 Confessions of an Internet Addict
I am the author of three blogs, including a collective one for one of my courses. I follow around 35 blogs on Google reader, and the number continues to increase. I have a very active Facebook account. My Twitter account, on the other hand, is not so active. I was once a moderator on a small "sözlük," and I am an inactive author on a major one (the concept of an online "sözlük" seems unique and untranslatable to me, sorry). I have a Last.fm account, which I sometimes like to pay for, so that I can listen to more music. I check two of my three e-mail addresses at least three times everyday. I have subscribed to and unsubscribed from too many mail groups and Web sites in my ten years of experience with the Internet. I have seen the golden age of Geocities, Altavista and ICQ. Now instead of ICQ, I, of course, use MSN Messenger frequently, although I was very fond of GChat for a while. There are more than 50 bookmarks in my favorite browser, Google Chrome. I tried using del.ici.ous for some time but then gave that up. My most recent infatuation is with Tumblr, the microblogging web site. I spent over an hour trying to find the perfect theme and customizing it.
My mother thinks it's addiction. Some of my friends think I can do without having Internet access occasionally. That sounds strange and very likely to me. Am I a weirdo? An incurable Internet junkie? A huge time-waster? Do I spend my precious life before the computer? Should I "get a life"? Wikipedia has a defined "Internet addiction" article with sub-categories of the "problem," so I understand that it is widespread.
I'd like to approach this whole subject from a simple, different point of view. Think about your cell phones. And imagine not having them. And of course, you know, people did not have them ten years ago, yet they survived. Some thirty years before that, few people had televisions, and they had limited access to a single channel.
But now, we do have televisions, and we do have cell phones. The point here is, once you grow accustomed to something that makes your life easier, enables you to have new friends, increases your awareness of the world or purely provides a source of entertainment, it is not really possible to quit them even for a brief period.
And then again, even if you are not at all into social networking, even if you listen to all your music from CDs that you play on your stereo, and watch all your shows on an actual TV, you still have to use the Internet. In less than a few years, all universities will be accepting only online documents in their master's and doctoral applications. Those in social sciences and humanities will be reading more and more articles online. Many courses at Bilkent are enhanced with the help of Moodle, e-mail groups, or even as our case, a Wordpress-supported blog. I'm very glad with the way we use online tools, and by we, I mean everyone. I haven't researched any statistics, but assuming that the average time one spends on the Internet increases every day in most demographic groups would be a rational conclusion to reach. And it's not going to decrease any time soon.
So, in conclusion I could say, no, I won't get a life. I already have one.
By Damla Okay (COMD/V)
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