"Young adults around the world experience distress when they try to unplug from technology for even one day, a research project has found.

"A clear majority" of almost 1,000 university students in 10 countries, including China, Chile, the U.K. and Uganda, were unable to voluntarily stay away from computers, televisions, cellphones and MP3 players for 24 hours, reported the International Center for Media at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md., which led "The World Unplugged" project.

Mental health epidemic predicted. A Sydney shrink claims that the world wide web could create a mental-health epidemic, with up to 10 per cent of adolescents at risk of addiction.

Lawrence Lam, a behavioural epidemiologist at the University of Sydney and the Children's Hospital at Westmead cited studies in Greece and the US which showed that eight per cent of adolescents could be classified as computer addicts. Lam conducted research in China where the problem was close to 14 per cent.