Does your Teen Live a Second Life Through the Monitor?

With competition fiercer than ever before and the media constantly redefining social norms--failure seems to be a steppingstone for adulthood. It's no wonder teens are turning to escape mechanisms to find comfort and bliss. Just like the lure of Pleasure Island for Pinocchio or the Looking Glass for Alice--today's teens are being lured into the fantastical worlds of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) and Second Life. However, as the past has taught us, fantasy can have detrimental effects on reality.

We might squawk around the buzz of web addiction in the U.S., but it has become such a prevalent problem in countries like South Korea and China that their governments are taking serious measures to stop its rampancy. In Martin Fackler's recent New York Times article "In Korea, a Boot Camp Cure for Web Obsession" he writes:

It has become a national issue...as users started dropping dead from exhaustion after playing online games for days on end. A growing number of students have skipped school to stay online, shockingly self-destructive behavior in this intensely competitive society...Up to 30 percent of South Koreans under 18, or about 2.4 million people, are at risk of Internet addiction...

As one of the first countries to have nationalized cheap broadband access, 90% of South Korea's households are now avid subscribers. As a result, PC Baangs (Internet cafes), have become some of the most lucrative businesses in the country. Teens swarm to these dimly-lit cafes before, during and after school to escape reality and play games like StarCraft, EverQuest, and Warhammer. In addition, countless online auction sites have popped up, targeting teen gamers addicted to buying virtual commodities. Because of their growing popularity, several cable channels are broadcasting online gaming competitions. Just as reality TV stars have reached A-list status in the U.S., top StarCraft gamers make six-figure salaries and have celebrity status.

To fight the war on web addiction, a growing number of hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and Outward Bound-like boot camps are offering treatments. Many of these therapies stress physical activity as a means to strengthen the addicts' bodies, weakened by sleep deprivation and sedentary lifestyles, and help them reconnect emotionally to the physical world.

So what is so addictive about these virtual realities? Playing MMORPGs and Second Life can have a therapeutic effect on players by filling emotional or psychological voids they experience in real life. These virtual worlds allow teens and adults to live fantasy lives through their alter egos, A.K.A. avatars. Players find approval, recognition and respect in their alternate realities, and form virtual relationships that are sometimes even more fulfilling than those in real life.

Although web addiction is not a national threat in the U.S. yet, it's become a pervasive issue in recent years. In the recent Wall Street Journal article "Is This Man Cheating on His Wife," Alexandra Alter studies a marriage, plagued by one spouse's Second Life obsession and virtual marriage. The article states:

Nearly 40% of men and 53% of women who play online games said their virtual friends were equal to or better than their real-life friends...More than a quarter of gamers said the emotional highlight of the past week occurred in a computer world...

For those of you like me who are Second Life virgins, it seems positively ridiculous that adults would buy into this. However, upon further comprehension, it's not so out-of-the-question. In Second Life, avatars create the world of content that they live in, and can realize their wildest dreams, despite the cards they were dealt in real life. An estimated 20 million "residents" (avatars) have virtual jobs, own property, date, marry and even sleep with each other. They attend lectures, concerts, read newspapers, and spend loads of Lindens (Second Life's currency) on imaginary accessories.

But in the virtual Wild West, anything goes: including rioting, gang play, child pornography and until recently, gambling. Luckily, the Linden Lab saw the danger in allowing kids to participate in adult Second Life and launched one just for teens. But just because it's a PG13 version, doesn't mean the premise is any different. The lines between fantasy and reality are still blurry at best.

As parents, we can't control the government, the tech corporations or the media, but we can take steps to help teens stay on the right side of the looking glass, or more aptly these days, the monitor:

• We can monitor their online habits; know the warning signs, and how to confront them.
• Teach them to value real intimacy, (which has sadly become the casualty of technology).
• Initiate and encourage real-world activities and hobbies.
• And most importantly--try to relieve their pressure instead of pile it on.

Comments

[UnrulyPeasant]

Just a slight correction here,Miss, and some advice before you blog about MMORPG's--Make sure what you're talking about first by doing a little more research and not just grabbing game titles at random or trusting old articles from years ago..Warhammer Online is still in Beta phase and won't even be released for some months yet..(I believe what you're attempting to reference here is World of Warcraft).­.Starcraft is a Real Time Strategy game,which while hugely popular in Korea,is hardly an MMORPG, and has been out for years and is soon to be replaced with Starcraft 2..Gold Farmers and commodities brokers for games aren't just targeted at teens..I know of a great many adults who frequent those particular websites to load up on what they are too lazy to get in game..

[mrs]

Just like with any new toy (technology) with an amazing array of applications, the web will get played with nonstop until some of its freshness wears off and for many of us begins to get played out. I suspect that after a
while many of us will get more selective and arrive at an online usage level that's pretty consistent. Sure, like obsessive/­compulsive­s of all stripes, they'll always be web addicts – just not in significant numbers.
Not to worry, Molly. Reality will trump digitality.

[leftbehind2000]

When I was a kid, there was a similar hew and cry over Dungeons and Dragons. It was the 70's version of the "wrong side of the looking glass." Satanist, they said. Damaging retreat into imagination, they said.

I guess my claiming to have turned out "Okay" depends on how you define the term, but I can at least say with confidence that I've managed to make it into my 40's without prison stint or mental ward visit. And, as far as I know, so have the other guys who spent their afternoons and evenings with me lopping off monster limbs and finding hidden treasure.

The thing that baffled me then and baffles me still is that these studies are made by people who believe the healthy people are the ones who plant their faces in front of a TV for 6 hours every night, subscribe to People and US magazine. They're the ones hang on Oprah's every word. If this is normal, I'll take the alternative world.

[charon]

One of my sons, who just turned 19, has been "addicted" to Guild Wars, a Warcraft-like game, for several years now. It seems like a waste of time to me, and at times he played it for 7 or 8 hours a day when he could. He works part time and goes to a junior college full time, so he hasn't had as much time to play it as he might like. It has concerned me, but fortunately he has less interest in it now, only playing 2-4 hours, maybe 3 times a week.

It did, I believe, affect his high school grades, but so did high school sports, which he played 3 seasons a year for 4 years. He is quite bright, and won a number of public speaking honors in Lion's Club competitions, so I am not ready to say it has seriously harmed him. I do know an MD's son who dropped out of a university, partly due to his addiction to what he jokingly refers to as "warcrack" (Warcraft). He got off the "warcrack" and worked for awhile before starting back in a state college.

I'm not sure addiction is a good term for it, loaded as it is with meanings that may not apply. But when in the grip of it, it sure looks like an addiction to drugs or gambling.

[Maia Szalavitz - Huffpost Blogger]

Also, boot camps are known to be ineffective and sometimes harmful-- we don't know the long-term effects of these games, but we *do* know that boot camp approach doesn't help with other addictions or behavior problems, so there's no reason to believe it would work here.

Many "tough love" programs for teens are actually more damaging than the problems they are intended to cure.

[brettreasure]

I'm afraid this is a poorly researched article that sensationalizes the risks of involvement in the virtual world. You cannot write in an informed way about an environment as rich and complex as this without first hand experience.

You seem to have not spoken to people who have experience of the environment. These people are easily found.

By the way, research by Ball State University says that if you add up the hours spent in other virtual activities, like TV, the internet, telephone, recorded music, research by Ball State University suggests it amounts to 66 hours a week. Almost all of which is completely passive entertainment. As opposed to virtual worlds which are an active involvement with other people.

So don't give us this poorly researched, sensationalist crap that virtual worlds represent some kind of threat. If you're worried about virtual experiences, turn off your TV and go throw a frisbee.

[letstakeawalk]

G4 television has looked into this extensively.

The average Second Life player is on fewer than 12 minutes... a month.

The other games aren't bad, but Second Life is a corporate-­advertisin­g illusion that is played up by the media... and ignored by real people. Sign up, play, I dare you to find another person to interact with on any worthwhile level.

[jms5646]

Interesting and eloquent description of a very interesting, 21st Century, post-modern phenomenon. Virtual food for e-thought...