The screen is illuminating as messages go back and forth on the information super highway that expands the roads of the Internet. A message pops up as you sign onto your messenger and after a few clicks of the mouse and a few strokes of your fingers you�re entangled in a conversation. You can become deep in thought in searching for the right words to type out, lose all consciousness of reality, and even lose track of time. Your typing surrounds you with constant sounds of the keys being pressed all in repetition of themselves so that you can create words that you have thought of to send, instantly, to whomever is within the same chat space as you are. Information is at your fingertips and everything comes to you in an instant . . .

In our society we have invented many things, but none as fast as our own society�s changing pace until the Internet. We are amazed about how we can download in a flash, post websites, share news, and best of all, mingle with people. Our communication technology broadens with this online ability. Messengers are in high use with buddy lists overflowing in number, emails are sent almost every second, but what�s a little disturbing are the chat rooms. The infamous chat rooms reform into regularly visited �hang outs.� There are a lot of causes as to why so many people go to chat rooms and people of all ages and race (that have access to the web) always seem to flock to the chat rooms, wanting someone to talk to, wanting someone there.

The Internet being readily available to the majority of the expanse of human existence on this globe of life is just one cause of hordes of people going to chat rooms that are popping up in cyber world. Another reason is because of our all too familiar habits that creep into our daily lives corrupting all motivation with laziness. Instead of being full of energy, ready and raring to jump up at an opportunity to meet with equally excited people we�d rather not exert all our energy into trying that hard and just stay home, sitting down at the computer, draped in pajamas, greasing up the keyboard by the munchies being eaten in-between typing out lines of words. If you think about it, computers are just becoming all the more like television sets. They both take the place of entertainment and you can�t succeed in any form of technology without the use of the �almighty� computer. This is why almost every household has a computer (if you don�t then you�re living in an obsolete universe) and people become lazy indulging in both these �activities� [television and the computer]. Our lazy nature leads us to just want to sit in front of a radiating monitor without having to budge one bit from this relaxing spot. Chat rooms become our safe haven in communicating easily and with no strenuous pursuit of actual conversation. This, in turn, leads to more chat rooms because of our need to meet (chat with) new people and extend our reach (typed out words) to a diverse group without traveling too far to do it.

Being lazy does induce the growth of more �hangouts� online, but so does being lonely. There is always an ad on a website that asks if you would like to meet that special someone, or better yet (or worse, depending on your point of view), the chat rooms titled: �Love Lounge� or �Singles� � these chats are always overcrowded with people wanting to �get to know you better.� This just shows that the average human being can experience an overload of loneliness and want to just chat with someone that is there to listen. All they really want is a friend and they can find one in the multiple chat rooms throughout the web which means this is an easy way to access this kind of relationship.

If it isn�t laziness or loneliness that keep raking us into chat rooms, it could be a mixture of shyness and just plain boredom. Not many people have the guts to meet up with someone in person. It makes them nervous standing in front of people, thinking about what to say without sounding stupid, worrying about what they think of how they look, and being tense over the fact that they might do something to embarrass themselves. Whereas online you could easily delete what you typed before pressing enter, not have to worry about how the person on the other end judges you based on your looks, and just be at ease in your comfortable office-like chair. You can be as brave as you want though you might be fooling yourself; it is still a factual situation. Also, boredom creates a need to do something, so why not browse through the lists of chats and try your luck at making a new friend or even create your own website to lure potential friends.

Personal websites create chats on their own server so they can have their regular viewers chat about the topics on their site or make them so that they have a way of getting real time responses to their layouts. If it isn�t a chat applet, they could have forums (message boards) in order to get feedback from the site surfers while letting others respond to their online peers. They also make chat rooms so that people with similar interests can talk together about what they like. The web page may have a certain subject that people can relate to, in turn, making them want to talk to others that surf that site so they can make new friends that like the same things they do.

These are all different causes as to why we go to chat rooms. Each one stems from our need to just communicate with others for social purposes even though it may not be all that real. So the major cause of people going to chat rooms is . . . ourselves. Of course we make the technology, we create the chat rooms, we have people that invent the software and freeware, we devote our time into making those things work and we�re the ones that have the feelings of loneliness. No matter how much new technology comes out, no matter how much loneliness can arise, the cause is all just because of us.