Instant messaging is one of the most used aspects of the internet today. According to my buddy list, the majority of my friends are on AIM any time they're at their computer, either while trying to get work done, or just sitting in class. While I and most people use instant messaging to casually talk to friends without the bother of making individual calls, some people become unhealthily involved with this feature, leading to PIU, or problematic internet use. One instance I saw of this was one of my friends having about 20 instant messages open at once, and trying to keep up some form of communication with every one of them. Not only is there obsessive talking with every person that is online, but you can stalk friends' away messages and profiles, as well as update your own.
This online space has a strong tendency to lead to PIU because of the "Affordances of Internet Interaction" which are related to Caplan's paper. The affordance that relates most closely with the space of instant messaging is the issue of "more intense and intimate self-disclosure". Since AIM is a leaner media, people can feel more comfortable sharing private details and having delicate conversations. This goes along with the Social Distance Theory, which says that some actions, such as lying, are uncomfortable, so a more distributed, leaner media would be desireable. This aspect also goes along with the "Re-allocation of Cognitive Resources" part of the Hyperpersonal Model. This says that in a leaner media, you can focus your brain power on analyzing wording, choosing your own vocabulary, and other things that would be too difficult while worrying about face to face factors. One more relevant theory is Social Information Processing. This says that over time, you adapt yourself to a lean media, so impoverished impressions will not necessarily be formed. People who spend a lot of time on AIM adapt to it and learn to use the intricacies of the lean media to their advantage.
This space shows classic correlation to several theories we've studied which explain why it would become a problematic use of the internet. According to Caplan, the two main signs of a PIU are excessive use, and compulsive use. From my experience with friends, AIM definitely satisfies both of these. A large percent of my buddies are the type of user that are on everyday, for most of the day. Also, I often find friends with away messages such as "I should be working" or something along those lines. This shows how they compulsively sign on, even though they know they should be working on something else at the time. They sign on because it is addicting, not because they actually need to talk to someone.
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2 comments:
You bring up some interesting points in this post, Richard. I also wrote about instant messenger and its tendency to lead to PIU. I agree with your comment about friend's away messages reading "I should be working." It's as if people know that they won't be productive if they sign online, yet they sign on anyway. Even if they aren't talking to anyone, they still feel a need to be connected to AIM. Also, if people aren't actually chatting, they are probably reading their friends'/acquaintances' away messages and profiles.
Hi Richard. You brought up a whole bunch of good points in this post, and tied together a lot of different theories we've been learning this year. The one thing I can think of in defense of AIM would be that people (like me) might use it as a time saving tool, as the Media Richness Theory would imply. In this sense, people might only be using AIM to talk to people in a more simple and effective fashion than, say, calling them. Of course, this is only true if the messages are very unequivocal. Also the amount of people I know who compulsively check away messages definitely points to PIU, but MRT was just a thought.
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