By Emilia Benton
Television and video games used to be things many teens and young adults couldn’t pry themselves from, but among college students, Internet addiction is the latest “disease” that is slowly beginning to spread, whether it’s among students with their own computers in their dorms or students using the ones in campus computer labs.
Worried you might be infected with this addiction? If so, ask yourself the following questions: Do you feel preoccupied with the Internet and think about it while offline? Do you feel the need to use the Internet with increasing amounts of time? Do you have an inability to control your Internet use? Do you lie to family members or friends to conceal the extent of your involvement with the Internet? Do you jeopardize or risk the loss of a significant relationship, job, or education opportunity because of the Internet?
Internet addiction manifests in many ways, and when students put the Internet before homework, relationships and other social situations, that’s when it truly becomes a problem.
“How much time I spend online depends on how busy I am. While I sometimes can’t help going on AIM to chat with friends or check my Facebook profile, I like to think of it as a welcoming break from homework rather than as a distraction,” said freshman Shruti Oza, a psychology major.
Professionals say statistics on the number of students addicted to the Internet are either not available or hard to base on solid research because it is not classified as a mental disorder.
“Even though my major has everything to do with computers, I don’t spend as much time as some do online and don’t feel the need to check Facebook or MySpace every day,” commented senior Steve Ricchiuti, a business computer information systems major.
For those taking classes involving use of computers rather than taking notes in a lecture hall, using the Internet to socialize with friends during class could be a tempting prospect.
“When I taught classes in a computer lab, this problem of students venturing out of class work to surf the web came up once in a while, but it wasn’t a big problem,” commented computer science Professor Sri Divakan.
Even with the many available activities on campus, many students find themselves holed up in their dorm rooms between classes surfing the web or chatting, sometimes for hours on end. While some are on their computers to work on schoolwork, it’s hard for most to not have AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) running in the background along with their MySpace or Facebook profiles open in another window alongside their homework.
“I basically live on the Internet. I check Facebook and MySpace about six times a day; they are definitely my biggest distraction when I’m trying to do homework,” said freshman Emily Sewell, a dance/communications major.
“I’d say that I’m online for about 5 or 6 hours a day. I have to check my Facebook and MySpace profiles every day; they are definitely a distraction from my schoolwork that I should be working on,” stated sophomore Elizabeth Teitelbaum, an English education major.
Shopaholics should also be wary of the risks of Internet addiction, as purchases from nearly every store one can think of are simply a click away for those with access to a credit card.
It’s also easy for students taking classes in rooms with computers to get distracted and sidetracked by the Internet during a lecture.
“When I had access to computers during classes in the past, I sometimes was distracted by chatting with friends through instant messaging,” said Ricchiuti.
Internet addiction is also somewhat linked to another unhealthy habit: gambling, which can lead to a series of other problems, like debt, depression and anxiety. Gambling has a negative effect for five percent of college students in the nation. It’s easy to fall into this trap because a person can gamble anywhere or anytime, even in their dorms.
