A Sweetest Day Moment: The Internet Addiction Test (Or why I have dinner plans for this Saturday)

The Internet Addiction Test is the first validated and reliable measure of addictive use of the Internet according to the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery which hosts the online test. The Center's director, Dr. Kimberly Young, certainly has the credentials. She developed the test which is a 20-item questionnaire that measures mild, moderate, and severe levels of Internet Addiction.

So I took the text. My score was 28. For scores between 20-49 points, "You are an average on-line user. You may surf the Web a bit too long at times, but you have control over your usage." My score would have been much higher if the test asked the following: "how do you react to connection outages that last under an hour, more than an hour, more than three hours." Anything longer than an hour and I'm climbing the walls like the man with the golden arm.

But wait, the Center also offers the Partners of Internet Addicts Test, "a test for spouses or partners of potential Internet addicts." According to the Blog Widow, her score for me is more than twice my score. She scored me at 59. For scores between 50-79 points, "You are experiencing occasional or frequent problems because of the Internet. You should consider their full impact on your life." "You" meaning me.

The Blog Widow read the test instructions -- I didn't because, well, I don't RTFM. The instructions stated "Remember when answering, only consider time your partner uses the Internet for non-academic or non-job related tasks." The Blog Widow emailed me saying "Joe’s score includes blogging." And that is work related. Should I mention that all this emailing took place within 20 feet of each other?

So if you take the Internet Addiction Test and your spouse, partner, whatever, takes The Partner's Addiction Test, you might want to be prepared to be going out to dinner this Saturday. I am now. Ouch, "thank you boss" (think NCIS Gibbs back of the head slap). I've just been informed that Saturday is Sweetest Day. [JH]