If your idea of a typical Internet junkie is a teenage male with Coke-bottle glasses and a pocket protector who speaks Klingon, guess again. A study presented to the British Psychological Society Tuesday claims that the new archetype of the hard-core user is much older -- and a woman. According to Dr. Helen Petrie, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, roughly equal numbers of men and women from among the 445 individuals surveyed identified themselves as addicts, but women "seemed to be more addicted to the Net than men were. They showed more positive feelings about using the Net and higher usage of the Net than men."
"This is in line with the trends we've been tracking," says TIME science editor Philip Elmer-DeWitt. "More than half of AOL users are now girls and women, largely because it offers such good e-mail chat services." And even in a p.c. PC world, is it that surprising that women find chat addictive? Still, one might expect than only kids would have 55 hours a week to
spend online -- the average dose for self-described addicts -- but researchers
were surprised to discover that the typical Net fiend was closer to 30.
They also tended to be depressed and introverted -- hardly
surprising when your main companion is named Dell.