Envision a couple standing in a corner at church talking about another couple they haven’t seen for months, who they just discovered are getting a divorce. In hushed tones they both think back over what they know and remember about the troubled couple. He comments how they seemed to be unhappy and sometimes didn’t even sit together. She remarks she couldn’t remember the two of them ever holding hands or putting an arm around each other or ever showing any physical closeness. Together they decide how sad the news is and determine “they just drifted apart.”

Life isn’t static, and disconnected things have a tendency to drift. When you’re adrift in your marriage, it is so much easier to connect to someone online. And if that happens, it’s even easier to continue disconnecting from your marriage. Now the online relationship that previously satisfied only your emotional needs becomes a conduit through which to consider addressing your physical needs. The need sparks a fantasy that begets reality. This is why there are stories of a husband or wife leaving their spouse and moving across country to consummate an old relationship that reignited on Facebook. The online relationship becomes the “greener grass” in that old saying. “The grass is always greener on the other side.”

The greener-grass scenario is an interesting one. In it you’re never responsible for the sad state of affairs on your side of the fence. But that’s not true in real life. For those couples whose marriages were in shambles because of emotional adultery, I often wonder what would have happened if all that time, effort, and energy that was sunk into the other relationship had been invested into the marriage instead? Maybe the reason the grass is in such poor condition on this side is because you’ve been neglecting to water, feed, and care for it.

Watering, feeding, and weeding your lawn takes a lot of time and effort. Every year I’m reminded of that fact as I wage a continuing battle against the moss that flourishes during our wet Pacific Northwest winters. Your real-life relationships are not different: they take time and energy and often require you to do nitpicky stuff like weeding out misunderstandings and resentments and working out the delegation of chores and responsibilities. Online relationships can be like Astroturf: from a distance and in poor lighting they look alike, but one is artificial. It may look greener, but it’s not truly alive.

The above is excerpted from chapter 6 in #Hooked: The Pitfalls of Media, Technology and Social Networking by Dr. Gregory Jantz.

I’ve always loved books and reading. As a kid I could lose myself for hours in an exotic faraway place, transported by the combination of someone else’s written word and my own imagination. There was the real world I lived in and a secondary place I could go if given the time, solitude, and the power of a good book.

Reading has always been a participatory experience, as opposed to television, which is more of a spectator sport. Reading stimulates the imagination; television supplies it for you. Going online is also engaging and participatory. Content is not merely presented to you in twenty-two-minute increments. Instead you determine where to go, what to take notice of, and what to disregard. You decide if you want to watch the commercial or not; you determine if you want to hit that link or view that page. You are in charge of your online content; it’s you, in the driver’s seat, choosing your own direction.

Gaming can be even more engaging. The graphic and audio sophistcation of Internet games is truly mind-boggling. It both activates and tricks the senses. But it’s not just how things look and sound; it’s also how things feel. So much of what is done on the Internet can simulate reality because of how real it looks. This intensity of experience creates a virtual reality.

The word virtual is an interesting one. Once, it’s primary meaning had to do with something having potental, something possible but not quite actualized. Merriam-Webster’s first definition of virtual is: “being such in essence or effect though not formally recognized or admitted.” To say something was virtually impossible meant it was almost impossible but not quite. Virtual meant as close to actual as you could get while still retaining the understanding that it was not.

The word virtual and the word reality were first linked together in the late 1930s when describing the fictitious and illustory reailty created on the theaterical stage. But the phrase has left the arts and is now firmly embedded in the techno-lexicon. Virtual has become a computer word. Virtual reality (VR) has come to mean a computer-simulated environment of either a real or imaginary place. I remember hearing it the first time while watching people who wore what looked like welder’s goggles; they seemed to be randomly moving like puppets on strings, interacting with something only they could see. Now there are entire virtual worlds, worlds that exist only as computer-simulated environments. There are virtual communities, social networks of people connected to each other online. There are even virtual relationships, relationships that exist only online with no physical interaction whatsoever.

Virtual reality is almost like the real thing but not quite. The gap between the real and the not-quite, however, keeps getting smaller in the virtual realm, as technology advances. These not-quite experiences are still good enough for many purposes for many people.

The above is excerpted from 5 chapter in #Hooked: The Pitfalls of Media, Technology and Social Networking by Dr. Gregory Jantz.

It’s your birthday. Nothing has come in the mail except bills and ads sent to “Resident.” But wait. You haven’t logged on to Facebook yet! The moment you think of it, the dilemma begins. Do you log on to see how many posts you have, or do you just think about how many you have? Once you log on, you’ll know; you’ll know whether or not anyone stopped long enough to wish you a happy birthday. You hesitate, but once you’ve asked yourself the question, it’s impossible not to answer it. So you log on and cringe, just a bit. Sweet relief! You have 27 wall posts, from people you saw yesterday to people you haven’t seen since the third grade.

You have unlimited texting on your phone, so it’s no big deal, really. You sign up to receive tweets form the offensive tackle of your city’s NFL team. That’s along with all of the other tweets you get – some from people you know but mostly from people you don’t. You sign up and then you wait. Before long, there’s the tweet! It’s not about anything significant; that’s not the point. The point is you’re connected to an elite group of people receiving this special message (albeit numbering in the thousands). But thousands aren’t millions, and that somehow makes you feel good.

You know you’re not supposed to be surfing the internet at work, but this thing’s only – what – ninety seconds, max? What harm can that be? Well, it did take you longer to find it, but not that long, and you’re sure your coworkers haven’t seen it yet. After all, they don’t spend as much time online as you do and have come to rely on you to handle the techy tidbits. Someone else brings in doughnuts every Thursday, and it’s your job to bring in the Net nibble of the week. It all started with those Maru, the Japanese cat, videos. All of you ended up talking about them for weeks. Now they look to you for that brief respite of online entertainment. You have value, you have cachet. It feels good.

It does feel good. Each experience like this is like a drug hit, a thrill. Doing this stuff activates your brain’s pleasure centers. The more fun it is, the more you want to do it. The more you want to do it, the more you actually do it. The more you do, the closer you come to that line, the line over which impulsive activity becomes addictive.

According to an article in Time magazine entitled “Wired for Distraction: Kids and Social Media,” we have two different brain circuits: the first is for concentrating, when we bear down and genuinely focus, and the second is for “reactive attention,” when we look up and pay attention to something new or novel. The new and the novel can produce a pleasurable response. Quoting a Stanford researcher, the article says, “Each time we get a message or text, our dopamine reward circuits probably get activated, since the desire for social connection is so wired into us.” Ding! A message. Ding! A text. Ding! A factoid or video. Ding, ding, ding. Fun, fun, fun. Twenty years ago someone ringing your doorbell triggered your reactive attention. Now it’s a minute-to-minute symphony of chimes, bells, beeps, and growls from every connected device in your life.

The above is excerpted from chapter 3 in #Hooked: The Pitfalls of Media, Technology and Social Networking by Dr. Gregory Jantz.