Second Life Addiction: A Father's Tale

My Son Andrew is a second Life addict. His internet addiction started with well intentioned introductions to new technology by those who thought they were doing him a favor. It is not the case.

Second Life is an online community where people who have enablers willing to give them money and a means to maintain their basic biological functions, to escape into a fantasy world they create. Real life is hard. People who want to dodge the discomfort associated with maturing into responsible,productive citizens will escape into second life just as a heroin addict escapes into a fantasy world via injection.

Second Life junkies will become combative and argumentative when confronted just as an alcoholic or drug user becomes combative. It has cost me a son. I guess I am a bad father. I believed that he could control his usage and time on it. He spends 12 hours a day on Second Life and has Second Life friends contacting him via cell phone so he can participate even when he is absent from his home computer.

They say alcoholics and drug abusers need to hit rock bottom before they decide to pull themselves out. My greatest fear is that my son has a network of enablers that will never allow "rock bottom" to happen. They will give him a place to stay and money for food( or maybe even free food and board and transportation) and will not require anything from him. One of his friends parents regularly allows their unemployed and drug abusing son to have friends live at their house when the kids don't want to follow rules in the family.

I hope and pray my own family will not do the same. By giving him the means to survive without discomfort will allow him to continue his addiction unabated. Our son does not need a new place to live. He has a home with us. He chose to leave because of our,his parents, desire for him to separate himself from his second life addiction and interact with the real world. Rejoining the real world was something he was not going to do willingly. If we were going to force him to do it he said he was going to leave. Something he did last night.

I hope he will come to his senses. I hope that sleeping on a couch at a friends house will make him uncomfortable enough to change his behaivor. I hope that if he goes to familiy members for comfort they will respect our wishes and send him home where he can get the love and care he needs. I hope he will grow into a fine man. Until he overcomes this addiction, he will forever remain a stunted individual wasting his opportunities and his future.

This is a cautionary tale and is true. Computers should not be in children's bedrooms and their time should be limited. The internet addiction breeds sociopathic behavior in my opinion. We need to act now or their may not be a generation left to save.