Most things are good in moderation but harmful in excess. The internet is no exception. The internet is an amazing creation that helps people stay connected, find information and of course a wonderful tool for procrastination. But what happens when some harmless procrastination, such as TMZ.com (a trashy online celebrity tabloid) gets out of control? What if reading and clicking on pictures on TMZ.com starts affecting your daily activities where you experience negative outcomes in academic, social and professional areas? According to Scott Caplan, such excessive and compulsive behavior that leads to negative outcomes can be considered Problematic Internet Use (PIU). People with psychosocial problems, such as loneliness and depression are most susceptible to PIU because they are socially incompetent. These individuals are thus drawn to the safer, less threatening internet environment. This preference for online interactions reinforces the behavior and excessive/compulsive conduct ensues. A vicious cycle has been formed! TMZ.com is a likely place for people with psychosocial problems to congregate because TMZ.com loves to trash celebrities and show celebrities at their worst moments. What better to make a lonely, depressed person feel better than to look and read about people worse off than you. Don’t tell me that hearing Britney Spears go loco didn’t make you feel a little better about your life. Psychosocial individuals can get addicted to TMZ.com because hearing that other people have problems will make them feel less alone.
TMZ.com also allows viewers to post comments on articles. Psychosocial individuals, who are already prone to PIU, will feel more at ease at posting comments online because of certain characteristics of the internet. For example, all postings are anonymous. This allows individuals with low social competence in FtF interactions to be more socially ambitious online. Anonymity decreases the perceived social risk of stating one’s opinions. Further, anonymity leads to more intense and intimate self-disclosure about ones true beliefs (for example, in regards to the current Hollywood scandal). The anonymity on TMZ.com allows psychosocial individuals to disclose their true feelings about Britney Spears’s antics without fear of social retribution.
Further, TMZ.com is open 24/7 with new and juicy gossip all the time. It is always updated with new photos and new stories. It’s high distractibility or procrastination abilities further PIU, especially in those psychosocial individuals who are already at risk.
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3 comments:
Hi Dina, I enjoyed reading your post. I too wrote a post discussing an online news website and how it can draw people in and make them become so addicted to it, they can spend a countless number of hours online. It’s fascinating how much entertainment and enjoyment people can derive from hearing about the lives of others, namely celebrities. Before these sites were developed, people’s go-to source for celebrity gossip was the newsstands but now with the increasingly available information online, there’s no point in waiting for that weekly subscription to US weekly to arrive in the mail when the information is just a few clicks away. These websites can cause people to develop some serious addiction problems considering the celebrity gossip is constantly being updated with more over the top news of what celebrities are up to. It would be interesting to see who would be more likely to be addicted to these websites – men or women? Perhaps the future of PIU should investigate gender tendencies toward specific addictions regarding different subject matters (i.e. celebrity gossip, gambling etc).
Hey Dina, great post. I was originally drawn to it by the title because, of course, I am at times guilty of stalking those celebrity blog websites like TMZ and Perez. While I do think that they are most helpful when one is seeking out a distraction in order to procrastinate and whatnot, these websites can be an easy outlet for people with the psychosocial issues that you discuss in your post. I think it's websites like these that can be especially dangerous to people with these issues because there's so little they have to do, its so thoughtless and easy to get caught up in and so easily distracting that it sort of becomes a trap, a trap that perhaps an especially lonely individual might appreciate. And also having the option of posting comments anonymously can also provide someone with a sense of community as well, perhaps an ideal community to a lonely individual because they can remain as anonymous as they want and active as they want, and still be a real part of it. Overall very interesting inquiries in your post, great job!
Hello Dina, it’s a great post. I agree with you that TMZ.com can lead to Problematic Internet Use (PIU) and I have seen couple of cases that were quite similar to your post. There is a Korean website called ‘daum.net.’ This is such a big portal website where you can find all different types of news. This website is open 24/7 as you mentioned about TMZ.com and gets uploaded quite quickly. I have seen and heard people complaining that they don’t understand why they spend many hours just reading articles and commenting without realizing the amount of time it passed. As you said anonymity takes a big role here. Since your identity is not necessarily true in Internet, you do not need to worry about how others would perceive you. This factor results in preference of online interactions which eventually becomes a vicious cycle.
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