Are you ad-dicted to the Internet? The Internet has thoroughly invaded the lives of typical college students.

I myself have a number of habits that, on initial inspection, may indicate a problem.

For instance, the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning isn't brushing my teeth. It's checking my Gmail account and my Bloglines.com RSS news aggregator. (The brushing comes later, I swear.)

I send instant messages to my roommate rather than taking the time to turn around and speak.

When I was researching places to stay for spring break, wireless Internet access was among the top factors I looked for.

And the last thing I do at night before going to bed? It isn't praying, I can tell you that. It's checking my e-mail again.

Defining Internet addiction is a tricky business indeed. Researchers have created lists of several symptoms of the disorder, including withdrawal from lack of Internet access, interruption of everyday social relationships and risking the loss of personal, career or educational opportunities in order to spend more time online.

It's faulty reasoning to say that you can measure the number of hours a person spends online each day and use that to determine Internet addiction.

For example, college students have a number of obligations that draw them to the Web every day. You can't avoid using the ANGEL Course Management System if your teacher requires it.

The vast array of fine resources available on the Internet (OK, I'm just talking about Google here) are the student's best research friend.

If you don't check your e-mail regularly, you're at a definite disadvantage. I can't count how many times I've gotten e-mails from professors along the lines of "Oh, I forgot to mention in class yesterday that there's a massive reading assignment due tomorrow. Make sure you get on that, because there's going to be a quiz."

I've gotten e-mails about internship opportunities with deadlines later that same day. Is it any wonder that, given the time sensitivity of a lot of the messages I get, I've become a fan of checking e-mail so frequently?

A distinction must be made between doing something a lot and being "addicted" to it. There's a lot of really cool stuff on the Internet, in just the same way as there's a lot of cool stuff in books and newspapers.

Is it right to say that somebody who reads every day is addicted to those media?

As I often do, I'm using my experiences alone (along with first-hand observations of friends and classmates) to make generalizations about college students as a whole. In all my time here, and even within my information sciences and technology major, I don't believe I've seen anybody with an unhealthy level of Internet addiction or fixation.

But this is where I'd like to step out of columnist mode and make an invitation to the reader.

As much as I like being perched in front of my word processor, deciding which technology topics are most worthy of the national attention this column receives, I think we'd all benefit from something a little more interactive. So I encourage you to send me your story ideas, anecdotes, interesting links and especially feedback to past columns.

Once we start a dialogue, this could get really interesting. I'll be checking my e-mail.