Internet Addiction

So I will admit it. After teaching about internet addiction in a variety of articles and texts, from Sherry Turkle to those New York Times articles about how obsessed we all are with being plugged in, I had to do a little self-evaluation. In fact, this class has made me think about my own problems with the Web.

First things first. I spend too much time on gchat. The days when I go invisible, I get 1000% more done.

Second, Facebook really does make me feel bad about myself. Like, legit. Just like that Slate article, when I go on Facebook I often see the following - and this is age specific, I suppose:

1) Tons and tons of wedding photos (from weddings I couldn't go to, or ones I wasn't invited to...can't tell which is worse)

2) BABIES. SO MANY PEOPLE HAVING BABIES.

3) Professional stuff. People publishing new academic articles, people writing books, people getting broad acclaim for say, being interviewed in the Washington Post.

It's intimidating to know, for instance, that my friend Ari Cohen is now a producer for a show on the Oprah Network. My friends Graham Sack and Adam Perlman are in the final stages of making their way through a super competitive screen-writing competition. To name a few. It's all very very exciting. But scary nonetheless. My college classmate Vin Vacanti's Yipit is going to make a killing now that Groupon's IPO has been show to have so many flaws. (BTW, check it out, it's awesome. My friend Lucien Smith narrowly lost a bid for state treasurer in Mississippi.

I don't talk to Graham or Ari every day, and ran into Vin randomly last year --and have supported Lucien over Facebook- So I guess you could say I see them on Facebook. So I wonder, if I cut Facebook out, would I miss this knowledge? Or would I feel in a bubble, rocking my own accomplishments?

At the end of the day, though, I'm inspired by what my classmates are able to accomplish. It's great. But I should definitely spend less time on Facebook, gchat, and all the rest, and more time focusing on my students and my research.

I think about what I used to procrastinate by doing before we had wireless, and I'm sure it was just stuff like talking on the phone and wandering down the college hallways, or listening to music. So I'm not sure it's all that different now that I'm always wired. But still, I KNOW how much time goes away.

So when we talk about addiction, we're also talking about social connection - but we're also talking about emotions, and procrastination, and a lot of complicated things.

RIP Amy