk Management, in Transformation of the Workplace: The Web and Work in the 21st Century.
Breaking Free of the Web: Catholics and Internet Addiction.
Gamers Anonymous: Understanding and Treating Online Gaming Addiction.
Fiction Works
In addition to her non-fiction works, Young is the author of The Eighth Wonder, a novel about the romance between an ambitious college professor and an older man. She wrote the entire story in a few months while recovering from retina surgery, and considered writing to be a therapy for her during her recovery.
