The Internet, our land of virtual promise.   I was thrilled the first time I plugged in a modem to a phone line, and heard the sound of the internet connecting.  Logging into Compuserve or Prodigy to explore this amazing new world.  Those were the good old days.  Good because, the ever expansive internet was actually fairly small.  It didn’t consume people’s lives.  It wasn’t enough of a virtual reality for people to escape the real world.

Nowadays, the opposite is becoming true.  It seems that an ever-increasing percentage of people are online, and all the time.  The internet has blown up into a never ending river of information (truth and lies), social networking (often a way to avoid actually having direct interaction with others, while still calling them friends), and online gaming worlds that allow you to be someone else.  The latter two are quickly growing.  I know that is a generalization, and many people enjoy these things while still having a balanced life.  However, that balance is becoming rare.  I know, I have been there.

Recently, I have found myself growing tired of the internet.  Tired of all the RSS feeds, the email, and the “news” sites that don’t actually write news.  I have been tired of feeling compelled to be connected, and the feeling of needing instant information.  In spite all the great software that is supposed to consolidate and simplify this stuff, I feel no more simplified. Rather, It makes life as hectic and unsatisfying as ever.

I have begun to back away from this world a bit.  I stopped playing online games, my email is just the essentials (no more newsletters, etc), and I rarely bother with social networking.  I still read my RSS feeds, but I have much less of them than before (not a big change since many of these sites just regurgitate what their neighbor says). I still occasionally get onto facebook, but not regularly.  I still read my email, and still prefer it to be instant (“push”). I mostly prefer less of it.  Increasingly, these things have felt more and more like annoying distractions, to an already busy life.

Since I have begun this little change, I feel less scattered, less “busy”, and more relaxed.  There is something nice in not staring at my iPhone or a laptop screen all evening.  By the time I am done with this post, I’ll be offline, probably all night.  It’s nice to do other things, like listen to music, play with my boys, and hang out with my family.

Tonight, I did a search on internet addiction, and found the following site:

On it, they have a test to see how addicted you are.  Here is how I faired:

Your Score: 28

Results: You are an average on-line user. You may surf the Web a bit too long at times, but you have control over your usage.

I suppose average is a good level for me right now.  

How do you score?