Algeria has opened the first ever internet addiction rehab facility in Africa earmarking the downside of an increase in internet use across the continent.

The clinic aims to cure internet fanatics in the North African nation where only 23.8 percent of its 40 million people have access to the internet and has more than 10 million Facebook users.

The clinic in Constantine, east of the capital, attends to patients as young as 14 years who have been affected by excessive use of the internet that some claim is causing physical defects such as headaches, red eyes and back pains.

The addicts feel fidgety and show aggressiveness when they do not go online, similar to the symptoms exhibited by drug users when they do not get their dosages.

The Maghreb nation is facing a crisis from the technological developments where its citizens spend a whole day on the internet, some without taking their meals or taking showers, Aljazeera reported.

“When talking about addiction, people usually think about tobacco, drugs or alcohol dependency,” Dr Hakima Boualem, head of the medical staff of the addiction treatment centre of Bachir Mentouri clinic in Constantine, told Aljazeera.

“But, for some, the fight is with internet – especially the ‘magic blue’ of Facebook.”

The historic opening of the rehabilitation centre is set to help the nation’s compulsive internet users especially on social media, where addiction grows by about 10 percent of the population annually, IsraelNationalNews reported.

The centres will help to reduce the vulnerability of brainwashing by extremist Islamist groups like Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) that use social media to recruit young people across the globe, according to experts in the country.

Algeria joins South Korea, the U.S, China, Taiwan and Britain as countries with rehabilitation centres for their internet addicts.

Most users are pushed by mental health problems into internet addicts and can easily relapse into the addiction even after years of rehabilitation, CNN reported.

The opening of the internet clinic in Africa comes five years after experts warned of its addiction in Kenya, one of the countries with the highest internet and mobile penetration rates on the continent.

Most of the addicts in Kenya are between 18 and 28 years and are driven by the low cost of accessing internet and being idle.

Experts warned of a spreading addiction in Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana, two years ago. The four nations alongside Kenya are leading in internet penetration in Africa, accounting for over 80 percent of Africa’s 339.3 million internet users, according to data by Internet World Stats.

The problem is set to rise in coming years as more people get access to the internet.