Hamburg  - Addiction to online games should be treated as a distinct illness, experts recommended recently. Round-the-clock gaming or chatting can have long-term negative impacts on a child or teenager's social, mental and emotional development, said psychologist Joerg Petry at an annual convention on gambling addiction in Hamburg.

"The pull of the PC as a medium is so strong that people turn completely inward," he said. In this way, some addicts come to play 50 consecutive hours or spend 100 hours a week at their computer.

But Petry says studies with students have shown that online addiction is not as widespread as assumed hitherto. It often proves just a a temporary problem during adolescence.

Nonetheless, a high number of young people have their development noticeably disrupted by the medium. Delegates at the convention hope to convince insurers to recognize online addiction as a disease, along the lines of gambling addiction, which was recognized as a disease in 2001.