Life can go on without the Internet!

It's true. You wouldn't believe it at first thought but us humans can actually survive without them three big Ws.

When I first moved into my new pad at uni, me and the housemates were greeted with an inactive phone line and a broadband operator that seemed to constantly delay turning our house into an Internet-savvy building.
Skip forward a few unpleasant phone calls (courtesy of a housemate, and consequently gaining half a year's free line rental or something), and we finally got hooked up.

The first few days, weeks, months, without Internet started quite unbearably - it's amazing how much we rely on the Internet to get our kicks off. Our only option was to cycle to uni to use the library computers, just so we could tell our friends what's on our mind via Facebook and reply to a few important emails days too late.

By the end of the first month (this went on for two months you see), we were used to doing this routine. Every day, whether we went to uni for lectures or not, we would pay the library a visit to get online for a few hours. When we came home, the house was a far more sociable place than most too. Sure, there was a lot of game-playing on the Xbox - but in comparison, playing a game with three mates is way more sociable still than being on Facebook on your laptop with three other guys next to you, doing the same.

Just while writing this, I've spoken to a housemate - who's downstairs - to ask for some ice cream to soothe the imminent arrival of my sixth bout of tonsillitus in a year.

What I've come to realise is that we really don't need the Internet. We don't need to stay connected to our friends 24/7 - if anything, it's an unhealthy obsession. I've come to realise another way of describing an online person as merely a hermit.

Fair enough, there are emails to be sent, family to stay in distant contact with, and research to be done for assignments due in way too soon. But the majority of us spend the majority of our time, like you right now, on Facebook, Twitter, and other "social websites".

Are we really being more sociable being online, or are we really just turning into hermits? Since when was a phone call not enough? The past two months, I've coped fine. The next two months, I'll sadly probably cave in and become just like every other lemming in the world. Come to think of it, it's probably time to update the Facebook status anyway...