While Sandra Hacker logged on America Online and wandered the endless corridors of the Internet, her three children sat in squalor, according to Cincinnati police. On June 14, responding to a call from a local child protection service, police arrested Sandra Hacker and charged her with three counts of child endangerment. The children have been placed in the custody of their father, who was the person who had notified the protection service. The article never says exactly what the woman was doing on the Web, but obviously she wasn't visiting Hints from Heloise . My guess is that she was chatting, meeting up online with people who could distract her from what was apparently quite a household grind.
People are weak, and they're lonely, too.
Give them a chance to connect, and of course they'll get hooked. Even the briefest visit to the world of America Online's chat rooms, for example, will give you a very good idea of just how desperate people are to make contact. Maybe that's a good thing. One wonders what all these Eleanor Rigbys were doing before America Online existed. It's when they start forgetting to feed their kids that an intervention is probably called for.