Ixnay on the eBay?
While eBay continues to rack up impressive user numbers, critics charge that some eBay members may need to check themselves into a 12-step program.
Dr. Kimberly Young is one such critic. Young, a clinical psychologist and director of the Center for On-Line Addiction, a behavioral healthcare practice in Bradford, Pennsylvania, says eBay sucks users in, then makes suckers out of them. "Lots of times, users end up buying junk," she says. "But they don't care because they're thrilled they won something."
By Young's lights, eBay's auction format gives shoppers something other Web sites don't supply: a little action. "eBay is not Gap.com, where you go online and buy things you could otherwise buy in its stores," she explains. "It's this place where you bid like a gambler in a very nonthreatening environment, often on stuff you don't need. The thrill of victory is a powerful intoxicant."
Young believes eBay is a compulsion that, in some cases, may require treatment. Not all experts agree, however. Dr. Sheila Blume, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, says the term addiction does not apply to online shopping. Explains Blume: "What we know about addiction from a physiological point of view and solid, scientific knowledge indicates that drugs, alcohol, tobacco — and not much else — are truly addictive."
But what about the notion that eBay's auction format is akin to gambling — and therefore potentially addicting? "There has been one behavioral addiction study I know of involving pathological gambling, which posits that the people who get hooked on it apparently achieve a high similar to the elevated feelings of a cocaine addict," says Blume. "It might be true, but we can't be sure until more neurophysical studies are conducted."
For now, if baby needs a new pair of shoes, there's always eBay. Even Young concedes: "The company has hit upon a very powerful way to separate people from their wallets." —R.B.
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