What do you call this behavior? (Facebook, Skype addiction?)

[mysterious_stranger]

Hi. Many, many people from our country (I don't know about other countries, as I don't know many people personally from there) seems to be addicted to Facebook and Skype. There's some other service in our country, which they also use, but it's about similar to Facebook. So Facebook... Many people are sitting whole day in the Facebook and just chatting or posting or playing games or doing whatever else in there... Just sitting there for hours... How do we call this? I'd say it's an addiction, but is it really possible that almost every person from my class are addicted to it? 31/33 are addicted. If we exclude me, 1 person isn't. I bet there's the same situation in other classes.

Skype. Skype is another thing, it isn't web-based and you can't post news or videos in it. You can play games, chat or talk. I have a friend and I know some other people who are always chatting online with somebody. I don't know about the others I know are chatting, but I know about my friend: he chats about 6-10 hours every day with girls over the internet. He likes to party during the weekends with them alone too, but he still chats a lot. I've been to his home few days ago, he turned on his PC and his Skype went up automatically. His internet went offline the last evening. There's been 12 chats with messages. I've asked him - "wow, do you have some business I don't know of? - No, I just like to chat. - How many people do you chat with at once? - Yesterday only 6. Usually - up to 16." I just said nothing and thought... How is that possible?

So how do we call this? Are 31/32 people really addicted to a social site or it's normal to chat for a few hours non-stop except the toilet until deep night?

 

[Retired]

Re: What do you call this behavior? (Facebook, Skype chatter addiction?)

Do you find that people who devote their time to chatting on social networks have a difficult time with real life, person to person interaction? Are people becoming socially isolated?

 

[mysterious_stranger]

Some are, but only a few, who probably are just 'the silent type'. Others are interacting a lot with each other, going into parties, etc..
Although, they spend a lot of time talking about these social networks, how they laughed from somebody yesterday in there, how they have found a funny picture, how somebody beat them in a Facebook game. Things like that. This makes them to live in it, if we look at it from some point of view, doesn't it?

 

[getxtina]

I spend most of my life online through social media. And still keep my interactions offline. Nothing wrong with it

 

[Cscotty]

Im 16. So yea, I use facebook a lot. If anything I use it to stay connected and get hw I forgot about. And hey, its either Facebook or COD. Might as well talk to falmouth (nearby town) chicks . And Because I'm in a social environment (Highschool) everyday I manage to stay connected and read others emotions. Basic stuff.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

its either Facebook or COD.

What's "COD"?

 

[H011yHawkJ311yBean]

COD = Call Of Duty
WoW = World of Warcraft
CoV/CoH = City of Villians/City of Heroes
SIMS -- Short for Simulations (various forms of this where you are a cartoon character and you meet up with with other people as cartoon characters)

Basically you're either meeting online behind a mask or construct of yourself. You could be an 80 year old male but your character is a young female night elf.

Or in the war simulation games like CoD you are in war-time simulations...

Pretty much all online interactive gaming lets you use templates to create characters that either emulate you or are totally not you... You can create back stories for them (biographies), and in some games you can control height, weight, hair colour, tattoos, costume, skin colour, facial expressions, eye colours, clothing and accessories, sex and class... You get to hang out with other people who like to do the same thing. There are rules of etiquette and lingo that goes with each game... There are different lands, different levels, tasks, missions that you can do on your own or in groups. You fight in wars, or fight monsters, or fight each other. No one ever dies, or rather you can die but you just go to a graveyard or something and resurrect. You can buy and trade weapons, do things like mine metals to make armour, etc...

Why do I know this stuff? I used to be a female Paladin on the Alliance side of World of Warcraft, and on the Hoard side I was a female Shaman Tauren (essentially a sentient bovinesque creature reminiscent of a Minotaur). My husband played on his own WoW account and then I tried it out and liked it a lot. The problem was after about a year of playing I noticed that even though we had some cool friends from Australia, various states in the USA, and Europe, we had sort of let our RL (Real Life) friendships slide. And that wasn't the only thing that slid. If I hadn't stopped first, our laundry and dishes would have fallen on us. Then after several years my husband, after stopping for long periods of time and restarting it again, downgraded to City of Villains (Superheroes)... It's not as demanding as WoW. You don't have to schedule your day around it. If you plan a big group mission/task that means all your online friends also take time out of their RL and sit down and ignore their children/spouses/friends/housework for several hours. You may have a wipe out when the big BOSS (the biggest monster) at the end wipes everyone before they finish killing it, and then you have to start over again.

Yep, I'm really glad I stopped playing. It's fun, but it sucks SO much time out of your day without you really being aware of it passing.

Any questions?

 

[H011yHawkJ311yBean]

YouTube - ‪The Guild - Episode 1: Wake-Up Call‬‏ Episode One of THE GUILD
OMG, meeting someone from you guild in person!!! That, like, never happens! lol


FYI: Guild = a group you are affiliated with online, specific (but not exclusive to) World of Warcraft. For instance you might be invited/recruited into a guild because they need more people of your gaming level, they're ramping up numbers in a new guild, or they need some fresh blood because everyone ceilinged out at their topmost level. Problems with guilds: some are very unstable, especially huge ones. It's not unusual for some misunderstandings to cause various members to remove themselves from their guild and either go solo for a while or go into a new guild. After that there could be some long-lasting animosity toward so-and-so and a lot of finger-pointing. It seems a bit like divorce. Some people will form a new group with the splinter group, others will stead-fastedly hang on with the original. Other will just say, "Whatever," roll their eyes, and then go solo and swear off going into a guild ever again. Some people have multiple characters and can keep some soloing, and have different characters in different guilds. That way if they need to team up, they can go out of their current character, go into their other character and rally some people from the other guild. Some guilds have alliances with other guilds.

It's quite a fascination sociology experiment. I have spoken to lots of gamers who had divorce because they kept escaping into the game instead of dealing with RL. It's funny in the video but actually quite sad in RL. You practically have to abandon your RL in order to fit into this pretend one, but even the make-believe one is a gong-show/soap opera/dramafest sometimes.

Another reason I don't play anymore.