One in every fifty internet subscribers becomes severly irc addicted. The malady is even more common amongst university students, reaching a high of 1 addict every 25 in engineering schools.
IRC addiction can result in severe social handicap including divorce, employment impediment, social deterioration and deliquency.
The initial lure of Internet Relay Chatting is the ease with which social contact can be established in a risk free medium.
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All Chatters are seemingly protected by the sensation of invisibility, and unsuspectingly come to enjoy the quick and responsibility free contact established with their peers.
Research has shown that common chatters chatting concurently on 8 channels, will attempt to invoke a new conversation once every four minutes. Sessions are on average 8 hours long and are conducted every day. A quick calculation shows that a novice addict will start 840 conversations a week. More than 8 times the number in commonplace social interaction. More experienced addicts will conduct less conversations with "new" people, but still maintain a "social metabolism" averaging 5 times that of day to day social interaction.
The benifit of this enhanced interaction is somewhat mitigated by the fact that tests prove that the flow of information in a text based interactive medium is 10 times slower than that of a voice-based communication, and 15 times slower than voice and video based communication (assuming no connection delays).
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One research group analyzed conversations conducted on channels operated by automated seemilngly intelligent automated programs. Chatters were found to conduct up to three hours of conversation with the program, sometimes spanning four sessions before losing interest. Some were even convinced by the program to trade pictures, addresses and home numbers.
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CASE STUDIES: The Quasibot© software developed a virtual relationship with the following four individuals:

Zead	DragonOrd	AATank	Riccio

-- excerpts taken from "Communicating in a new medium?" J.H Reingler, phd. Kingston Press (1995)