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Surfing Not Studying
Dealing with Internet Addiction on Campus
Dr. Kimberly
Young
Executive Director
Center for Online Addiction
Posted February, 23,
2001 Student
Affairs Online, 2 (Winter)
Part One: Risk Factors for Student Internet Abuse
"Staying up late at night on the Internet is the best time I have
at school," boasts Kim, a sophomore physics major and regular
attendee of the kind of party we just witnessed. "After awhile, it
was all I wanted to do, all I thought about. It was all so
fascinating. In the chat rooms, I met a woman from Ottawa, Canada,
who was a physics major at a university there. I don't see many women
physics majors where I am. And I became close friends with a guy
living in England, who was actually an exchange student from
California. We connected over everything in life!" Kim got so
engrossed in her Net world that she ignored her studies. A former
math and science whiz in high school with serious career ambitions,
she allowed her grades to crash before recognizing that her new
obsession was sabotaging her goals.
At least Kim recognized the problem. Most college students, sadly,
do not. And as their numbers continue to soar, colleges have become
perhaps the major breeding ground of Internet addiction. Here's a
quick look at the major contributing factors:
- Free and unlimited Internet access - When freshmen
register today, they get a student ID card, a meal card, and most,
important, a free personal e-mail account. They've got no online
service fees to pay, no limits to their time logged on, and
computer labs open for their convenience round-the-clock. It's an
Internet user's dream.
- Huge blocks of unstructured time - Most college
students attend classes for twelve to sixteen hours per week. The
rest of the time is their own to read, study, go to movies or
parties, join clubs, or explore the new environment outside their
campus walls. Many forget all those other activities and
concentrate on one thing: the Internet.
- Newly-experienced freedom from parental control - Away
from home and their parent's watchful eyes, college students long
have exercised their new freedom by engaging in pranks, talking to
friends to all hours of the night, sleeping with their boyfriends
and girlfriends, and eating and drinking things Mom and Dad would
not approve of. Today, they utilize that freedom by hanging out in
the MUDs and chat rooms of cyberspace, and no parent can complain
about online service fees or their refusal to eat dinner with the
family or help out with chores.
- No monitoring or censoring of what they say or do online
- When they move on to the job world, college students may
find suspicious bosses peeking over their shoulder or even
monitoring their online time and usage. Even e-mail to coworkers
could be intercepted by the wrong party. In college, no one's
watching. Computer lab monitors tend to be student volunteers
whose only responsibility is to assist anyone who needs help
understanding how to use the Internet - not tell them what they
can or cannot do on it.
- Full encouragement from faculty and administrators -
Students understand that their school's administration and faculty
want them to make full use of the Internet's vast resources.
Abstaining from all Net use is seldom an option - in some large
classes, professors place required course materials solely on the
Net and engage in their only one-on-one contact with students
through e-mail! Administrators, of course, want to see their major
investments in computers and Internet access justified
- Adolescent training in similar activities - By the time
most kids get to college, they will have spent years staring at
video game terminals, closing off the world around them with
Walkmans, and engaging in that rapid-fire clicking of the TV
remote. Even if they didn't get introduced to the Internet in high
school, those other activities have made students well-suited to
slide into aimless Web surfing, skill-testing MUDs, and
rat-a-tat-tat chat room dialogue.
- The desire to escape college stressors - Students feel
the pressures of making top grades, fulfilling parental
expectations, and, upon graduation, facing fierce competition for
good jobs. The Internet, ideally, would help make it easier for
them to do their necessary course work as quickly and efficiently
as possible. Instead, they turn to their Net friends to hide from
their difficult feelings of fear, anxiety, and depression.
- Social intimidation and alienation - With as many as
30,000 students on some campuses, students easily can get lost in
the crowd. When they try to reach out, they often run into even
tighter clicks than the in-crowds of high school. Maybe they don't
dress right or look right. But when they join the faceless
community of the Internet, they find that with little effort they
can become popular with new "friends" throughout the U.S. and in
England, Australia, Germany, France, Hungary, Japan, New Zealand,
and China. Why bother trying to socialize on campus?
- A higher legal drinking age - With the drinking age at
twenty-one in most states, undergraduate students can't openly
drink alcohol and socialize in bars. So the Internet becomes their
substitute drug of choice: no ID required and no closing
hour!
Part Two: Reactions from the Ivory Tower
College administrators are concerned about that they have put all
this money in for an educational tool and some students are using it
for self-destruction as students chat, play interactive games, gamble
online, day trade, download porn, or scan the web. College counselors
across the country are seeing more and more cases of Internet abuse
on campus as students suffer from the following problems because of
Net abuse:
- Lack of sleep and excess fatigue
- Declining grades
- Less investment in relationships with boyfriend or
girlfriend
- Withdrawal from all campus social activities and events
- General apathy, edginess, or irritability when off-line
(s)
- Denial of the seriousness of the problem
- Rationalizing that what they learn on the Net is superior to
their classes
- Lying about how much time they spend online and what they do
there
- Trying to quit completely when threatened with possible
expulsion because of poor grades, then slipping right back into
the same addictive patterns.
Yet, despite these problems, denial cuts especially deep in the
college environment because packed computer labs provide an even more
effective cover than drinking in a crowded bar. When you're sitting
in rows of Internet users whose obsessions manifest in eight-hour
sessions, no one's going to tap you on the shoulder and say: "Hey, I
think you're seriously addicted to what you do on the computer and
you need to get some help." Most students laugh off any suggestion
that they're becoming psychologically dependent on the feelings they
get from playing games and chat rooms. "Only foolish adults get
addicted to stuff they take or things they do," students counter.
"Anyway, I'm not as bad as the geeks with the computer majors who
never log off and have to know all the software programs. I can cut
back or quit fooling around on the Net any time I want."
Then serious trouble sets in: They flunk out of college. Their
real-life girlfriend breaks up with them because all they ever want
to do is play on the Net. Their parents explode when they find out
their huge investment in their child's college education is going to
support all-night Internet sessions. They tumble into a major
depression when their online steady blips off the screen forever.
They experience major withdrawal when they try to quit their habit -
even if their only motivation was to stay in school to keep their
free Internet access. At that point, the addicted students themselves
at last may decide to seek help. At most universities, however,
counselors know little or nothing about the ways of the Internet and
its special allure for students. One college counselor was treating a
female student who reported feeling extremely depressed because of a
recent breakup with her boyfriend. The counselor assumed the boy was
another student at that college or a former beau from back home. Not
until their fifth session, and only by accident, did the counselor
learn that this "boyfriend" existed only in cyberspace. Yet the
girl's devastation appeared just as real as if she had known him in
real life. The counselor was surprised at how a young adult could get
so emotionally attached to a computer pal.
If you're a counselor, learn all you can about the Internet and
what students do there. Talk to students about their online
activities, ask them questions about what they get out of it, go
online yourself to see what chat rooms and interactive online games
look like in action. During intake interviews with students reporting
depression or anxiety, make sure you inquire about their Internet
habits.
As the Internet is a necessary part of a campus life, educating
college counselors is only the first step. Several other universities
and campuses strategies across all levels of campus life should be
implemented to prevent student Internet abuse:
- Educate administrators and faculty on the dynamics of Internet
abuse to raise awareness and prevention throughout the campus
system.
- Implement resident life educational programs that address
student Internet addiction. Similar to alcohol awareness and
prevention programs on campus, resident life programs that educate
students on the warning signs and risk factors of Internet
addiction are known to promote early detection and reduce
incidence.
- Encourage students to seek counseling when Internet-triggered
problems arise.
- Emphasize the importance of student participation in the
social world the campus offers. Campuses offer a variety of social
clubs and organizations for student involvement and growth and
administrators are now actively encouraging students to join these
clubs and to get offline.
- Bring in campus speakers to discuss cyber-behavior to help
expand students understanding of the implications of this new
technology.
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