Internet Addiction by Troi (Edison)

“Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD), or more broadly Internet overuse, problematic computer use or pathological computer use is excessive computer use that interferes with daily life.” This can be divided into subtypes such as excessive gambling, (online poker- Texas Hold ‘em), excessive viewing of pornography, inappropriate involvement in social networking sites, (WoW, Real Life, Facebook, etc.) or blogging, and internet shopping. I’ve seen quizzes, such as “Are you addicted to Facebook”, I even heard about it on a radio show I listen to on the way to school in the mornings. I decided to take it for research purposes.

My result was “You are not addicted to Facebook. It has not become an integral part of your daily life.” The second part “It has not become an integral part of your daily life” really caught my attention. It’s might as well  have said,”You aren’t spending enough time on Facebook! It needs to be an integral part of your daily life.” Some of the questions were; “A day without Face book will be (A) Horrific or (B) Normal.  I don’t typically spend much time on the computer. In fact I have only written one blog prior to being in this class. On average, unless I’m working on a paper, I spend maybe 5-10 min a day online.  However, I can imagine people actually answering (A) to that question.  I took the quiz again, out of the 9 questions I clicked mainly on the opposite I chose originally. The result was, “You are addicted to facebook. It has become an integral part of your daily life. Rock on.” Does anyone else find this disturbing? I realize this is just a single internet quiz, but I think it’s reflective on how much we as a technologically advanced society have come to rely on the internet as a necessity in our daily lives.

Before there was WoW, there was an internet game called “Asheron’s Call 2″. My husband personally knew a women that started playing this game because it was the only way she could find to spend time with her husband, who was an established gamer. If you can’t beat them join them right? She made another character under her husband’s account and they played the game together. Later down the road, they got divorced and the main thing they were battling over was who got to keep the account. The shift of our society to being internet dependent is undeniable. We just need to be careful not to lose sight of the importance of interacting with people in real life (and I do NOT mean “Real Life” the virtual reality game!).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_addiction_disorder
http://www.funquizcards.com/quiz/computers-internet/are-you-addicted-to-facebook.php

This entry was posted on 17. June 2009 at 07:00 and is filed under Introduction to Sociology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.