Six times on Facebook… in an hour

It started out as a fun hobby to relieve office stress. Soon it took over your life itself. From checking email once a day, it has become six times an hour. Sounds familiar? Join the tech junkie club. Here are signs of a cyber addict.

Email

Once upon a time you checked your email once a day. Now you do it multiple times… an hour. Here is a good benchmark. If you check your email three times an hour, you are officially lonely. If you check it out six times an hour, you're officially a cyber addict. After a point, the obsessive-compulsive behaviour can even make you a bit depressed because you end up looking at a blank inbox half the time. But if you open it at normal intervals, this won't be the case.

Not Only Friends are Networked to You

Facebook, Orkut, and various other social network sites have made you Mr or Ms Popular. But how many of these 'friends' on your account are really people who care about you, or vice-versa? Count on the fingers of your palm and chances are you won't reach the second finger. A sure-shot sign of a cyber addict or a tech junkie is someone who has 200 plus friends on their Facebook account. That's not even a tech junkie come to think of it. That's a PR agent, for heaven's sake!

Your language itself is changing

Another sign of a tech junkie is when your language itself starts changing. Lol is lots of laughter, brb is be right back but 'x' standing for kiss is truly an example of how tech lingo is making us a demented lot. Then again, there is sms lingo that can get the better of your language skills. It might mean you're keeping up with the times, but in reality, it could be making you more emotionally disconnected than ever.

You don't meet people, unless they are strangers…

Another good sign of cyber addiction is when you start feeling less and less inhibited meeting strangers through these networks, and find even less time for your real friends.

Remember that some amount of social networking through these sites is exciting, but if you begin to search obsessively for stranger's details, hobbies, likes and dislikes, you're lost in cyberspace, and the only way is down!

Inter-passivity

A great phenomenon of our times is inter-passivity. Are you voraciously downloading more games, songs, video clips, etc., than you will ever consume in one lifetime, leave alone a year?

Welcome to the world of inter-passivity. With the internet comes a wide range of options, but if all you're doing is downloading without even having the time to enjoy it, then you're engaging in inter-passivity.

Re-assurance

A lot of cyber-obsessive behaviour could be about wanting emotional re-assurance say experts. We like to feel loved, wanted, cherished.

Those myriad virtual gifts and virtual cards, and the free cocktails, and what have you have been created to make you feel special. Do engage in it, but remember that it's always better to flirt with cyber-emotionality rather than to get sucked in by it.

That's for the Japanese, who have truly mastered the art of making love to the machine!



'She finds solace in cyber anonymity'

Most people who are unnaturally hooked on to the internet suffer from personality disorders. Take the case of this 27-year-old girl whom I have been counselling, for example. She flits from chat room to chat room for 12-15 hours everyday and shuns physical contact. She treats the cyber world as an escape route, where she feels safe from rejection and ridicule, the fear of which keeps her from developing inter-personal relationships in the real world.

At present she is undergoing counselling for building self worth and improving her social skills, which took a nose dive after she faced a series of rejections in her life, which pulled her into a vicious loop of diffidence and self loathing. She instead finds solace in the anonymity of the cyber world, where she doesn't need to bother about what other people think of her.

She has had a long history of maladjustment where she could never get along with her peer group or colleagues.

She was lonely when she migrated to Mumbai about a decade ago. In time she failed to form meaningful friendships in the city and picked up the habit of nitpicking and fault finding, which carried on to her professional life as well. She would complain about her work and colleagues, especially her boss and couldn't seem to stick to one job for long. The result today being, she developed an adverse reputation in the job market and has failed to find employment for quite some time now.

Several other disappointments in life have eroded her self esteem and trust in other people. She hardly ever socialises, except in the cyber world. She uses this medium as a crutch to tide over her inadequacies.