1) How many hours a day would you say you spend online, outside of work/school related activities?
This is really hard to gauge. For starters, I have an "always on connection," via cable, so I suppose that I am always technically "online." Beyond that, I tend to spend most of my day at a computer of some sort. In addition to my desktop PC , both of my TVs are attached to computers (that are online). If I want to watch a movie, for example, the chances are good that I'll pull up the Watch Instantly feature of Netflix and stream a movie onto my big screen TV. Technically, I'm online while I stream that movie. I'm not a big gamer, but the XBox is online, too, so when I do play, I guess you could say I'm online. I don't have a car, (my husband takes our only car to work) so I tend to be pretty isolated. Often, it is just faster and more convenient for me to bank, pay bills, make purchases, or run other errands online than it is for me to take a bus. My friends and family are scattered all over the country (and the world), so to stay in touch, I often use e-mail or IM. Time zones don't cause nearly so much trouble online. 🙂 When I do call via a telephone, though, it's via my Voice over IP connection, (the same cable through which my TV, internet, and Xbox all run) so I guess you could say I'm technically online then. I can also get calls forwarded from that phone to my cell phone (and the other way around). When we cook, the chances are pretty high that we'll take a laptop into the kitchen and search the internet for a recipe rather than using a traditional cookbook. Not even the bathroom is completely removed from this interconnectedness, although I'll let you imagine the degree of multi-tasking that goes on there. 🙂 Taken together, I'm sure all of these activities add up to a ton of online time.
Basically, because my hubby's an I.T. guy, we've got a pretty well-networked operation going for us. Granted, it's not always pretty. It's mostly McGyvered up out of spare parts and a mix of older and newer technologies and devices. It works, though. That means that we're pretty much online whenever we're in the home, even if we're not actively surfing the internet. If you count all of that internet-related interaction and interconnectivity, I don't think 8 - 12 hours a day would be an exaggeration; in fact, it may even be an understatement. For us, "the network" is pervasive and ever-present. We use it for every-day tasks or activities for which we would have once used phone books, cook books, land lines, rabbit ears, stereo sets, stationary, bank tellers, shop keepers, etc. It's not even so much "the computer" or "the internet" that we use anymore, as the lines between those technologies and others are becoming increasingly blurred.
That said, I do spend an alarming amount of my time on the Buffy Boards, on a certain Jane Austen site, and on an RPG site. I'm not sure whether that's an addiction to the internet, though, or whether it's due to the fact that I am an as yet unpublished writer. I love writing. I love the fact that people read what I write. I've never much cared whether they read that in my first grade handwriting journal, in the "slam book" that my friends and I kept in middle school, in the newspapers than I ran in high school, in my Creative Writing workshop in college, in the tech manuals that I wrote as a tech writer, or, now, on various online forums. I love to read and write. The internet gives me a forum for that. If that's an addiction, well, it's not an addiction to the internet as much as it's a lifelong addiction to the written word... and one that I wouldn't give up for all of the money in the world.
2)Have you ever heard of internet addiction?
Yes.
3) Do you believe internet addiction disorder is a real problem or a "fad disorder"?
Umm... I'm not sure. I think I'm straddling the fence on that one. On the one hand, I guess anyone can become addicted to the chemical/hormonal reaction of the body to a certain stimulus. If people can become addicted to gambling, for instance, why wouldn't they be able to become addicted to the internet?
On the other hand, I'm not so sure that using the internet often (or even all the time) counts as an addiction. I'm not even sure that feeling isolated or unable to complete certain tasks without the internet is a good indicator of internet addiction. I'm just not sure how you'd separate addiction from dependence. Humans become dependent on the technology that they create. Is the entire population addicted to electricity or plumbing because they form an important part of the infrastructure on which our society depends? Are we addicted to our cars because we can't get to work without them? Single sourcing is big right now, and the internet is the means by which it is achieved. The internet is becoming as vital a part of our infrastructure as TV cables, telephone wires, radio waves, highways, telegraph lines, train tracks, etc. etc. were in the past. To me, the internet seems like a source of information, goods, and services. I think it possible to be addicted to one or more of those information types, goods, or services, but I'm not sure you can be addicted to the means by which they are sent and received.
4)Would you consider yourself or anyone you know, addicted to the internet?
No. I know plenty of people for whom the internet is pretty much always there and always on, but I don't know anyone who can't go to work or on a date or to the mall or for a dinner out with friends or some other activity that requires one to interact with people one-on-one without interference from the internet. I don't feel withdrawals when I walk to the grocery or when I go to the comedy club with my buddies. I don't feel withdrawals when, almost nightly, I allow myself my greatest luxury: a bubble bath complete with candlelight and a good book. The same is true for my hubby: he is also perfectly capable of walking away from "the network" for his greatest luxury, which happens to be a motorcycle ride along the ocean highway or up through the mountains. We spent President's day out and about with our phones turned off, and never once did we feel the need to pull out the laptop or juice up the cell phone (although we could have done so). The internet is a tool and a valuable one, but even for high tech people like us, it just sort of fades into the background of life.
