DULLSVILLE.COM: NET'S BO-O-O-RING.

Byline: Martin Kuz Staff Writer

As recently as a year ago, Robert Peck used to devote hours every day to surfing the Internet, checking out new Web sites or goofing off in chat rooms. Today his surfing comes as he looks for the perfect wave in the Pacific instead of sweet deals on eBay.

``In a good week I'll go surfing four, five times a week, head to Zuma Beach or Malibu,'' the 21-year-old Calabasas resident said. ``I go online maybe three times a week, if that, and now it's just for e-mail or to check the surfing conditions.''

Peck, who works at Surf Boards by Kennedy in Woodland Hills when he's not attending classes at Pierce College, isn't alone in leaving cyberspace for the real world. Industry analysts say a rising swell of Internet users seem to be spending less time online and more time living life.

A handful of surveys suggest that between the Internet's novelty ebbing and people becoming savvier online, overall use appears to have plateaued.

``When people first log on, they're using every site. After they're used to being online, they're visiting the same 10 sites they want to use and not much beyond that,'' said Maria Bumatay, spokeswoman for Milpitas-based NetRatings, which measures online audiences.

Bumatay said with some 60 percent of Americans now hooked up to the Internet at home or work, their familiarity with where to go online has reduced their time spent staring at the screen.

In other words, while the sheer number of people getting online continues to grow, the eyes of veteran online users, once bugged-out by the Net's newness, have glazed over a bit.

Or, as Peck put it, ``At first you're like, hey, this is pretty cool. But after awhile you realize you're just looking at the same stuff.

``Besides,'' he adds, ``why sit in front of a computer when you can go surfing or snowboarding, go to Venice Beach, go for a bike ride?''

Martin Shea offered a similar perspective while browsing at Books on the Boulevard, a used-book store in Sherman Oaks. A playwright and professor at Los Angeles Valley College, Shea, 59, said a year ago he might spend an hour to 90 minutes online. Today he's down to about a half-hour.

``The charm has worn off for me,'' he said. ``You can only sit and look at the screen for so long.''

Shea tells students in his English classes on occasion that he thinks the printed word will make a comeback as Internet fatigue takes hold. He may be right.

In March, the Web site collegeclub.com reported that almost half of the 12,500 respondents to an Internet survey said they were less enamored of the Net than in the past. Only one-fourth said the Internet had become more interesting.

The desire to ditch virtual reality for plain, old reality has become evident over the last 12 to 18 months at LuLu's Beehive, a Studio City cafe whose storefront awning bills it as an ``Espresso Parlor, Cyber Den, Art Forum.''

``We used to get maybe 30, 35 percent of our customers coming in and plugging in their computers,'' Beehive co-owner Fiona Sanderson said. ``Now it's maybe 20 percent.''

Despite the apparent trend, not all industry analysts believe Net fever is breaking.

Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for Communication Policy at University of California, Los Angeles, said the center's ongoing study of Internet use showed last year that people who had been online for four years or more a spent an average of 16 hours a week exploring cyberspace. First-year users, by comparison, spent about six hours a week trolling the Internet.

``So I'm not sure that online use is going to plateau anytime soon,'' Cole said. ``I don't think that can be answered yet. It's still too soon.''

But Sherman Oaks residents Francois Frizat and Carma Lewis, strolling through Sherman Oaks Fashion Square on Thursday, feel they've already reached the plateau. Lewis said that three years ago she would while away hours online. Now, her computer sits quiet except for the 20 minutes or so she needs to read and respond to e-mail every day.

Frizat's daily Net use has dwindled even further - he sometimes only makes one trip a week to the World Wide Web. Like other jaded Internet veterans, he views his computer as little different from his telephone or TV, just another everyday appliance of modern life.

``I really don't want to spend the whole day online,'' he said. ``I like getting out of the house, you know?''

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

Robert Peck, 21, of Calabasas now spends more time surfing waves in the Pacific than in cyberspace.

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer