Sunday Viewpoint, San Francisco Chronicle November 1997
On-line chatting is not an addiction
Don't believe the headlines: It's a healthy method of communication
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Written by Angela Penny, of 2-D Chat software company The Palace for CEO Jim Bumgardner
IF YOU FOLLOW news about the Internet, you might think that chat groups are nothing more than forums for perverse, immoral discourse. At least, it seems that way, considering the negative implications and even sensationalism I have seen associated with them.
The most negative message about chat came out of the American Psychological Association's recent annual convention in Chicago.
There, a University of Pittsburgh psychologist, Kimberly Young, presented research based on 360 surveys of active Internet users. Her study found that people dependent on-line interaction suffered withdrawal and other symptoms similar to drug or alcohol addiction. Young says this group includes less than 10 percent of all users, spending about 38 hours per week on-line. "Nonaddicts" are wired maybe 8 hours a week.
She technically called this affliction pathological Internet use, but used the word "addiction" often in her report and cited on-line chatting as one of the major contributors.
Well, I don't agree that these people should be called addicts. I suspect that there are similar statistics out there about television couch potatoes and people who spend hours on the telephone. My mother loves to talk on the phone, but no one calls her addicted. Many people use other behaviors that can be considered compulsive like TV watching, sleeping, exercising, and even driving, but you never hear these behaviors characterized as being as damaging as alcohol and drugs.
Internet chat gets the bad press because it's still foreign to many of us. People are saying, "God didn't intend us to communicate this way. It isn't natural. It isn't human."
Well you know what? Nearly a century ago, many pundits told Alexander Graham Bell that it wasn't natural for people to communicate through wires. Today, the telephone is a fundamental part of our lives.
"I'm passionate about on-line chatting. And I'm afraid that the positive aspects of this new communications medium will fall by the wayside in light of all this negative attention."
Humans are compelling and chat fills a need for socialization. I enjoy having real-time conversations with people all over the world who share specialized interests, whether it's bird watching or raising a 2-year-old. We are living through a phenomenal communications revolution.
On-line chatting provides the opportunity to meet people on the inside before you meet them on the outside. When you meet them on the outside, first, you get a lot of preconceived notions about who they are, and often you don't get past that. When you meet people on-line, you don't have to deal with biases or preconceptions -- yours or theirs.
On-line chat will not replace other forms of communication like face to face, phone talks, e-mails, and traditional letters. It is just another option in life's great buffet.
Chat mirrors society; it doesn't define it. The biggest complaint I hear about chat is that it is completely banal with no worthwhile conversation. Chat may be banal 90 percent of the time, but isn't that true of what's available in real life? To find good conversation, you have to look for it. Relationships formed in chat rooms aren't any deeper or more trivial than relationships folks develop in real life.
On-line chatting is an incredible way to take a class, share business information, have a high school reunion, communicate directly with your favorite celebrity and do a host of other activities that we haven't even thought of yet. It celebrates human connections and adds to rather than detracts from other types of human relations.
So, next time you see a sensational headline about on-line chat, think about the tremendous communications breakthroughs possible with the technology rather than the occasional oddball or "addict" who might be occupying cyberspace with the rest of us well-intentioned chatters.
On-line chatting is not an addiction
Don't believe the headlines: It's a healthy method of communication
----------------------------------------------------------------
Written by Angela Penny, of 2-D Chat software company The Palace for CEO Jim Bumgardner
IF YOU FOLLOW news about the Internet, you might think that chat groups are nothing more than forums for perverse, immoral discourse. At least, it seems that way, considering the negative implications and even sensationalism I have seen associated with them.
The most negative message about chat came out of the American Psychological Association's recent annual convention in Chicago.
There, a University of Pittsburgh psychologist, Kimberly Young, presented research based on 360 surveys of active Internet users. Her study found that people dependent on-line interaction suffered withdrawal and other symptoms similar to drug or alcohol addiction. Young says this group includes less than 10 percent of all users, spending about 38 hours per week on-line. "Nonaddicts" are wired maybe 8 hours a week.
She technically called this affliction pathological Internet use, but used the word "addiction" often in her report and cited on-line chatting as one of the major contributors.
Well, I don't agree that these people should be called addicts. I suspect that there are similar statistics out there about television couch potatoes and people who spend hours on the telephone. My mother loves to talk on the phone, but no one calls her addicted. Many people use other behaviors that can be considered compulsive like TV watching, sleeping, exercising, and even driving, but you never hear these behaviors characterized as being as damaging as alcohol and drugs.
Internet chat gets the bad press because it's still foreign to many of us. People are saying, "God didn't intend us to communicate this way. It isn't natural. It isn't human."
Well you know what? Nearly a century ago, many pundits told Alexander Graham Bell that it wasn't natural for people to communicate through wires. Today, the telephone is a fundamental part of our lives.
"I'm passionate about on-line chatting. And I'm afraid that the positive aspects of this new communications medium will fall by the wayside in light of all this negative attention."
Humans are compelling and chat fills a need for socialization. I enjoy having real-time conversations with people all over the world who share specialized interests, whether it's bird watching or raising a 2-year-old. We are living through a phenomenal communications revolution.
On-line chatting provides the opportunity to meet people on the inside before you meet them on the outside. When you meet them on the outside, first, you get a lot of preconceived notions about who they are, and often you don't get past that. When you meet people on-line, you don't have to deal with biases or preconceptions -- yours or theirs.
On-line chat will not replace other forms of communication like face to face, phone talks, e-mails, and traditional letters. It is just another option in life's great buffet.
Chat mirrors society; it doesn't define it. The biggest complaint I hear about chat is that it is completely banal with no worthwhile conversation. Chat may be banal 90 percent of the time, but isn't that true of what's available in real life? To find good conversation, you have to look for it. Relationships formed in chat rooms aren't any deeper or more trivial than relationships folks develop in real life.
On-line chatting is an incredible way to take a class, share business information, have a high school reunion, communicate directly with your favorite celebrity and do a host of other activities that we haven't even thought of yet. It celebrates human connections and adds to rather than detracts from other types of human relations.
So, next time you see a sensational headline about on-line chat, think about the tremendous communications breakthroughs possible with the technology rather than the occasional oddball or "addict" who might be occupying cyberspace with the rest of us well-intentioned chatters.
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