What the Quantity of our Online Use Means for the Quality of our Offline Lives

What the Quantity of our Online Use Means for the Quality of our Offline Lives

            The internet is one enormous distraction. Of course, it’s so much more than that, but for many of us it’s difficult to deny the internet’s crucial role as an excuse to repel our attention from the things that we probably should be doing. On a near daily basis, I use it to stay connected with my friends from home while I’m away at school, to send e-mails for both professional and personal purposes, to assist me with my homework, to avoid doing homework, etc. With seemingly infinite ways to use the internet it makes perfect sense that a worldwide network with so many features and potential benefits should occupy a reasonable amount of my time. However, the point at which internet use becomes addictive, and detrimental to our real-life relationships is unclear. If we abstain from the internet will we optimize our face-to-face interactions and the quality of our relationships? Although research has suggests a positive correlation between loneliness and level of internet use, is it excessive internet use that causes social isolation in real life? Is it social isolation that leads people to further engagement online? Although there is not an obvious answer to these questions, I think that it is important to understand how to use the technology in the digital world to our advantage without losing touch with the real, physical world and the human relationships that we value.

Consequences of Compulsive Use

            In investigating my instinct that our generation has become excessively dependent on technology and that this overdependence on the virtual world could impose social consequences in the physical world, I referred to the expertise of Dr. Kimberly Young. Young has been the face of reform in internet addiction since she began her work in 1995, having conducted many studies and lectures to inform the public on the issue of internet addiction. Young often uses variations of a survey which she developed, known as the Internet Addiction Test (IAT) to gage whether or not the subject is truly overdependent on the internet. Young has found that those who are new to the internet who take the IAT or similar questionnaires are more likely to answer in a manner that is consistent with addiction than those who are experienced internet users. However, this also raises the question of whether or not those experienced internet users have become desensitized to the amount of time they spend online, and have slowly adapted to view their behavior as ‘normal’. Young also focuses on how families can improve their relationships by lessening their media consumption and focusing on spending time together without their devices. Research has supported Young’s ideas about internet use leading towards a decrease in communication between family members, as well as decreasing size of social circles. Check out this fascinating TEDtalk, in which Dr. Kimberly Young discusses a variety of topics in internet addiction, including parents who are too engaged in a game of candy crush to remember to pick up their children from school, adults who embezzle money in order to provide for their virtual characters in life simulation games, and ways in which we can self-monitor our internet use and establish more meaningful relationships with our friends and family.

(What you need to know about Internet Addiction | Dr. Kimberly Young | TEDxBuffalo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOSYmLER664)

Quitting the Internet

            Dr. Young advocates that we tone down our dependence on the internet and technology – Paul Miller, a technology journalist from The Verge, ran with this idea.   Miller was overwhelmed, and felt that he had been using the internet as a means of distracting himself rather than pursuing his interests and aspirations. At 26 years old, he abstained from the internet for an entire year - this meant no Facebook, no Youtube, no Google, and he even went the extra mile to abstain from texting. Miller simply wanted to detach from the virtual world, and work to improve his skills as a writer. While some internet users may become so invested in their virtual world that they sacrifice both the quality and quantity of their face-to-face human interactions, Miller explains why he realized after a year that a virtual presence is important to remain socially active in the physical world. In his experience, he fell out of his friends’ social circle once he stopped using social media. He spent countless hours playing video games rather than working towards his initial goal of improving his writing skills. At the end of his year offline when Miller rejoined the internet, he skyped his brother and his nieces/nephews and was amazed at how much they had grown, and how much of their lives he had missed out on. This experience offers an interesting paradox: a social presence online is necessary for an optimal social presence offline. Thus, combining Young’s and Miller’s ideas, it seems that spending too much time online can lead to social isolation in the physical world, yet not spending enough time online yields the same result. Hear Paul Miller’s full story below!

(A year offline, what I have learned | Paul Miller | TEDxEutropolis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trVzyG4zFMU)

Learning from Each Other – Finding the Right Balance

          While Young speaks of compulsive internet users whom she has encountered, and Miller declares that abstaining from the internet isn’t a means to improve our relationships with those we care about, I am left to believe that there must be a middle ground. For me, the internet has allowed me to enhance my relationships with my friends and family while I have been away at school. I am grateful that I can see my parents’ faces when I speak to them on Skype, and that I can instantly share events, music, images, and more with my peers. I would imagine that I, like Paul Miller, would become much more distant from the people I no longer live near without the internet’s ability to keep me connected. However, it is not unreasonable to think that I might become more attentive to my relationships with those who I currently spend time with if I entirely disconnected from my personal internet devices. Internet addiction may be difficult to quantify, and appear to be a very real issue for some users, but I think that each internet user has potential to find a subjective balance between online and offline interactions that works best for them.

Caplan, Scott E. "Preference for Online Social Interaction: A Theory of Problematic Internet Use and Psychosocial Well-Being." Communication Research Communic Res 30.6 (2003): 625-48. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.

Kraut, Robert, Michael Patterson, Vicki Lundmark, Sara Kiesler, Tridas Mukophadhyay, and William Scherlis. "Internet Paradox: A Social Technology That Reduces Social Involvement and Psychological Well-being?" American Psychologist 53.9 (1998): 1017-031. Web. 13 Oct. 2015.

Miller, Paul. "Offline: How to Use the Internet." The Verge. The Verge, 03 May 2013. Web. 14 Oct. 2015.

Net Addiction. "Dr. Kimberly Young Internet Addiction." NetAddiction. The Center for Internet Addiction, 2009. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.

Young, Kimberly S. "Internet Addiction: The Emergence of a New Clinical Disorder." CyberPsychology & Behavior 1.3 (1998): 237-44. Web. 13 Oct. 2015.