The Dangers of Chat Room Addiction: What You Need to Know

It is estimated around 2.5 million people are addicted to chat rooms in the USA alone so worldwide the number is greater.
The average age of an addict is between 15-25 but can be any age.
Approximately 60% are male and 40% female
Around 50% of chat users suffer from some kind of depression or anxiety
People can experience withdrawal-like any other addiction
You should not feel ashamed of any kind of addiction, its part of life and happens to everyone at some point in their life

How do people become addicted to chat rooms?

There are 1000s of reasons why people use chat rooms, stress, lonely ness, boredom, anxiety socialising, dating, difficult conversations, sex, insomnia, fear, the common denominator is not why you turn to chat sites, but what you learn when you do, you teach yourself that chat rooms help what ever problem you are struggling with, the more you practice this the more ingrained it becomes,

Chat addition online doesn’t happen over night. its practiced and learned behaviour, you start to use chat sites as a crutch and unconsciously teach your brain, that what you are doing online make the situation easier, or a part of life more bearable, usually because people don’t have alternative means to cope with this.

An Example

For example let us take Dave who comes home from work to an empty home and the loneliness is unbearable, Dave starts looking for a distraction, so he logs online into chat gives him a bit of a buzz and he no longer feels lonely, if you do this now and again its fine and not a big deal, but what if this becomes a daily thing and then becomes the only way Dave can deal with his problem, the more you repeat this behaviour the more your brain learns that there is something to look forward to and get a hit of dopamine when you get home to cope with it, and you find find relief in an online world.

Bear in mind Dave has not solved his problem, he has just found a way to cope with it and mask his feelings, by repeating this over and over you are creating a power habit in his brain, the longer the feelings are not addressed the more deep seated they become and the more he will feel drawn to go online and chat, that is how addiction starts.

You may try not to turn on your laptop to stop the habit but you become more drawn towards your computers or devices to get that hit, and you may even start to spend more time you did not even intend to in chat, you could even suffer withdrawal symptoms which maybe physical from this virtual reality world.

Real life stories

So here is a story from my life. When I was younger, I used to play football with this guy, he was an average-looking guy, and every time I saw him, he had a new girlfriend, However, I never met them, he had photos of them, and they were always stunning women, and I thought, “Wow, how is he meeting these women, It’s a new one each week”

Later, while watching catfish one night, it dawned on me that he wasn’t meeting them; he told me he met them online after I asked him one night, and he found it very addictive to meet new girls like this. I can tell you now that those women were not real; they were just women he met online who sent him a fake hot girl picture, and this guy was wasting his life chasing these women.

This is what chat addiction can do for you. You can be chasing fake women and catfish online all your life, there are 1000s of them out there, but there is a real world out there, try not to waste it online in chat rooms, By all means, use them and enjoy them, but don’t let them take over your life. As I assure you, there are lots of real-life men or women that would love to get to know the real you.

Please don’t end up like this guy showing fake pics to your mates to try to impress them it is incredibly sad, please read the rest of my page and reach out for help if you need it.

This is the story from someone I know as the owner of World of chats site.

Read more about the dangers of chat rooms in our article here, and about the many differences between peoples personality’s here

What are the Definition and symptoms of ChatRoom Addiction?

This is quite simply an addiction to chat rooms or social media and the excessive use of chat apps or rooms, It is mainly characterised by the person’s inability to limit their time online for example staying up late on a work night, to the point where it interferes with real-life events, and often becomes preoccupied with the conversations and the need to get back online.

Why are they so addictive? and what are the risks?

Everyone has the need for social interaction it is the anticipation of the next person replying to you being the right person you have been looking for, be it she is hot or just local to you, We live in a digital world where everything is online, be it on your computer or your mobile phone, and wanting to meet and chat with new people is perfectly normal. However, as with anything, going overboard can be detrimental to your family life, marriage, and career.

Just like alcohol and drugs, anything can become addictive if you do it too much and it affects your life in a negative way, most people have had some kind of addiction to social networking sites or other sites such as YouTube and tick tock, the addiction is the same its a virtual thing, that has only reared its head because of the development of new technology, this is not something humans were made for this new virtual world, which is constantly moving and changing along with the fast changes in tech.

Sexual chat or cybersex addiction

In a world where we have record numbers of lonely people, there is also often the need for some kind of s*xual release, and people start to use adult s*xual chat, where people use chat rooms to replace intimate conversations and use them as part of mas**bation, there is an article about this kind of addiction here

This can be incredibly addictive and can be harmful because you can risk your own s*xual health, as this is not a natural way to deal with these types of feelings, which can lead to you hurting your real life s*xlive, for example, er**tion problems in men.

Internet chats can release dopamine, which is in the pleasure zone of your brain, which makes you want to do it over and over again until it becomes a habit and you cannot go a night without finding the same feeling. So you go back on chat over and over, repeating the same cycle, Doing this is fine, but if you are doing it over and over and can’t stop, you have chat room addiction.

What are the treatment options for chat room addiction?

Try to stop delete the apps and just ween yourself off it, think about the amount of time you waste in boring pointless conversation, and how many actual good conversations you have, its going to be very few and if you work out the time you wasted that you could be doing something constructive, you will realise its a waste of time being in chat all the time.

The treatment options for chat room addiction vary but a good place to start would be your local Dr or GP, they will not laugh at you or tell you not to be stupid, it’s their job to help you with any mental or health-related issue

They may suggest speaking to someone who is a CBT counsellor if you feel the need to talk about this with someone, often talking about our problems helps

CBT is cognitive behavioural therapy; it is basically giving you a way to deal with the feelings of wanting to go online, giving you some kind of plan to deal with your feelings in a positive way and slowly weaning you off your addiction to chat rooms or social media.

Tips and help from a chatroom owner

Chat is a great communication medium, but a lot of people in chat rooms are fake, so your online addiction could be a total waste of time, as you’re not talking to real people or the person you think you are talking to.
People have thrown away real-life relationships with people they met online, only to find out this person wasn’t real so end up with nothing.
There was even an incident where a man murdered another man, to try to stop the girl he was talking to online from talking to another guy, the girl turned out to be fake, he had murdered someone for nothing.
Often it’s a sign your relationship with your wife or girlfriend is in trouble if you’re looking for someone better or new online.
Try to encourage your kids or yourself to take breaks from being on the internet
Don’t stay up late mindlessly scrolling be aware of when you are doing this and log off or go to sleep
Don’t put your internet friendships above real friendships they are not the same.

Resources for chat addiction

If you need any help with this, please speak to your doctor about it; they will be able to help you get counselling, or you may want to search for a counsellor online who can give you some help over Skype or Zoom; often they have an online waiting list over Zoom that you can join and wait to speak to someone.

Searching for social media addiction or internet addiction on Google may help you find someone, as chat room addiction is not always listed on counsellor websites.

Thanks for reading, and good luck.