Scott,
a 19 year old second year college student, inducted
an interview at the counseling center in his college.
He came to this small but well established engineering/technical
school in the northeastern United States, after initially
being rejected by one of the military service academies.
He achieved good academic results in the first three
semesters, but began to face difficulty in the second
semester of his second year. During this semester,
he began to experience symptoms such as depressed
mood, changes in his sleep-work schedule, frequent
absence from class, poor academic achievements, and
dispute with his parents. Scott was able to discuss
his recent problems, but he was either unwilling or
unable to identify the possible cause of his problems.
During direct questioning, Scott unwillingly confessed
that he spent close to 2000 hours engaging in an online
Multi-user Dimension (MUD) during the semester. MUDs
are mostly games “inhabited” by a fluctuating
number of people who communicate with each other in
a text-based format. MUD members can logon from any
computer terminals in the world.
As Scott continued to discuss his participation in
the MUD, it became increasingly evident that he was
having difficulty retracting from the community, even
at the cost of his academic preparation. Scott would
still look for other ways to connect to his MUD community
even when he is out of the campus. Scott acknowledged
that the MUD was his main medium of interpersonal
communication; in fact, he did not know his next-door
neighbors whom he lived with for an entire year. Contrastingly,
Scott drove 1900 miles instead to meet up a woman
he met on MUD.
In addition, Scott showed other measures of dependence.
Scott noted that his statistics of Internet usage
uncovered the propensity to stay online for increasing
amounts of time. He also admitted that, on a few circumstances,
he had made unsuccessful attempts to reduce his Internet
usage. Finally, Scott also admitted that he had pulled
out from engaging in his hobbies in addiction to his
academic coursework. Despite a period of initial denial,
Scott became aware that he would be academically expelled
- yet his MUD use continued.
It is clear that not only is Scott heavily influenced
by his need to connect to the Web to engage in MUD
activities, Scott had also turned the Web into his
main channel of social interaction, sacrificing interpersonal
contact with those near him or more immediately in
touch with him. Scott had not only displayed the symptoms
of a regular Internet addict, he is beginning to suffer
the harm caused by the virtual realm too, and the
price he had to pay were real-world problems such
as being expelled from college.
