7: Addiction to Second Life

One online activity that can lead to Problematic Internet Use is participating in an online phenomena known as Second Life. Second Life, created by a small boutique company in San Francisco has elements that can make it an addictive online space that can be problematic for some people. It is basically an online world where people can create avatars of themselves and hold a “second” life online. According to an internet blog about Second Life addiction, “you simply roam around, chat with people, play games, buy land, build homes, create objects you may want to sell for the local currency (Linden Dollars) and so on.” Caplan (2004) describes problematic internet use as being excessive, where people exceed their planned amount of time online, and compulsive, where people cannot control their online activity and have guilt about their lack of control. Certain people display both of these factors when they are on Second Life, qualifying it to be a problematic use of Internet.

One of the factors that makes Second Life to be addictive is that a user has to be online at all times to play the game and interact with others. Wallace explains this property of the internet as being maintenance of virtual presence, where one has to be in the virtual space to control characters or support other team members. I saw an example of this being problematic when one of my friend explained to me how his neighbor would not take care of her kids because and ignored her kid various times just to play this game. Also, I found another example of this on a Second Life blog which stated, “My wife has been staying up all night on SL. Worse, she has started lying about it…Recently she missed work to sleep all day because she was on SL all night.”

Other aspects that would make Second Life problematic is explained by Davis et. al. (2002)’s individual factors such as social comfort and diminished impulse control. Social comfort is when one uses Internet as a tool to increase one’s social network. One of the features on Second Life that exhibits this is how you can have people over and play games with them. Furthermore, diminished impulse control can be seen when some people blow off their children and jobs to spend more time on this “fantasy life”.

Caplan (2004)’s model, “suggests that lonely and depressed individuals may develop a preference for online social interaction, which, in turn, leads to negative outcomes associated with their Internet use.” (pg 625) This does hold true for Second Life as it gives individuals chance to create their own characters, displaying greater control over self presentation, and through CMC chat they can have more anonymity. If one is depressed and lonely they will hold negative perception about their social competence and Second Life gives them a chance to present themselves in an anonymous way. Moreover, this interaction can lead to a viscous cycle and present a problematic internet usage which will affect their school, life and work environment. And by reading the blog examples given above we do know that interactions on Second Life do affect real life for some people.

All in all, Second Life is a very fun but addictive tool where one can get absorbed and forget their real life. A unique property of this space is how closely it resembles real life, since people can have jobs, houses and even friends on this space. As one blogger puts it, “In the past few days, my character has bought land, designed and built a home, had guests over, gone to a strip club, gone to a dance club, bid for new land in an auction, participated in movie trivia games for Linden Dollars, and much more.” What a life!

The web address for the blog used above is:

http://elliptic.typepad.com/elliptic_blog/2004/01/second_life_add.html