Is it screwing up your life? Has the internet just replaced television in your life, or has it taken the place of other activities you used to enjoy?

Do you think that, overall, the internet has improved your life, or has it turned you into a pathetic lump with no hobbies other than chat rooms and the Xeney forum?

Not, you know, that I'm projecting or anything. Heh.

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

Answers

I thought I was the only person starting to stress about how much time I spend on the net. Not even going into the fact that sometimes in work I just surf round in circles.

Most evenings, I finish my entry, post that, check e-mail (which can take up to 3 hours), check all the journals read, check the journals I read that hadn't updated in the first round of surfing, forget where I was as I followed to many links. Then realise that my eyes are burning cos I've spent a horrible amount of time on the computer

I have started making sure I have swum or Tae-Boed before I sit down though as I have learned that I will not get offline to exercise once I've started.

C.

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

I have had my life moments as an internet addict, but really, I guess having a job that involves being on the net, I feel fully justified. That and I've lost 60 lbs.

And on the weekends, I usually don't do internet anything because there's far too much to get done elsewhere, usually involving other hobbies like the man creature, the child creature and sewing for the baby creature.

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

Well, you're gonna hate me for this, but I spend about 30-40 hours a week surfing. I'm on a help desk, and when I'm not on the phone, I'm on the web.

As a result, when I get home at the end of the day, it takes wild horses to drag me to the internet. I check my email maybe twice a week.

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

Heh. I guess you can all point your fingers and say "loser", but my isp tells me I spend 170 hours a month on average online. lessee, four weeks a month, means...42.5 hours a week online.

That's not bad except that's at *home*. I didn't count the forty hours a week I spend online at work...

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

...it's one of the reasons i don't have web access from home [even though that's a cardinal sin for online journalers it seems]...that way all my "web stuff" [work and play] is melded into the same 8-12 hour day...sometimes it's inconvenient, but all in all it's better for me this way...plus, it means i get paid to update...*glee*...

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

I spend about 30 of my 40 work hours web-surfing and reading journals. You'd think that would be more than enough for me, but at home after dinner, I'm in front of the computer for 1 - 3 hours. On the weekends, I tend to sit online for 3 or 4 hours each day, even though there's a refrain running in the back of my mind the entire time: "One more entry...one more entry, and I'll go read/clean/whatever. Okay, one more then I'm going to go back upstairs. Okay, one more..."

http://www.bitchypoo.com/bitchypoo.html

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

*Heh!* >:>

Oh, crikey, I spend waaaay too much time on the 'net. OK, so we all know, I'm the "Internet Development Chick" for a non-profit organization, so I *do* have to be on at work. But then I surf journals during lunch, and I build web sites for other people on the side, and I've got my own site going, and I help M out with his site, and then there's my weblog, and surfing for information, and surfing for wedding stuff, and surfing for fun, and...

I just tried to decide whether I was "addicted" or not, and my answer is "no." There have been weekends when I haven't been online at all; unfortunately, those weekends result in a mailbox with 500 e-mails in it... I can't afford to turn away side jobs, either, at least, not right now.

After the wedding, though...I'll be out planting tulips in front of our tiny house. :> Beth, any suggestions?

-- roe

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

Mostly replaced TV. I found myself surfing instead of watching the Super Bowl. Sports have definately taken a back seat to the Internet (house cleaning and yard work are in the trunk).

--john

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

I spend more time surfing during breaks from indexing at the office. I check a few forums as soon as I get to work, read the news for a bit, etc., and then do the same during little breaks I take throughout the day. I'm glad no here cares how much we surf as long as we get our projects done on time and our indexes are in good shape.

At home, I only spend maybe one hour a day connected, which gets divided among answering email, skimming a couple of forums, a few weblogs, and two or three journals, and updating my own site (which doesn't take much time). I also order my groceries on line and do various other chores on the web, but that stuff takes only a hour a week tops.

When I got my first modem, years ago, it resulted in a bad CSi forum addiction for about two years. I met some nice people during that time (and some lunatics), but I was spending way too much time connected... of course I was happily unemployed at the time, so I had time to burn, but in retrospect I wish I hadn't burned so much of it online.

Now, being online is just not that interesting to me overall, but I still like dropping into a few forums, especially the kind where there's a large variety of opinions being expressed but without much (if any) flaming going on. :)

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

I'm not sure of an exact figure of how much time I spend on the internet, but this should be an indicator: You know those "we pay you to surf" things where you get an ad window on your screen and they clock your hours? the one I'm on limits you to 25 payable hours a month. I usually finish my hours each month within the first 10 days. And for the hours to count, you have to have a browser window open, so the time I spend chatting in IRC doesn't count, and I'd say I do that at least 2 hours for every hour I spend surfing. I am a pathetic lump with few hobbies besides chatting and reading journal pages (including xeney), but i'm a happy pathetic lump :-)

And I religiously block out time for Buffy. I try to block out time for Passions too but pesky school gets in the way. Thank the gods for Buffy.

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

I spend maybe two or three hours a day. Sometimes more. I don't go on from home as much because my connection from there is hellishly slow, and I usually go on either Saturday or Sunday, not both.

A lot of this is The Well rather than the internet, but I figure it still counts.

We didn't have cable for several months and I found other ways to entertain myself. Now that we have it, though, I'm shocked at how much time I spend watching those true crime shows on Discovery.

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

I'm using cyberdiet.com for some calorie cutting ideas (oops - that's another string) and I just used it's weekly shopping list to purchase my groceries at peapod.com. For this alone I worship Al Gore for inventing the Internet.

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

The internet has turned me into a morning person.

I really like reading journals in the morning, so I now get up one hour earlier than I need to in order to get in some quality time with my modem.

If I'm able to cut work/school/internship, that saved time is used for surfing.

And then, as soon as the man leaves for work, it's just me and my keyboard for the rest of the night.

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

I'm a web designer. I work the web all day long from 9-5 and then I come home, eat dinner watch a show or two and get back online unless I'm at the gym working out.

So, in any 24 hours time span, if I spend 8 hours at work and 8 hours sleeping, that only leaves 8 other hours to fill. Of those, I probably spend 2 total, getting dressed, eating and commuting to work. The other 6 are a variable split between chores/TV/otherwebtstuff.

So on any given day I am spending 10 to 12 hours, or half of my day, on the 'net.

It has improved my life thusly:

1) It gave me a job when I first got out of college 2) It's given me a career that I enjoy and pays well (pays the bills in other words) 3) It has helped me get in touch with old friends long lost. 4) It's given me a forum in which to publish my otherwise unpublishable writings 5) It's given me a space to connect with other like-minded or not so-likeminded, but quite likeable people 6) It's made it easier for me to pay my bills on time

How it has detracted from my life:

1) It dominates almost all of my waking hours 2) It has caused stress and pain as in: "Gosh darnit! Why won't this freaking piece of code _work_!!!!!" 3) It has intruded into my ability to communicate with the people immediately around me 4) It has made me overly sedentary far too young in life 5) At one point, I was so addicted to the 'net (Mushes in particular) that I almost completely ruined my life 6) It has contributed to our financial problems due to the cost of connecting/maintaining a server

Those are just a few of the pros and cons.

Mostly, I see it as a benefit if only for the fact that you can find so much random information online that you can't find in the yellow pages or in lengthy trips to the library/bookstore.

Need to know something about medieval Bulgaria? Go look it up at bulgaria.com

Need to get a recipe for that dinner party next week? There's everything from epicurious.com to foodtv.com.

But it has had some deleterious effects as well, which is why I'm making a concerted effort to leave the computer off more often at home and spend more time talking to my sweetie, cuddling my cats, taking walks and going to the gym to work out.

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

I spend way too much time on the damn Internet.

The only time it caused me a real problem was my freshman/sophomore years of college, though. I "discovered" the 'net my freshman year, and proceeded to spend all my waking hours in chat rooms and surfing the Web. It was really out of control. I'd skip class just to sit idle in a chat room, or maniacally hit "reload" on cnn.com.

These days my habit is more under control, although I have an enabling office job that allows me to sit on my ass and surf the Web all week long while getting paid for it. It's really bad during the 6-week period that we're not in production, because then I really don't have anything better to do.

The one good thing about surfing at work is that when I go home, I don't have the strong addiction craving to go sit on my butt and stare at the Internet. Instead, I obsessively play "Oddworld 2" on the Playstation. An improvement? You tell me.

-- Jan

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

I'm a DIFFERENT Jan!

Anyway, I spend 3-5 hours/day on this thing. I don't feel guilty, though, usually. At least, on the Net, I'm learning something or connecting with people, not like the time I WASTE playing Snood!

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

I'm online all day at work (StockCharts.com: check it out!), and now that I have DSL I'm online all the time at home, too!

I consider the money I spend on cable to be wasted; I'm rarely watching tv these days.

I am out dancing two or three nights a week. I'm on a convention committee. I see my sweetie almost every weekend. So I don't feel like I'm devoting too much time to online interests.

The internet has certainly been a good thing in my life. I still enjoy it a lot!

Anita of Anita's BOD and Anita's LOL

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

I never used to spend so much time online, because my ISP used to have pretty tight download charges100 Mb a month for free before you have to cough up for more. Since I'm basically tight-fisted that way, I very carefully rationed what I could have daily, and it was not much at all then they jacked it up to 200 Mb a month, which made things easier, and currently it's 350 Mb a month, which has made things ridiculous. I currently probably spend at least four hours a day online. I don't think it's replaced TV for me because I never used to watch TV much anyway, and it hasn't taken me away from my outdoors activities because I never had any of those anyway. I was a pathetic lump before I first got online so even that hasn't changed.

Too much time at the computer? Almost certainly. But I'm not so hooked that I don't know when enough is enough for one day and I'll go find a book to read instead. And I've had access to information I'd otherwise never have had access to, met friends and interesting people through the Net and frankly, if it hadn't been for the Net I almost certainly wouldn't have the position I currently have with a community radio station. So it's been a force for the better more often than not.

Tonight We Sleep In Separate Ditches

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

I spend about 3-6 hours a day on the internet. I dont use it at work(I wish I had the time to use it!), but I am usually online from shortly after I get home from work until I am off to bed. I try to make a point to stay off the computer on the weekends, so I can have some kind of life in the "real" world.

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2000

I beat online addiction early on because I got a head start -- internet access back in '88, baby. It became a serious problem for me in the summer of 1990 when I was working at Stanford. I would hang out on Usenet, send email, and telnet into a Seattle BB where all my friends could be found. Since, at the time, there was no notion that one could "goof off" at a computer [my co-workers were limited to Lotus 1-2-3 and MultiMate in their cyber-savvy] when people would walk by my desk and see me typing at my characteristic 92 wpm they would assume I was working and not bother me or throw anything in my inbox that needed immediate attention, thus creating an ongoing cycle where no one gave me anything to do and I would send more irritated missives to soc.feminism. Ergo: I was online for 8 hours a day PLUS my lunch hour, when I would walk over to the computer science building and log in from a public terminal.

This all predated the web, you whippersnappers. All this was text-only. And at 2400 baud! Did I mention that? Thankfully, all this came to an end when I moved back home and reestablished myself in my social circle. After this early innoculation I was kind of fed up with the net. Since then it hasn't really interfered with other things I'd rather be doing. (In much the same fashion, I have inured myself to the lure of various types of alcohol by overindulging in them. The scent of rum still makes my stomach clench, reminding me as it does of the endless rum & coke binges of my freshman year.)

............................................

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2000

I have no life outside of the internet.

A year and a half ago, I had an account where I was allowed 30 hours a month. Now I'm on the unlimited option, and I always use more than 100.

I was a pathetic lump before this, though.

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2000

i'm probably worse off than most of you, because i'm in grad school for computer engineering, and i work as a research assistant. therefore: school=computers. work=computers. small blocks of play time that i carve out from the day when i'm putting off school and work inevitably=computers.

all i can say is i'm glad i'm getting out of here in may.

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2000

Only at work, but then it's eight hours a day, every day. Mostly it's just my e-mail that's running, while I'm working on webpages, but I do have a limited number of sites I visit everyday without fail - Xeney, Pamie, and the odd one out, the immortal Spacegirl (www.spacegirl.org).

I do have a pc at home, but no modem. Eight hours a day is more than enough for me, thank you very much.

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2000

a-ha! I have cleverly beaten home internet addiction by living in Britain where spending all night on line would bankrupt me (we have free access but pay the telephone bills. it's so sad - the ISP number is our 'best friend' in the company's scheme. hmmm - perhaps i'm not as addiction free as I think...)

at work it's a different matter - great way of filling in time when i've nothing to do but have to look busy, and a great way of putting off work when there's a pile as high as a horse waiting to be dealt with. It's these darned journals, i tell you...

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2000

Let's see: I put the online edition of a local newspaper online, so I'm on the web all day at work. I probably spend another 1-3 hours on it at home. It HAS improved my life ie: friends and without the html knowledge, I wouldn't have my current job.

I spend time with my kids, my husband and I split the chores, bills get paid, no worries.

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2000