WHAT has happened to our willpower? It seems modern Brits cannot do anything without taking it to excess.

Drug and alcohol abuse is so pass, darling: these days we are Lottery addicts, sex addicts, shopping addicts, fitness addicts - and now Internet addicts.

The people who run the Priory Clinic, salvation to many a sozzled celebrity, have just set up a website to help Internet addicts.

This sounds like the equivalent of holding an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Oddbins. But if surfers fill out the online questionnaire, they will discover if they are suffering from a genuine addiction, or merely need to get a life.

But can you really get addicted to the Net? Psychologist Dr Mark Griffiths thinks so.

"Internet addiction definitely exists. It may only affect a small number of people but for those it does affect it is like any other addiction."

So what are the symptoms? "People begin to suffer withdrawal when they are away from the Internet, they build up tolerance to spending a long time online and use it to modify their moods, to create a buzz and to relax.

"An addiction will begin to pervade every walk of life, to cause conflict in relationships and compromise work.

"Addicts will also suffer medical conditions bought on by constantly being on the internet such as eye strain, back ache and sleep deprivation."

Internet addiction can take many different forms because there are a lot of different ways to use the Net.

Many people are addicted to shopping or gambling and simply use the Internet as a tool. Top tennis player Serena Williams has admitted in the past to being to being a compulsive online shopper.

But Dr Griffiths believes there is an important difference between people addicted to an activity on the Net and people addicted to the internet itself.

"People are addicted to activities such as gambling which they can carry out on the net. But people genuinely addicted to the Internet are addicted to activities they can only do online."

The two main ones are chatrooms and fantasy role play. Role play allows people to engage in a non-threatening environment where no-one has to be face-to-face.

Dr Griffiths says: "The Internet is a disinhibitor, people can be more truthful.

"People have the opportunity to change their identity and social persona, they can even gender swap. An acne-ridden 15-year-old can become a 23-year-old Baywatch hunk."

Dr Griffiths is not the first to suggest that Internet addiction is a problem. Four years ago, a University of Hertfordshire survey suggested that more than half of those who regularly use the web become hooked. And this problem was not confined to the techno-geeks, but also affected 30-something women.

Two years later, a US study reckoned there were 200,000 "cybersex compulsives": people fixated on porn sites, X-rated chatrooms and the like.

The Archbishop of York, Dr David Hope, also expressed concern about the Internet's "potential for evil".

"The danger is in having all this wizardry in individual homes which people never leave and where there is, as a result, no social interaction," he has said.

Simon Evans, who works at the Gateway Internet Caf on Swinegate, York, believes there is a risk of people becoming caught in the Net.

"For the younger generation it's more addictive because everything now is computer generated, computer oriented. You have got computers in schools.

"The younger ones will come in and pay for a lot longer than the older people who will go on, and when they get what they want, they will stop and go out."

But Roger Burrows of York University is sceptical. He is an expert in the sociology of the Internet and wonders if the problem has been overblown.

He spends four or five hours doing Net-based work each day, but certainly would not consider that constitutes a problem.

"Whenever these sort of changes occur, people talk about it as deviant behaviour.

"It's an 'obsession', an 'addiction'.

"Addictive behaviour normally involves some sort of substance abuse: alcohol, drugs maybe.

"Perhaps we should use a different word: an over-prioritisation of certain activities."

For many people, spending lots of time surfing the web is just part of their changing lifestyle.

TV viewers were long castigated for being unable to tear themselves away from the box, but because of computer games and the Internet "people are watching less telly now", says Mr Burrows.

It's just a shame they don't get out more.

Updated: 10:36 Wednesday, March 20, 2002