Internet � Social Life Killer?
The Internet; the largest collection of information known to humanity. If you want to know about something then the internet is where you go. Of course this is not the only use of the internet. It is also used by millions of people world wide to interact with each other. It can be used to talk on a web forum, or a chat room. You can talk to people using microphones and speakers. You can even see the person you are communicating with using a web cam. There are even virtual worlds in which anywhere from 2 to 10,000 people can interact with each other. The greatest tool we have at our disposal can, like all things though be abused. Some people out there are under the impression that the internet kills a person�s ability to interact socially. Fortunately, this isn�t true, quite the opposite actually.
A lot of opponents of the net nerd claim that people are addicted to the Internet for spending too much time online. They see people spending hours on end using their computers to do many different things. Games, chat rooms, and web forums. They see them not going out side and socially interacting with other human beings. Thusly they call these people addicted. The truth is, these people are addicted. But they are addicted to something not everyone in this world can achieve in the real world, acceptance. On the Internet you can be fat or tall, ugly or pretty, young or old. No one will ever be able to tell the difference if you don�t want them to.
Being a net junkie my self I have found that a vast majority of people on the Internet are much more polite online than they would be in the real world. Freed from the bonds of persecution from piers people are allowed to act how they want to act. They can do and be anything they want to be. No one is going to make fun of you online for being friends with a homosexual in a perfectly heterosexual relationship. I am personally very good friends with a homosexual on line who goes under the alias of Infernus and lives in Rhode Island. I know for a fact that if Infernus and I were real life friends my other �friends� would persecute him and me just for the fact that he is gay. In many ways people online can be better friends than the ones in real life. You can test what other people think of the real you with no consequences. No one is scared to be who they are. Major magazine articles also seem to agree with me. Quoted directly from an article is the following:
�Constrained Identity. People have a need to present their "true" or inner self to the outside world, to have others know them as they know themselves (e.g., McKenna & Bargh, 1998; Swann, 1983). When one cannot do this in one's current relationships, one is likely to be motivated to establish new ones in which those needs and preferences can be fulfilled through expression of the new persona, or aspect of self. However, in encounters with those one sees every day, an individual may fear being seen as "silly" if he or she were to suddenly try out new personality aspects, particularly those that may appear incongruous with the role and other expectations those people have of the individual.
As Turkle (1995) noted, the Internet offers an alternative playground ripe for testing the waters of such unexpressed identity and personality aspects. Identity can be constructed and reconstructed in numerous ways on the Internet with no "fallout" for the individual. Accordingly, we should observe a great deal of role-playing and taking-on of inner personae in Internet social interactions. � (McKenna)
So now we have the opponents of my view point. Enter one Kimberly S. Young. Doctor Young wrote a book five years ago about internet addiction. It makes a lot of good points in preventing an over dependence on the internet and becoming so overly entangled in it that you quit your job, school, or other non internet relationships. The problem I find with her book is that she makes it seem like if you spend more than an hour online a week in a chat room you have a major problem. In the very first chapter she made a questionnaire for internet users. Two of which read �Do you feel preoccupied with the Internet (I.e., think about previous online activity or anticipate next online session)?� and the second reads �Do you use the Internet as a way of escaping from problems or of relieving a distressed mood?� (Young)
To both of these questions I answered yes. But does that make me addicted to the Internet? After actually thinking about it I realized that the Internet �addicts� are nothing new. They are just the modern day versions of a telephone junkie or a couch potato. We never called them addicted did we? Sure we could be doing more active things but I think that we are better of on the internet than the Television or Telephone. On the internet your vocabulary is constantly expanding. You meet people you would have never spoken to before (Infernus for example). And you�re constantly reading. So I guess the people who speak on the telephone for five hours with their girl friend are addicted to the telephone and it affects their ability to socialize? That�s the logic that I infer from arguments such as this.
The other view point on why the internet is addicting was found in a web article which is the most up to date article on the problem that I could find. It is by a Doctor Grohol and confirms my belief that the Internet is not the problem.
�What some very few people who spend time online without any other problems present may suffer from is compulsive over-use. Compulsive behaviors, however, are already covered by existing diagnostic categories and treatment would be similar. It's not the technology (whether it be the Internet, a book, the telephone, or the television) that is important or addicting -- it's the behavior. And behaviors are easily treatable by traditional cognitive-behavior techniques in psychotherapy.� (Grohol)
Doctor Grohol states through out the rest of his statements that the research on internet addiction is so focused on specific case studies that we don�t have a real idea of what exactly internet addiction is.
�How can we really draw any reasonable conclusions about millions of people online based upon one or two case studies?�(Grohol)
�I don't know of any other disorder currently being researched where the researchers, showing all the originality of a trash romance novel writer, simply "borrowed" the diagnostic symptom criteria for an unrelated disorder, made a few changes, and declared the existence of a new disorder. If this sounds absurd, it's because it is.�(Grohol)
Doctor Grohol is making the point that research that is done is not done correctly, on a wide enough scale, nor is it used correctly to diagnose a problem. So how can people say that overuse of the internet is bad if they don�t know what it is?
The Internet is the greatest technology ever invented. It�s the greatest thing since sliced bread. It releases a person from the social bonds that normally time them down and let them experiment to see who they really are. Opponents of internet use to be a social crutch for people see them as being addicted, but no one has even clearly defined what an addicted person is through hard research and facts. So it is my conclusion that the Internet helps people become more socially active by showing them who they really are. The only problematic parts of the internet are when people decide that they don�t need a real life social life. The Internet is not meant to be a persons full life, it�s supposed to make their whole life better.
Works Cited
Grohol, M. �Internet Addiction Guide� Dr. Grohol�s Psych Central 28 July, 2004. 16
Nov 2004.
http://psychcentral.com/netaddiction/.
McKenna Katelyn and John A Bargh. �Causes and Consequences of Social Interaction on the Internet: A Conceptual Framework.� Media Psychology 1.3 (1999). Communication & Mass Media Complete. EBSCOhost SCCC Library. Schenectady, NY 17 Nov. 2004.
http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?d...,ip,url,uid&db =ufh&an=3364857
Young, Kimberly. Caught in the Net: How to Recognize the signs of Internet Addiction and a Winning Strategy for Recovering. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998
2004-11-23, 09:49 AM
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