Reflection - Tara Einam

At which point in the last few weeks did my computer become similar to a light bulb? When did I become the moth, irresistibly drawn towards its beacon of light?

I can’t pinpoint the exact date, but I do know that it has happened. No longer can I walk from my lounge room to my kitchen without having to stop and check what my friends, and even some people I don’t know, are doing. My computer has become a friend, who just happens to know the gossip on everyone else.

Thanks to the technology behind social networking applications I can now ‘follow’ my friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances. There are many different applications out there however the ones I will be focusing on are Facebook, Twitter and Delicious.

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg while he was a student at Harvard University. Launched in February 2004 it is now one of the most popular social networking sites with over 64 million users. It allows users to join networks, such as schools, places of employment or locations, and then find and connect with people in the same networks.

Delicious (or del.icio.us) was founded by Joshua Schachter in 2003 and then purchased by Yahoo in 2005. It is a social bookmarking web service used for storing, sharing and discovering web bookmarks. Users assign chosen keywords, tags, which are then combined with everyone else’s bookmarks so that it is possible to view all bookmarks listed under that tag.

Twitter started as an internal research and development project for Obvious in 2006. Users are able to send text based messages (or ‘tweets’) of up to 140 characters to the website and then these are displayed on the user’s profile and sent to other users who have elected to receive them. Twitter allows ‘tweets’ to be sent and received by mobile phones, instant messaging services and other applications, such as Facebook or Twitterific.



For a period of four weeks I have been using these social networking applications. Over these weeks I’ve noticed that my routine has changed and that I can group these changes into three distinct categories.

1. my social connections
2. my attitude towards the applications
3. my behavioural routine

Before using these applications the only ways in which I kept in contact with most of my friends from high school was through unexpected face-to-face meetings, infrequent phone calls, short text messages and the occasional email. Obviously the level of each of these varied from person to person, however sadly, for the majority contact was minimal and often lost completely. But with the social networking applications it made contacting friends so much easier. As well as sending them messages I could find out what they had been up to, see recent photos of them, find out whether they were in a relationship, whether their interests had changed. I could also see which friends we had in common and sometimes found connections which we may never have know existed. For example, I discovered that one of my school friends now works with a friend who I once worked with.

My attitude towards these applications was previously relatively uninformed. While I knew that they existed I had never felt the need to create an account and join the frenzy. However, as my family and friends can confirm, I have now been encouraging everyone I know to sign up to these applications. At the end of the first week I had doubts about their purpose, and kept thinking, “Why would you use this?”, but as more of my friends joined I appreciated the applications more. Suddenly these applications were all I could talk about, and my routines started to focus on them.

Even though my home computer has broadband internet access, I would only ever turn it on when I had a specific purpose in mind, such as checking for an email or to look at a website which I had heard about. Now my computer comes on in the morning when I wake up and doesn’t get turned off until I’m about to go to bed. I will open a webpage and just refresh it every time I walk past to see what has happened. Has someone left a message, has some updated their status, has someone added new photos, has someone tagged an interesting website? My mobile phone has also become attached to my person thanks to the mobile capabilities of the applications. Now when I go out I keep my phone with me. I keep it in my pocket and even though it will beep and/or vibrate if I receive a message I still pick it up and check it anyway. After only a few weeks of usage my behaviour has already began to alter. Adjusting to allow my lifestyle to become closer linked to the social networking applications.

These three categories lead me towards the issue of addiction;

• Can we develop an addiction to using social networking applications?
• Who would be most susceptible to a social networking addiction? And
• Should we be concerned about this happening to us?

In an article published by the Herald Sun (November 05, 2007), journalist Darren Osborne interviewed Julian Cole, a digital strategist for Naked Communications. The article discussed the possible addiction of online social networking. Cole was quoted as listing university students or people new to the workforce as being more likely to be typical addicts due to their ready access to computer. Possible signs of social networking addiction included frequently visiting the site for longer than intended, experiencing negative psychological or physical effects when the activity wasn’t available, and scheduling other activities around online time. Although Cole stated that the ‘benefits of online social networking outweighed the negatives’ this attitude was lost in the article as it discussed the addictiveness of social networking websites.

The media is always keen to discuss the affect the internet and other technologies are having on our impressionable children and teens. So I found it interesting that, even though the article was titled, ‘Youngsters addicted to networking websites’, Cole did not list youngsters as among those most susceptible to the social networking addiction. I believe that the main reason for this, besides having a smaller amount of ready access to computers than university students and those new to the workforce, is that children do not have as wide a range of social contacts. While students/new employees have a list of friends, acquaintances and contacts which they have developed for many years, children only have their school friends and family members. Thus social networking applications will interest and benefit them less.

Addictive behaviour occurs in a large majority of the population. Whether an addiction to an activity (such as gambling) or a substance (such as tobacco) addiction is always considered as a compulsion developed by an individual to engage in a specific activity regardless of the consequences to the person’s health, mental state or social life. Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) is formally recognized as a disorder by the American Psychological Association and is concerned with the ‘problematic use of the Internet, including the various aspects of its technology’.

My own experience with these applications demonstrates that addiction could undeniably become a side effect of using these applications. Within only a few weeks of use my behaviour changed to allow my lifestyle to become closer linked to the social networking applications and I started to exhibit symptoms of an Internet Addiction Disorder;

• Losing track of time spent online,
• Fatigue from lack of sleep,
• Spending an increasing amount of time online and then having difficulty cutting down on this time, and

Thinking about previous online activity when not online and then anticipating next online session.

Interestingly one symptom which I most certainly did not exhibit was;

• Decreased investment in social relationships and activities.

Four weeks ago I had little to no involvement in social networking applications, four weeks later the have changed my lifestyle, both positively and negatively, affecting my social connections, my attitude towards them and my behavioural routine.

Can we develop an addiction to using social networking applications? Apparently so. Using these applications is an activity for which you can develop a compulsion and my own experience, even over a short period, has demonstrated this.

Who would be most susceptible to a social networking addiction? Not children but university students and people new to the workforce due to their ready access to computers and their wide range of social contacts with which to network.

Should we be concerned about this happening to us? Well that is up to each individual. For me, after considering it I have to say yes, for you, who knows? However I would recommend that you keep this in mind. It is the prevention method recommend for Internet Addiction Disorder. “If a person knows that he or she has difficulty with other forms of addictive behaviour, they should be cautious in exploring the types of applications that are used on the internet. In addition, it is important for people to engage in social activities outside the internet.” And no, I don’t think that receiving tweets when you are out would count.