Case Study: Second Life Addiction.
Saurin - I am an SL recovering addict. I have an addictive personality - recovered from alcoholism 15 years ago but always played internet games. This one took me into realms of fantasy I never imagined were possible, or interesting to me - a black lesbian dominatrix with sex slaves (I am a middle aged man). I have spent the best part of a year 4-5 hours per day online. Lost my job, kept my wife and family - barely. I do not critisize the medium - really it is my own predisposition (addiction) which led me there. I only wish to point out the dangers there are for people like me and also the apparent lack of support groups. Alcoholics Anonymous is not too hard to find if you have a drinking problem. There are few such resources available for those with online gaming addictions.
Sheridan: Yes, it’s true, it took over my life. SECOND LIFE was basically my first life. I basically couldn’t turn the game off. Virtual shopping seemed to curb my taste for my real life shopping addiction. If you don’t play many games, none of this will make sense to you. But, I am sure some of you are sitting there nodding your head! I stopped answering my phone, which, it doesn’t ring anymore. I rarely answered my text messages. I have friends ive not seen in I don’t know how long. My best friend would complain to me non stop about me living in my virtual world and I thought she didn’t know what she was talking about. She barely speaks to me now. I had landed myself in trouble in my real life and it was a nice escape into a world where no one knew my real life issues. I threw myself into the game... obsessed with making lindens, having a sexy avatar, dating the sexiest male avatar, which turned out was a girl! I have beautiful homes in my inventory, I have animals in my inventory, you name it, Second life has it. Yes, Even SEX. But we won’t go into that. As it’s only a small part. I spent many many hours in the game... I didn’t want to leave my house. Second life, became my FIRST life. People log in and get virtual jobs, and virtual lives, and I am sure I am not the only one who let their first life slide. SO! DONT get so wrapped up in the game.... It has been 3 days since I have logged in, my friends in the game are texting me to make sure I am ok. Perhaps later I will log in for an hour or so.... perhaps not.... don’t let this happen to you..... Take it from an addict.... it can control and ruin your real life.....
Chady: I got addicted big time on Second Life, I used to play 12 hours stretch every day and up to 18 hours in weekend. Results? I lost control over myself at home and at work. When my wife was about to leave the house and things went on rage not to mention my performance at work... I had to wake up. One day, 3 months ago, I swore not to start second life during the week days at all and to play only 48 hours total in the weekend. I never broker that since then. My wife is happy, I am healthier, and I am back to good productive level at work.
One online activity that can lead to Problematic Internet Use (PIU) is participating in the 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 many 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 (2003) 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. Therefore, certain people display both of these factors when they are on Second Life, qualifying it to be a problematic use of Internet.
A few aspects that make Second Life problematic are 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”.
One of the factors that make 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.”
Caplan (2003)’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!
Reference:
Caplan. S, 2003, Problematic Internet use and psychosocial well-being among MMO players, University of Delware, USA.
Davis et al., 2002, ‘Validation of a new scale for measuring problematic internet use: implications for pre-employment screening’, Cyberpsychology Behavior, vol 5, no 4, pp.331-345
