Originally appeared in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press

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When I first got wind of the study, I, like a lot of heavy Net users, took major umbrage. It is simply not true of the people I know who spend a lot of time online. Some of my acquaintances have at least a passing acquaintance with depression, and they see interactive media as depression-killers, not depression-causers.

And I started to write a refutation of the research, likening it to drug-scare propaganda of the 1960s, or to the fabricated Internet smears which have appeared in magazines like Time.

The Net is new, requires learning, and represents a changing of the guard. For all these reasons, it is very unpopular with certain segments of society, and anti-Internet stories never have trouble seeing print.

The more I thought about it, though, the more I could see that for many people, especially people new to the excitement, the Internet probably is causing problems. Two-thirds of the people online, after all, have only been there for the past 24 months. To many newbies, the Net must seem like the most exciting fad ever -- until the letdown sets in.

So I made a list of warning signs, to alert you when you have gone overboard online:

Do you check your e-mail more than three times a day?

Compulsively checking to see if you have incoming messages is an early indication you have crossed a line.

The situation is made worse by instant messaging programs like ICQ and AOL Instant messenger that condition you to drop everything when incoming messages arrive.

Do real-world friends complain they can't call you because you're always chatting with online friends?

Online relationships often serve as a substitute for the real thing. All the excitement, novelty, and flash with little of the risk of actual relationships.

Remember that there really isn't anywhere for online relationships to go. Deep down we have universal urges that must not be quashed: we want to meet one another in the flesh, break bread, and see a movie.

Have I caught myself not communicating with someone because they don't have e-mail?

This is getting less and less common, as the supply of people meeting this description dwindles. But the temptation to discard people who require the extra work of phoning or meeting or writing an actual letter is real.

How dare they not get hip to your new toy? Aren't they, by shunning the Net, rejecting you?

Have I found myself staying up more than two hours past my usual bedtime, to explore the Net?

People online, looking for the next kick, bop from link to link, promising themselves just one more chat room before they retire for the night. This is basic techno-compulsiveness, along the lines of "just one more game of Solitaire." Guideline: if you're not having fun, go to bed.

Are you getting into arguments on Usenet?

Getting drawn into flamewars is a sure sign you have lost perspective. The virtual battlefield has become your main battle, and the idiots yelling at you online have become more significant to you than the idiots you know in the flesh.

Wy is this bad. Because the survival skills learned in actual arguments, which have a statistical possibility of ending, carry over to flamewars, but the reverse is not true. In thirty years of trying, no one has yet won a flamewar.

Are you grasping for a word or phrase to use for what you used to call reality?

It sounds ridiculous, but people who spend a lot of time online know the semantic problem. The online world is real, in that the people on it, and the ideas expressed, really exist. But it's not real, in the sense that things there don't happen in real time, and there is no geographical space for things to happen in.

I have heard some people call it "real reality" or "actual reality," versus "online reality."

Loyalty should come into play at some point. You were born and have lived most of your life in real reality. It made you what you are today. It is only fitting to show it your allegiance now.

When your server is down, do you go down?

Many of us curl up into a little ball when our Internet connection times out. Our ISP or LAN is our umbilicum to the cyber regions. When it gets snipped, we are on our own again, just like at birth, so we cry.

Make a note to yourself: next time your server is down, even for a few minutes, have your cry, then pick yourself up and take the dog for a walk. It will do you both a real world of good.

Readers wanting to look deeper at depression on the Internet should check out The Mining Company's http://depression.miningco.com. Or Michael Finley's own site at http://mfinley.com.

America's Best-Loved Technology Writer(TM), Michael Finley has a free gift for visitors to http://mfinley.com.