Technology Addiction: Applied to Online Auction Users The “MIS Quarterly” magazine article titled; “Integrating Technology Addiction and Use: An Empirical Investigation of Online Auction Users,” explores the relatively new phenomena of technology addiction. The article starts out by laying down a thick foundation of previously known information that was taken into account during the study that they performed. This information introduces the reader to the Technology acceptance model (TAM) which is important in this study because it can help to define and explain how technology usefulness and ease of use influence system usage. This understanding of how and why systems are used is then necessary to find a point at which they are overused and addiction is present. Then the article goes on to define Technology Addiction, which has not previously been defined, as a psychological state of maladaptive dependency on the use of a technology to such a degree that would fall under “normal” addiction levels; some of these addiction measures are salience, withdrawal, and tolerance. The purpose of this study as defined by the article is to examine whether or not users’ levels of addiction, to online auction websites (in this case Ebay), influence their need to use information technologies by distorting various perceptions. The reason this study focuses primarily on online auctions is because trying to conduct a study on technology as a mass would be way to overwhelming and instead it needs to be simplified into one area of research that can be thoroughly investigated. The Article discusses how online auction addiction can be described by three important behavioral problems; compulsive consumption, Internet addiction, and compulsive gambling. Internet addiction is later found to be an unlikely source of obsession because users are more likely to be addicted to what the internet does for them in terms of supplying them with particular programs. The researchers used three different ways of conducting their studies based on prior studies of addiction and hypothesized that one of the most important factors was whether or not the user believed that the system was becoming easier to use or serving them better after long term use. The reason that this was such an important fact is because this type of tendency is prominent among people who are addicted. The article also listed salience, conflict, and relapse as other symptoms that tended to dominate the measure of technology addiction. The Article then gives in-depth descriptions of how the data of this particular study was obtained, which was through online surveys, and that there were no major biases among the data resulting, for the most part, in a reasonably acceptable conclusion. Finally, the article lists the major implications of the findings in two separate fields. The first is theoretical implications, which consists of the possible outcomes such as the better understanding of how users form their focal perceptions and make certain decisions under psychological dependency. Then the Practical Implications of the study demonstrate that technology addiction should not be ignored because it can affect the way users interact with information systems. Specifically, it can augment the user perception of enjoyment, usefulness, and, in some cases, ease of use, just like was hypothesized earlier in the article. Also, it points out that future research is needed in order to develop a treatment and preventative approach to this addiction. Along those lines it is concluded in the closing paragraph that the Management Information Systems theory can be extended from the typical context of desirable system use to include situations in which overuse becomes unhealthy and needs to be controlled.
References

Turel, O., Serenko, A., & Giles, P. (2011). INTEGRATING TECHNOLOGY ADDICTION AND USE: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF ONLINE AUCTION USERS. MIS Quarterly, 35(4), 1043-A18.