I remember my first real love affair: A simple girl of 16, we connected instantly and effortlessly, thanks to my parents and a great deal of electricity.

My first and only love. Virtual love, I guess: AOL. The World Wide Web. My online existence.

My heart, which once leapt at the words “you’ve got mail,” now welcomes this phrase as a norm in my life. In college, an online presence is a necessity, and happiness an ethernet connection. How else could I research my English paper and order dinner, all without picking up the phone or leaving my room? The university community is becoming increasingly based on a virtual world, one in which classes are taught via the Web, professors hold discussions in online chatrooms, and students download mp3s in lieu of spending their beer money on CDs.

But is it possible that this online community is infringing upon our real one?

Case in point: Lately, when I’m feeling too lazy, I have taken to “instant messaging” a friend who lives across the hall from me, rather than walking the 12 or so steps it takes to get to her room.

LOL? We do too, giggling about our exchanges — not because they’re altogether funny, but rather because more often than not we find ourselves typing to one another instead of speaking.

As a lover of the written word, I have become hooked on this wired existence, realizing that, for once, what I write and how I do so comprises a greater part of my identity than my appearance or my voice. Personal interactions with friends are taken over by electronic exchanges, as we opt to chat online rather than on the lunch line. I even had the courage recently to hold an e-mail romance — you know, the sort of flirtatious chitchat where I can easily say things over e-mail that I would never utter to the person face to face. A wimp like me becomes a warrior at once: Words are my sword, my wit malleable with the aid of the delete key. What could be better?

Yet, while such e-mail flirtations and long-distance chat are absorbing, it is also all too easy — and dangerous — to allow an online world to usurp the real one. We often become more concerned with what’s happening on the computer screen rather than what’s going on in the outside world. That’s when human contact becomes intrusive — the sound of the phone ringing, of an actual human voice, infringes upon the gentle numbness found in surfing the ‘Net.

And, while all this technology provides a staggering amount of information and convenience, it also comes with a price. Individuals such as Columbine’s Dylan Klebold turn to this online world not only to escape, but to research and then promote fantasies of uprising and violence.

So how do we pull the plug on a society so wrapped up in a wired world?

We don’t.

Instead, we must learn to walk a fine line between virtual reality and the real thing, allowing for a balance between amusement and isolation, between accessibility and information overload. Between an online existence and an actual one.

For now, that’s the only way to walk around the Web and enjoy its expanse, without actually becoming tangled within it.