Book summary

With the explosive growth of the Internet has come a new type of pathology -- one that many have labeled Internet addiction. But can anyone truly become addicted to the World Wide Web? Or is abusing the convenient accessibility of the Net a symptom of deeper spiritual, emotional, and psychological problems? How do you say "goodnight" to a party that never ends?

Internet expert Andrew Careaga examines Net addiction not only from a solid Christian perspective but also from a deeply personal point of view. As the author of two books on Internet ministry and a self-admitted Internet junkie, Careaga is intimately familiar with both the dangers and the prom- ises of extensive Internet use. Careaga shares his personal experiences as well as his research to help not only those ministering to "Netaholics" but also those who are themselves hooked on the Net.

Hooked on the Net is "a sobering account of how easily we can slip into technological idolatry and online promiscuity," says Quentin Schultze (author of Internet for Christians and Habits of the High-Tech Heart). "We ought to heed (Careaga's) warnings and consider his practical solutions."

Introduction: Confessions of a Netaholic

Hi. My name’s Andrew, and I’m a Netaholic.

It’s been five minutes since my last e-mail fix. Although I’m now logged off from the Internet and busily working on this text, still the Net’s siren song beckons. Softly and tenderly, e-mail is calling. In my gut I know the in-box holds nothing that can’t wait until later. Still, it draws me to its promise. Its promise -- of what? A note from an old and distant friend, perhaps? Adulation from a reader? (A rare occurrence indeed.) Breaking news? Inspiring commentary? A special offer? A computer virus? Spam? A recycled joke -- not even a funny one -- from someone whose idea of staying in touch means punching the "send to all" command, forwarding stale jokes and urban legends (stolen kidneys, money from Microsoft, the infamous Neiman-Marcus cookie recipe) to in-boxes everywhere?

Really, what is it that I think awaits me there? You’ve got mail! Big deal. The mail can wait. This time I won’t succumb to the Internet. I have a point to prove -- to myself, if to no one else.

The point is, I’m not an Internet addict. Not really. I’m just a normal Internet user.

User -- that’s the term we Netizens use to describe ourselves. And as I strive to keep my mind focused on writing and away from Internet dreams, it dawns on me why the term user seems so appropriate.

The New Millennium Addiction

According to one study, as many as eleven million people might be hooked on the Internet. The study itself has garnered a fair amount of controversy, as has the whole notion of Internet "addiction." But these problem users -- let’s call them "Net dependents" for the time being -- hail from all walks of life. Attorneys as well as graduate students can and do get absorbed in the surreal world of online role-playing games (RPGs). Chat rooms attract corporate executives as well as bored housewives. Secretaries might be trading and following stocks online while stock brokers are selling Beanie Babies over eBay or swapping music files via Morpheus. In one of the earliest studies of this online obsession, Caught in the Net, psychiatrist Kimberly S. Young’s profiles of Net dependents include people from a variety of backgrounds: construction workers, high school and college students, executives, homemakers, professors, and secretaries. Young’s point is clear: anyone can get hooked on the Net. For many people in Young’s study, their Net habit led to problems familiar to those who suffer from the more well-known addictions such as alcoholism or drug dependency: family and marital problems, lost jobs, poor grades, and financial ruin.

When she began conducting her research in the mid-1990s, Young turned to the Internet itself to find subjects for her study. She posted her questionnaire to dozens of online discussion groups, and was astounded by the number of responses. "Yes, my respondents wrote, they were addicted to the Internet," Young notes. These people were online "for 6, 8, even 10 or more hours at a time, day after day, despite the problems this habit was causing in their families, their relationships, their work life, and their school work." Furthermore, "They felt anxious and irritable when off-line and craved their next date with the Internet. And despite Internet-triggered divorces, lost jobs, or poor grades, they couldn’t stop or even control their online usage." Young, in fact, characterizes online compulsive behavior as "the addiction of the millennium."

Young’s research garnered both media attention and criticism. It also triggered an avalanche of discussion about Internet addiction in academic circles and the media. (People on the Net, however, had been talking about compulsive Internet use for years, sharing their stories in Usenet newsgroups such as alt.addiction.) On the heels of Young’s research came even more studies, spawning even more debate and media attention. Studies included the following:

• A 1998 University of Cincinnati study of fourteen Internet dependents set off a media frenzy with its widely reported anecdote about a college student who flunked out because of Net abuse. After he had disappeared from classes for a week, campus police discovered the student in a university computer lab, where he’d spent seven consecutive days online.
• A Carnegie Mellon University study of Internet users in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, released in the fall of 1998, linked Internet usage with depression and loneliness and generated headlines such as "Online and Bummed Out."
• A 1999 Net-addiction study by ABC News and Connecticut psychiatrist David N. Greenfield was conducted online. Involving more than 17,000 respondents, the study later formed the basis for Greenfield’s 1999 book Virtual Addiction: Help for Netheads, Cyberfreaks and Those Who Love Them, and put hard numbers to all of the Net addiction talk. According to this study, eleven million cyberjunkies were mainlining the Net. Greenfield likened the Internet to "television on steroids."
• A Stanford University study, released in February 2000, claimed that people who were online for five hours or more a week -- 25 percent of all Net users -- were in danger of losing touch with family, friends, and the rest of the "real world" because of their Internet habit. One newspaper report of this study labeled such Net users as "workaholic misfits" (one addiction on top of another) who are "so solitary they can hardly be bothered to call Mom on her birthday."
• A 2001 study by Rutgers University warned of college students’ spending long hours in chat rooms or playing online games, and called cyberaddiction "a relatively small but growing problem" on university campuses.

Many of these studies have drawn criticism for any number of reasons -- methodology (only fourteen subjects in the Cincinnati study and only Pittsburgh residents in the Carnegie Mellon study?), the researchers’ motives (was ABC more interested in building Web traffic than in conducting research, and was Greenfield more interested in selling books?), and the very basis for creating such a label as Internet addiction. These criticisms will be discussed in depth later in this book. Despite the criticism, however, these studies, and the media viruses they have engendered, have brought the issue of Net dependence to the forefront. What was once a topic discussed only in obscure Usenet forums is now the subject of debate in our most prestigious universities. As Young explains, "In our culture’s eager embracing of the Internet as the information and communications tool of the future, we had been ignoring the dark side of cyberspace. My study of Internet addicts had brought the issue to light."

If we hadn’t heard about Internet addiction before these studies, we certainly have now.

Hooked on a Feeling

Years ago, B. J. Thomas sang a song that began,

I can’t stop this feeling, deep inside of me. ...

Although Thomas was singing about his feelings toward a lover, those lyrics from "Hooked on a Feeling" take on a different meaning for those who spend more time at their computers than with their loved ones.

Although I still waver over the idea of Net addiction, I admit that on some days I’ve spent more time with my PC than with my wife. And I’ve had spells of actual longing for more time at the keyboard.

That I have four different e-mail accounts might be a tip-off that I spend a lot of time on the Net. But possessing multiple e-mail accounts today is not that unusual. It actually helps me to manage better and filter the growing mounds of electronic information that I receive. The e-mail account that I most often check is for work-related purposes (although, admittedly, a few personal e-mail messages do slip through to that address). Another address is for personal correspondence, a third is for the church youth ministry in which I’m involved, and the fourth was originally created to handle messages from an online discussion group for writers. I’ve since signed off that discussion group, however, so I rarely check the fourth address. In addition, I occasionally read the e-mail from a fifth account, that of our local church, to assist our pastor, who never checks his in-box and is at no risk whatsoever of Net addiction.

But the Net is not just about e-mail. Although I pore over two hundred-plus messages on an average workday, I also spend time in chat rooms and occasionally surf newsgroups and other online forums. In addition to sending and receiving e-mail, I wade through the flotsam of some thirty electronic mailing lists. I check Web sites, and I play the occasional chess game. (Okay, maybe more than occasional.) I’ve never calculated precisely how many hours a week I spend on the Net. For one reason, the Net is always on when I’m at work, and throughout the workday I multitask between writing, checking e-mail, and scanning the Web. In addition, I might spend three or four evenings a week in front of my home computer, much of it writing, and occasionally I log on to the Net to look up information or verify a fact. Thus, I’m well into the five-or-more-hours-a-week category that, according to the Stanford study, would qualify me as a social misfit.

Many times, I find the Internet to be both a necessary evil and something that adds needless burdens to my life. Far too much of the stuff that finds its way into my in-box is garbage. Accustomed to the speed of a T-1 connection from my university office, I get annoyed at the slow connection speed of my home PC’s dial-up modem. After a long day at the computer -- whether surfing the Net or doing something "productive" -- I can feel the eyestrain, and my back and shoulders ache.

Yet I can’t imagine doing my job without the Internet. As a university public relations writer, I interact with faculty, reporters, editors, and administrators day in and day out via e-mail. I use the Internet to forward drafts of news releases to researchers, and e-mail facilitates our practice of giving the faculty members who are the subjects of our news releases the chance to check facts before we issue our news to the rest of the world. I try to update the news on our campus Web site weekly, if not more often. In addition, the Web is a handy and convenient research tool for my daily work. I also use the Net extensively for my freelance writing. In conducting research for my earlier books, as well as for this one, I pored over hundreds of e-mails, newsgroup postings, chat-room transcripts, Web-based journals and Webzines, research reports, news sites, and other online documents. I also transmit much of my freelance work to editors and publicists via e-mail.

I also use the Net as a social tool, to stay in touch with family members and friends. Admittedly, I don’t stay in touch as much as I should. But I’ve never been much of a letter-writer. Before the Internet, my siblings might have received one letter per year from me. Today I send little if any "snail mail" to siblings, but I manage to stay in better touch thanks to electronic mail.

At times, however, I think my life would be better off, much simpler, without the Internet. What if I just unplugged from this online world? I wonder.

I would miss it, even as I now miss the Net after only a day or two away from it. I think about this marvelous communications tool that has helped me stay in touch with friends, to meet people virtually from all over the world, and to visit both the Library of Congress and the Louvre with equal ease; I can’t imagine my life without it.

Still, I can imagine a more balanced life.

Not long ago, because of my interest in online chess, I became more and more drawn in by the Web. During that time, I began to think more about the notion of Net addiction.

Checkmate

It’s bad enough that I’m a computer geek today. But from junior high through college, I was also a chess geek. (Chess geeks were as unpopular then as they are today.) Then I discovered the labyrinth of chess rooms online, and I felt like I’d been transported back to my junior high days. Until I rediscovered this passion from my youth on the Internet, I hadn’t touched a chess board in years. (I still rarely touch a "real" one.) But the zeal and excitement of chess competitions quickly returned. Moreover, that excitement was magnified a hundredfold because now, rather than playing a few fellow geeks from school, I could compete against thousands of players from all over the world. These virtual competitors ranged in talent from the masters, with rankings above 2000, to the chess-challenged, with the majority, like me, being somewhere in the middle.

The first time I logged on to this online chess world, I couldn’t get enough of it. How exciting it was! (It’s a chess geek thing.) I was relearning many of the openings and techniques that I’d studied as a teenager. A strange euphoria washed over me as I enjoyed the thrill of strategy. After finally logging off, I found myself replaying the games in my mind, and anticipating the next time I could be back online.

After immersing myself in online chess for a few days, I started surfing the Web for more information about the game. I wanted to relearn the great opening moves and the techniques of the masters. I read about chess master Garry Kasparov’s site and paid it a visit. I read about Kasparov’s competition against the IBM supercomputer, Deep Blue, and reviewed the transcripts of those matches. I downloaded a "shareware" computer chess game to play at home for a thirty-day trial period, in hopes of improving my abilities. Then, armed with my new knowledge of the game, I returned to the chess rooms, more savvy than before.

With each match, I became more and more obsessed but not necessarily a better player. I found myself rushing through lunch at the office to log on for a quick game or two before the lunch hour ended. Or if I was going out to lunch with my wife or coworkers, I tried to squeeze in a game before noon. Soon, if a match required it, my in-office lunch hours extended to 1:15 or 1:30. Also, I’d try to get a game in before the workday began. I spent more time playing chess on the home PC, instead of writing or helping my wife keep the house in order. The euphoria was almost palatable. I was getting high from this game. I was getting hooked on a feeling. Like an alcoholic’s needing just one more drink before calling it a night, I’d stay online to play just one more game. But, of course, one more was never enough. What’s the harm in just one more quick game? I spent one entire Saturday afternoon in the chess rooms, playing match after match. I battled a college student from Turkey, another procrastinating writer from Texas, an eleven-year-old French Canadian from Montreal. I started my first match that morning while my wife, Dyann, went grocery shopping. When she returned home, I was still glued to the PC, playing chess. Chagrined, she unpacked the groceries herself and then commenced cleaning house. By the time she had finished cleaning, it was time for dinner. The day had zoomed by. Dyann had to pull me away from the computer for the meal and, upset at having to cancel a close game (it would reduce my rating), I reluctantly logged off and trudged to the table. When Dyann commented on my addiction to this game, I got surly and defensive.

There’s no such thing as addiction to a computer or a computer game, I thought. Silently, though, I wondered if maybe she was right. I had, indeed, been feeling symptoms of withdrawal from virtual chess: I was irritable when interrupted; I daydreamed about my next game; I replayed moves in my mind.

Could I be addicted to Internet chess? Could I be addicted to the Net?

Flunking the Test

Well, I blew it. I flunked my Netaholic test. I heeded the lure of the siren’s song and crashed onto the craggy rocks of e-mail. I checked my personal e-mail account. And what treasures did I find there? Nothing that couldn’t have waited. A note from a cyberpal in the United Kingdom, which was nice; an e-mail from a sister, with two photos of her new granddaughter, my grand-niece, attached (also nice); the monthly letter from a missionary in Guatemala; and then the spam, always the spam: those unsolicited come-ons for better car insurance (delete), lower phone rates (delete), a network marketing opportunity (delete), hot phone sex with teen girls (delete!), "guaranteed clinically proven weight loss" ("lose 2 to 14 inches in one hour! 100% guaranteed" delete!), and a win-a-new-computer sweepstakes pitch (save to read later; maybe I’ll enter; I could always use another computer).

As I logged off to return to my writing, I felt like a recovering alcoholic who had just downed a shot of whiskey: remorse, regret, and disgust -- but mostly disgust.

Why did I give in? I wondered. Do I have no discipline? Why do I let this Internet occupy so much of my time, thoughts, and energy?

These are the questions that will be explored in this book -- not only for myself but also for you or your loved ones.

Another Test