Cam Adair finally realised that his addiction to video games was out of control when it made him consider ending his life.

Mr Adair, a 32-year-old Canadian, has gone on to become the founder of Game Quitters, an online support group for people struggling with gaming addiction.

The US National Library of Medicine now classifies gaming dependency as part of wider internet addiction.

And Dr Andrew Doan, a neuroscientist and expert on digital addiction, agrees that the lockdowns have exacerbated the problem.

To help combat internet addiction, a number of tech firms have produced tools that can be used to help block or limit access to the web, or gaming websites.

Teodora Pavkvic, a qualified psychologist, and digital wellness expert at San Diego-based Linewise, says that young people are particularly susceptible to spending too much time online.

For adults, internet addiction can also blur into gambling addiction, with betting apps and websites fuelling the latter.

BetBlocker is an app that allows people to block their access to tens of thousands of gambling websites and apps for a user-determined period of time.

"The ease of access to remote gambling is unquestionably the biggest challenge that anyone with a gambling addiction will face today," says BetBlocker's founder Duncan Garvie.

And people can also use the app to block other websites, such as gaming ones.

GamBlock is another app that can be used in a similar way to prevent access to gambling websites.

Dr Doan's expertise in video games addiction has partly come the hard way - he used to be such an addict himself.

"During medical school at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine [in Baltimore], and during my residency training, I was playing 80 to 100 hours of video games per week, for about 10 years," he says.

The author of a book called Hooked On Games: The Lure And Cost Of Video Games And Internet Addiction, he says that the internet should be seen as two separate parts.

"[Whereas] the excessive usage of digital sugars like gaming, pornography and non-work related social media can increase the risk of addictive behaviours, in particular when these activities are used to escape daily stressors.".

Dr Doan fears that given the amount of time we now all spend online, we will see more gaming and internet addictions?

Is internet addiction a growing problem