Social networking, videogames, the world is full of fantastic time wasters, but abuse of these time wasters is a major problem.

I don’t have good time management skills. The need for studying usually gets overwrought by finishing just one more episode of a television show or one more mission in a video game.

I seem to always look at the clock when the night is gone and panic arises. Many fall victim to the same habits, but a large factor in precious time being wasted is the Internet.

Vast, abundant, and dangerous, the Internet has many faces; all of them are as intriguing as the next. According to the U.S. Census Bureau News, Internet use in the home has tripled in a decade, from 18 percent in 1997 to 62 percent in 2007. There is always a lust to gather more information with each random thought that passes.

For example, social networking; as a product of the Internet, I can’t pass on a subject until I had scoured every resource in order to gather every bit of information. The same can go for any member of a social networking website.

According to a study from the Nielson Company, social networking sites account for 17 percent of all time spent on the internet in August 2009, tripling the percentage of time spent last year.

With walls to be written on, status updates, instant messaging, and other means of connecting with others, the ease of these tools help us learn about each other or even become absorbed in each other’s lives. Distance is becoming less of an issue and with these sites, face to face human interaction may become second to an Internet profile. Even though the Internet is rich with resources, it still has a limiting factor, time.

I spend countless hours playing video games. When I tell people this tidbit, I usually get the answer, “I can never find the time for those things.”

I don’t really have the time for video games either, but as a strong interest, naturally, time finds its way to be spent.

As students, we claim we can’t find time to balance studying with friends or classes with work, but through the integration of technology, we can stay constantly connected to the Internet and find the time. What matters most on how we use our time is where our interests lie.

Though the Internet can have its good and bad aspects, it is contributing to how we are changing our ways when it comes to time management. We can still connect with each other and indulge our interests while fulfilling other responsibilities.

Finding time isn’t the concern, it’s how we use it. Time waits for no one, not even for the Internet.