Consider the effects of writing a blog and reading blogs. In order to participate in those two activities, some time is required. In those 10 minutes spent reading a post and then forming a comment, you could easily have made yourself a sandwich or skimmed over a section in a textbook. Unfortunately, when someone doesn't have this time and continues to participate, negative consequences can result. This is characteristic of Caplan's definition of problematic Internet use as resulting in negative academic, professional, and social consequences.
Caplan describes excessive use as use exceeding normal, planned time online. If an individual plans to spend a certain amount of time catching up on a blog or writing a new blog entry, it is very easy to exceed the allotted time. It's true that many blogging front ends allow saving of a draft copy and you can always bookmark an entry to read later. However, it is often easier to blog a little longer in order to complete the train of thought. During the course of blog writing, the user may proceed into a rant. A common result is continuous ranting without considering elapsed time. Similarly, when a user is reading a blog, he or she may become absorbed in an entry and exceed their original planned time. This excessive use is also characteristic of compulsive use, the inability for one to control one's online activity, along with guilt for lack of control. When an individual is too involved in reading or writing blog entries, the realization of excessive time spent online leads to guilt over the overdevotion to blogging. Excessive use and compulsive use are both characteristic of problematic internet usage.
In Caplan's model, individuals with psychosocial problems view themselves as more socially inept. This causes increased propensity for internet usage due to less threatening characteristics. Consequently, this leads to more actual internet usage, which further complicates the original psychological problems. For blog writers, blogging offers a venue to express themselves anonymously and more intimately with greater control over self-presentation. A blogger can present personal details without ever revealing his identity if he is posting to a blog under a pseudo-identity. These traits of blogging are affordances that Caplan believed lead to increased preference for internet usage. However, individuals may choose to blog in lieu of expressing their opinions in face to face social context. That decision leads to decreased self-disclosure in physical social interactions and negative social traits. For blog readers, blogging allows them to gain knowledge of social experiences via posts concerning events in the social lives of others. Due to the ease of self-publishing, devout blog readers can become engrossed in the opinions and experiences of random individuals. This leads to less personal experience and thus has a negative social impact.
Blogging can be considered an example of problematic internet use, but in the case of COMM 245, if we do not blog, it will hurt us academically. Therefore, there is no need to panic if you feel doing the weekly blog posts is becoming a chore. It isn't exactly problematic internet usage. Posts also force us to state our thoughts on topics discussed in class with the hope of bringing up similar discussion points in real life. However, if blogging allows expression of opinion in a computer mediated context, a drop in real life expression is expected. In this way, blogging can be examined both positively and negatively.
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Henry, your post is very thorough and intriguing. As blogs become increasingly popular and the “blogosphere” (I hate that term) expands, the problematic usage of writing your own and reading others’ blogs becomes more relevant. I might understand your analysis slightly better if you included an example of problematic blog usage—because I can’t recall any specific instances that I have seen or experienced on my own. It just seems, on a macro level, that as people become their own news reporters—there is less collaborative information retrieval. Everyone is losing their social insecurities and becoming more outspoken. While this certainly has positive aspects (hearing everyone’s voice around the globe), it can be damaging to someone’s psyche if they are persistently soapboxing and patting themselves on the back. And on the contrary, people are hyperpersonally forming strong impressions of other bloggers. There is certainly a lot of information that can be analyzed within this phenomenon.
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