Managing Internet Addiction

How do you do it?

If you're online a lot YOU WILL have urges to "check back in."

Katherine Ellison has a personal essay, with some draconian proposals, at LAT: "Hooked on the Internet":

In the time-honored tradition of Alcoholics Anonymous, I recently entrusted my fate to a higher power — specifically, to a new software program that shuts off my access to the Internet for a designated time.

I finally had to acknowledge that I was helpless in the face of my addiction, which has had me, especially in recent weeks, tapping my e-mail "refresh" button like a lab rat trying to get cocaine.

Read the whole thing.

The trick, I think, is to find a balance. If the Internet is interfering with work and family, the addiction might rate up there with substance abuse. Professional help wouldn't be out of the question.

I'm online too much, and I know it. At this point in my life I learn from it --- and get charged from it --- and hopefully I'm making an important contribution in some ways. That said, sometimes I want to walk away from blogging, my main activity. And yet, I'm balancing things much better of late than I did a few years ago. My entire family is wired as well, which reminds me of the country's sociological changes discussed in Dalton Conley's book, Elsewhere, U.S.A: How We Got from the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms,and Economic Anxiety.

I'm going to work on some personal changes, in any case, for example to do more professional writing.

As for advice, just be good to yourself and your work, and most of all be good and attentive to your loved ones. Blog posts, e-mail and Twitter can wait.