Internet users in York today claimed they were not addicted after a report said millions of people were turning into "cyber-junkies".

Researchers said five million Americans were putting their jobs and marriages at risk by being "seriously addicted" to surfing the net.

But James Houston, 29, who spends up to 12 hours a day using the worldwide computer network, said he was quite unaffected by it.

"I am certainly no Internet junkie," he said. "There will be some addicts. People who sit in their bedrooms or garage, or wherever they are away from other people, staring at the screen. It is obvious that there are people with nothing better to do than sticking their noses into everything other people are doing on the Internet.

"But most find it a useful tool and quite right too. I find it difficult to understand how you could be addicted to the Internet. It would be rather like being addicted to a public library. There is more information than you could possibly digest and most of it is very boring."

James, who runs the York Multimedia Network, which operates the Internet Caf on Walmgate, York, said he sent or received up to 200 e-mail messages a day.

"Talking to people on the Internet is not vastly different from talking to them on the telephone or in the pub," he said.

"I think that the Internet can often compensate for social inadequacies. Some people find it hard to make friends, but can do so on the Internet.

"I do socialise with friends in the Internet Caf and it can sometimes be useful to log on to check a fact, like who won the cup final in 1956.

"I do find it socially useful too. I keep in touch with friends around the world."

An expert in Internet addiction, Dr Mark Griffiths, senior lecturer in psychology at Nottingham Trent University, said he did not think there were many Internet addicts in Britain.

The definition for addiction used by the American report, he said, was wider than one he would use because it counted the number of hours users were logged on.

"If someone spends a long time using the Internet, this is indicative that they may be addicted but it is certainly no proof," he said.

"There are plenty of genuine reasons why people are logged on for hours at a time."

He said: "Many of the so-called Internet addicts are actually addicted to gambling or sex or computer games and are just using the Internet as a medium for their habit."

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