The examples of possible online activities that lead to Problematic Internet Use that were listed on the description of Assignment 9 (porn, gambling, away message stalking) all have a negative connotation even when done in moderation. These are not the only problematic activities, though. We have all heard the saying “Too much of a good thing.” While people generally regard a thirst for knowledge as something to commend, the search for information on the Internet can certainly lead to PIU.
With the linkability of the Internet, especially on web sites such as Wikipedia where words in the description of one thing appear as links to their own pages, the ability to go from source to source is limitless.
When you need information for a specific purpose, you need to find the exact intelligence or statistics that will solve your problem. The catch is that you don’t know what site, page, or other source will give you the facts you need. This is where Wallace’s concept of Operant Conditioning comes into play. It’s possible that we’ll find our answer on the first website we look at it. It’s possible that that first site will have a link to the right site. It’s also possible that we will find what we’re looking for three hours and 30 web sites after our search began. But we don’t know which it will be. We keep searching and searching, thinking that just one more click will take us to our destination, and it’s hard to give up when the right answer could be around the corner. This is how a planned ten-minute information search can last for hours.
Sometimes, we look for information just for fun. This can be a problem too because we don’t know when something will pique our interest. Each page we visit could have a new, interesting link. This too can lead to knowledge gathering sessions that last hours.
Searching for information on the Internet can certainly lead to Caplan’s (2004) problematic behavior related to too much time online. People use the information search space of the Internet to excess when they spend longer than normal, or look for facts longer than they thought they would have to. Likewise, compulsive use is when people can’t control their search methods, and are unable to stop looking for a specific piece of data until they find it, or feel bad later when they realize how much time they wasted trying to find one little piece of information.
While porn, gambling, and Facebook can all cause problems online, part of what’s so dangerous about the internet’s addictive quality, is that it can cause issues in areas that are normally good for people, such as knowledge search.
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You bring up an interesting example of problematic internet use, especially since internet searches are such a common habit for everyone. Whenever people need general information about something, it’s convenient to turn to the internet. Most people probably don’t feel as guilty for using the internet for research because they’re being somewhat productive and as you explained with operant conditioning, it is rewarding to the user to achieve what they are searching for. It may be more difficult for users to see this as problematic because they always have the excuse of “I’m doing research.” From Davis et al., I’d say most people use internet searching in either the diminished impulse control or the distraction/procrastination dimension. I admit that I use it for distraction/procrastination from doing school work...
Your example also relates to how Wallace describes the internet as a time sink, and she does mention that people who realize how much time the internet can take from you are the ones who can get the problem under control.
Hey, Dan. I like that you took something most of us don’t even think about (searching and linking) and looked at it from a PIU perspective. I especially enjoyed your conclusion that even something we normally see as a good thing can become a negative when pursued in excess, as information search often is online. I wonder further about the impact the immediacy of knowledge has had/is having on our and younger generations. We are already seeing the decline of the paper medium for the passing of news information, quickly replaced by instantly-updating websites for both cable news services and even the newspapers themselves. Twenty years from now, will we no longer need job interviews? Will blind dates be a thing of the past? As social networks such as Facebook grow in popularity and subscription count, it seems as if we are moving inescapably towards the day when face-to-face social interaction is seen as comically pointless, as everything we could possibly need to know will already be online. However, much like Wikipedia will almost never be a 100% guaranteed information source, such will also be the case of these social sites. The question for us is whether or not we will remember that twenty years down the road.
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