1998 was the year that my family came into the Internet age. Carried by a Pentium II 450 Gateway computer, WCNet dial-up service, and Internet Explorer, I became immediately familiar with the primitive Internet of the day. In 2002 I moved up to high-speed DSL, and in 2010 I surrounded myself with online access in the palm of my hand. Between work, laptops, desktops, tablets, game consoles, and my mobile phone, every aspect of my life now provides access to the Internet.
And it is destroying me. I am losing who I was, am, and want to be. The Internet has meant different things to me over the years, so let us see how I got here.
In 1998 the Internet was a new frontier. I was definitely a tech-head at the time, but mainly because of video games. My experience with real computers was limited, so I was overwhelmed at first by the possibilities presented to me by a powerful new computer and huge amounts of information. Yahoo! was my first stop online and I saw the world through it's purple-tinted glasses for quite a while. I found a few favorite websites, dabbled with HTML for the first time, and eventually found a small online presence thanks to the awesome 10MB of online storage WCNet provided us.
By the end of 1999, I found my first "must have" app of the Internet: AOL Instant Messenger. While it was initially close friends that brought me to AIM, it was the promise of talking to my high school crush that kept me on the service. I had AIM before I had my first phone, and 15-year-old me got to experience something my parents never did: asking a girl for her screen name, not her phone number. My routine was obvious: flirt with girls all day at school, then run home to continue the conversation for as long as possible all night long.
2000 saw the melding of two worlds: gaming and online socializing. EverQuest entered my life, a subscription-based massively multiplayer online game that let me explore a virtual world with friends and strangers. EverQuest laid the groundwork for the addictive nature of MMO games, and I was sucked into its world for almost three years before moving on. The persistent nature of the game meant that fights over how long I tied up the phone line were a weekly occurrence.
In 2001 I took to AIM with another high school crush (this one should be easy to figure out), and kept in constant contact with her. This was an amazing time for me - the constant nightly chats helped me grow closer to her than I ever expected, and I completely thank my growing Internet obsession for that. With more communication and more friends came more drama, however, as constant chatting to multiple people led to a game of "he said, she said" quite often. Thankfully I was not always glued to AIM, as the Half-Life universe of games led me to online gems like Team Fortress and Day of Defeat. These games consumed immense amount of my gaming life, and it was around then that I decided I was a PC gamer first and foremost.
My time at BGSU began in 2003, and with it, mobile computing. My first laptop, a Dell Inspiron 5150, was a heavy burden on my shoulders but a necessary tool for my roaming college habits. I kept close to the laptop - in class and during breaks - thanks to BGSU's high-speed wireless access. I was able to keep up with my favorite news sites, play games, and chat with friends from wherever I wanted to be on campus. In hindsight, this always-available connected access was the beginning of my painful Internet obsession.
Two of my biggest online obsessions began in 2005. First was my introduction to World of Warcraft, my first online game experience since EverQuest. I immediately recognized the addictive nature of the game, and chose to limit my time with WoW to summer breaks. But man, what awesome summer breaks they were. This new thing called "Facebook" also reared its head at BGSU, and I joined the social network, mostly out of curiosity. At first it was a little awkward - and barren - but I was quickly addicted to updating my status. As more friends joined, I found a new obsession, which would later be known as "Facebook stalking." Whoops.
With Facebook officially a thing with all my friends, 2006 was the year that the Internet brought me pain. While I was meeting new friends thanks to college, things like AIM and Facebook meant I was always up-to-date with my friends even when I should not have been. Did I need to know about all the fun my friends were having when I was laying in bed for work the next morning? What was my ex-girlfriend up to that weekend? How many new friends did she connect with on Facebook? Oh, they were all guys? Someone else I may like just found a boyfriend. Work sucks, and now my bosses all know it. The communication flood turned a puddle into a lake into an ocean within a year, and guess what: I cannot swim. For the first time in eight years, the Internet brought me more pain than pleasure.
In 2009 I was a year into my first "big boy" job in Findlay, Ohio. Three monitors surrounded my desk. Two laptops at home glowed all day, one of which (a Dell Mini 9) went everywhere with me and connected to every available Wi-Fi network I could find. My desktop at home was a beastly machine designed to tear through modern games without breaking a sweat. Its most-used application? Firefox. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Calendar, GMail, Engadget - the list goes on, but I was using all my computing muscle and time to browse the Internet, click links, and look at pictures of cats. How did I feel about all this? Amazing. I had access to tons of information and plenty of distractions to keep me busy during the most boring days of work.
The mobile web entered my life near the end of 2010, and all hell broke loose. My first mobile phone with an unlimited data plan meant I had the whole Internet experience in my pocket. I used and abused this awesome power. Facebook was more social than ever. RunKeeper was my new favorite app. I read my favorite sites in those small pockets of downtime at family functions. I checked my email obsessively. Streaming music was awesome. Mobile YouTube. I came to rely on my phone as my calculator, clock, to-do list, Internet browser, Facebook companion, and ultimately, my enemy.
Never in my life have I hated something so much. Over three years, after seeing more and more people around me glued to their mobile screens, I have learned that the always-connected, always-available distractions of the mobile Internet are dangerous. Countless dinners with friends and family have turned into phone-fests. I cannot tell you how many times I hear "huh?" from my friends as they miss what I say because they are scanning Twitter, Instagram, or checking scores. Not only is it obnoxious, it is rude. I am certainly guilty of all these things over the past few years too, but I am at a a turning point now.
2013 began with a painful realization: I am addicted to the Internet. This is not an obvious admission. I have clearly been sucked into the Internet for well over ten years now. But for the first time ever, I have had a moment to step back from my constantly-connected world and take in the bigger picture of what I am missing in my life. Conversation with friends. Honest emotion. Downtime. Rest.
Information overload has been taking its toll on me, and along with all the other changes in my life this year, I am making a new pledge: to put my phone away on a regular basis. Out with friends and family? Phone away. Unwinding after a long day? Phone away. Trying to focus or working on one of my projects? Phone away. Addiction is not easy to break, and my move away from the always-connected world will be slow-but-steady.
The constant glow of the portable, mobile Internet is one of the biggest revolutions of my generation, and it is eating me alive. I love the Internet, I really do. Is there a place for it constantly in front of my face? Not anymore. Focusing on my writing, photography, and biking is so much easier without the anxiety of checking my notifications, checking my work email, or wondering if so-and-so messaged me back.
Over the remainder of 2013, I am weaning myself off the need for an expensive phone and expensive data plan. By the end of the year, I plan to use my iPad and a cheap data plan for the occasional mobile internet, and my phone be reduced to a no-texting and no-data dumbphone that does one thing very well: make calls.
B3 out.
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