Check out this article over at the Philadelphia Enquirer; It's short, but interesting. It's a valid question: Are you addicted to SL? When you walk down the street in RL, do you find yourself trying to right-click people to see their details? Do you walk in RL at all? Do you say out loud things like 'LOL' or 'AFK'? Do you yearn for teleportation? Okay, that last one is not necessarily SL-related; I've wished for teleportation for decades. But have you found your SL to be more compelling than your RL? And if you do spend the lion's share of your time in SL, do you feel it to be a problem? Being the misanthrope that I am, this one wasn't too difficult to answer for myself, though I wouldn't qualify it as a 'problem', necessarily. I can quit anytime I want! But then, that's what all addicts say, isn't it?
The only thing bothering me about the article in question was " ... check out our too-close-to-home guide for assessing whether your hobby is a dangerous obsession." There doesn't seem to be a link to any sort of guide. That, and did you know there was a Center for Internet Addiction Recovery? When does a hobby become an obsession?
(Thanks, Corey!)
1. I have an ex-girlfriend, from years before I heard about SL, who described herself as a "recovered World of Warcraft addict." I laughed at first until she started telling me about the worst of it -- being on for 16 hours a day, losing a salaried job because she simply stopped showing up for work, losing a boyfriend because she simply stopped calling him back. Although the term "addicted to gaming" should usually only be applied tongue-in-cheek to most gamers out there, just like gambling and sex there definitely is a real danger concerning this stuff to a certain amount of the population. As far as answering the question of when a hobby becomes an obsession, I'd recommend asking the same questions anyone does when pinpointing an addiction. Are you losing friends and jobs because of it? Do you skip fun social events that you would otherwise go to? Are you using it as an escape from parts of your life you don't want to deal with? I think unless you can answer 'yes' to questions like this, most people don't have anything to worry about; but yes, there are definitely some SL residents out there who can answer 'yes' to these questions.
Posted at 11:52AM on Oct 14th 2006 by Jason Pettus