On the perils of internet addiction, irc, et al....

I have no doubts that most people casually discard those reports on internet addiction.

I don't.

I treat them with great caution, because I have been none before. Normally, I don't get "addicted" to something easily. I started drinking coffee when I was 7 (when my dad shares his coffee with me, mixing it with the yacky milk to make it taste better), and I cold-turkey my coffee drinking habit recently in less than 3 days. Sure, I got sleepy in the first day, but that's about the only withdrawal symptom I have. I slept through that first day, followed by couple of hours' nap in the next two days, and I'm good to go. When I make a decision and am determined to do something, I can get it done.

Back in my college days, I got hooked onto irc (aka, internet relay chat). Back then, irc was almost exclusively for college kids. AOL chatrooms were not even there yet, so most everyone on irc was university students, saved a few sysadmin folks, and a few bots around for manning traffic. It was fun, and it's exciting, because suddenly I was chatting with a whole host of people around the world, even flirting without any recourse (that I normally won't do). I would admit that it's intoxicating. Although I didn't lose any sleep (one of the symptom - sleep deprivation - mentioned in the report), I spent most of my waking hours on irc. I skipped classes, I went home late. There was one night that I got home so late that my sister (who was living with me back then) was ready to call the police, and she got so upset with me for "being irresponsible" and "insensitive to others". Well, naturally I didn't consider myself to be that bad, and my irc habit persists. I even had "bro" and "sis" on irc. Those were fun days.

That lasted for about 6 months, 6 intensive months of irc'ing. And then, reality hit hard on me, when I didn't have enough time to work on my computer graphics assignment, and I got really really low marks. I eventually dropped that elective. It's at that point that I realized that I was forfeiting my real life for something virtual, and I've decided that it's not worth it. So, I stopped, saved the occasional contact of a few irc pals. I pretty much cold-turkey off of irc.

After a few months of absence, getting back on irc almost seems mundane. There's the usual annoyance of the newbies who don't know the irc etiquette (eg. no caps unless you mean to yell). All the chatters and flirting on screen seem fruitless.

I kept in touch with a few irc pals for maybe a couple of years thereafter. Eventually all communication stops. By then, I realize that all these virtual friends are nothing more than that - virtual, not real. Everyone grows up and moves on. I move on too, and never look back.

I remember there were a few irc diehards who's been on irc (from its infancy) for almost 10 years already when I started. Some are grad students (for obvious reason that they'll be around their universities for that long). I remember this Korean guy from Texas, switching from full time to part time study, just so that he could hang around the campus for a longer period. (I'll leave out all irc nicknames, so everyone remains anonymous.) Looking back, he's almost like a loser to me. But when I first started out, he was cool. In fact, everyone on the irc channels thought he's a cool dude. Perhaps that's what kept him on irc for so long, since he's considered the cool dude on irc, which was probably something that he wasn't in real life.

And then there's my irc big bro in Arizona, who was a grad student in CS. His sudden death (real one) came as a shock to everyone. He had tried to flirt with me on irc and I declined, but we stayed as irc pals for quite some time. He managed to get another girl from Taiwan hooked. In fact, when he died, this Taiwanese girl flew in to Arizona to attend his funeral, just to find out that he already had a very steady, longtime girlfriend in real life. After that, she flew home, heartbroken.

Unlike these days when pedophiles are a given in the virtual world, predatory on everyone who claims to be underaged, it wasn't so back then. The "danger" on irc back then was mainly getting ditched by your bf/gf. Looking back, it's so benign.

I had an irc pal who was a prodigy, finishing his first degree in math when he was 13. He had disguised his age and you wouldn't realize it. You probably won't realize it either, meeting him in person, since he's 6'5" (yes, he's very tall). I remember that day when he disclosed his real age on the irc channel, everyone pretty much stopped talking to him. I felt bad for him, and I kept in touch with him for a longer period, until he moved to California, finished his Ph.D at 20, and married at 21. And I'm glad he finds a real life, and has moved on.

In any case, virtual reality is just that - virtual, a mirage. It's left to everyone's fancy. But it can be turned off the in a flash.

I know my kids - indeed all kids - would potentially go through that path. The path of virtual reality is much more dangerous now, since the web is not as pure as it once was (when almost everyone was from college), and is littered with all sorts of dangerous figures (eg. pedophiles). I hope my experience would equip me well to guide my kids through this.