If there is such thing as not being online enough or a problem called lack of internet use rather than problem internet use, I just may have it. After coming to Cornell last year I found myself continually online chatting with friends back home from Canada on MSN messenger and wasting massive amounts of my time in pointless conversations, not only did I see my marks suffer but also my health. I was continually tired and found myself getting sick at times and I rarely ever have these problems. While Caplan sees internet use as either an obsessive or a compulsive problem, I definitely fell under the obsessive as I found myself being online way longer than I had planned on a consistent basis. I do not consider my use to have been compulsive because I never seemed to feel guilty about it.
The problem that I had was obviously minor compared to a gambling addiction for example but it was becoming a problem in my life because it was interfering with more important things that I needed to worry about, such as school. Believe it or not I did not have facebook before I came to Cornell… yeah pretty lame. Rather than discontinuing chatting with my friends online I just changed the method that I was using. By using an asynchronous method I was able to leave shorter messages and not get into long conversations with people. I stopped using MSN messenger almost all together. Now I barely have a reason to go online and it is actually kind of nice I will go on to check my email, facebook, or the scores of all the hockey games played the previous night from time to time but I do not feel that I am missing out on something just because I am not online.
I would say that Wallace would agree with me in that I have an internal locus of control, meaning that I have control over my life. I go online when I need to. I rarely ever spend time online surfing or chatting because there is really no satisfaction for me in doing that. I decide when and how long I will be online and I never think about how long I will be because it is not an issue.
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1) Congrats on getting over your internet addiction!
2) I would have liked to see you apply Caplan's model more to your behaviors from last year. Although it wasn't compulsive use, I think you could have separated your behaviors into Caplan's three-part model to make it easier to connect.
3) I think it was smart that you realized you could change your space of communication, and it is important to note the drastic changes it brought. I see that you think the difference comes from the space (of facebook) being asynchronous as opposed to MSN which was synchronous. Do you think there were any other factors/characteristics of facebook that helped you? Why did you pick facebook and not email or another blog? These are just a few questions that would have been interesting to see in your blog, but otherwise, I liked that you shared your personal story.
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