Monday, May 19, 2008

'Screeen sucking'

I have a confession to make: I'm a crack addict.

On the information black market, my drug of choice goes by the name of email. The good stuff is laced with social media and RSS. The better stuff also includes mailing lists, website statistics, IRC, and 500 TV channels. The best stuff adds both Facebook and MySpace accounts, instant messaging of every kind, and a pony made from Ajax.

My dealer calls himself Unread. I caught a glimpse of his driver's license once though, when his wallet spilled all over the ground while we were shooting up in an airport lounge. Turns out his real name is Unimportant Bullshit. That's a pretty funny name, when you think about it.

But I haven't thought about it. I'm usually too strung out to notice. I just keep buying more product.

 

Information Overload Addiction

The study, Glued to the Screen: An investigation into information addiction worldwide, shows that we are witnessing the rise of a new generation of 'dataholics'. Based on a survey of 1,000 people in the UK, US, Ireland, Germany, Singapore and Hong Kong, the survey shows that over half of respondents 'crave' information, while almost 50% claim that if information was a recognized drug, they would know people who would be considered as addicted.

Three quarters of people believe that PCs, the Internet and information generally will become addictive in the future, while 54% claim to get a 'high' when they find information they have been seeking.

Information addiction is not only confined to the workplace. Fifty five per cent of parents interviewed expressed concern that their children were turning into info-junkies, due to the vast amount of electronic information available. Seventy two per cent believe that Internet use will exacerbate obsessive information-gathering.

Nearly half of all parents surveyed said that children prefer PCs to their peers, and 36% were extremely worried that their children were over-exposed to information. Eighty six per cent believe that schools and colleges should be doing more to prepare the next generation to deal effectively with their information load.

Dr. Kimberly S. Young, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, commented, "The Internet only feeds America's 'fast food' mentality towards information. People are craving immediate access to the most up-to-date, current information and then find themselves trapped in enormous information gluts."

 

Is it an addiction?

What's striking to researchers is how few people take even the most basic steps to reduce workplace interruption. In the Basex study, 55% of workers surveyed said they open e-mail immediately or shortly after it arrives, no matter how busy they are. "Most people don't even think about turning off the dinger," says Spira, who turned off the alert sound on his e-mail nine years ago with no regrets. "We can't control ourselves when it comes to limiting technological intrusions."

Indeed, there's a compulsive quality to our relationships with digital devices. Hallowell has noticed that when a plane lands nowadays, BlackBerrys light up the way cigarettes once did. "A patient asked me," he says, "whether I thought it was abnormal that her husband brings the BlackBerry to bed and lays it next to them while they make love." Hallowell and his frequent collaborator, Harvard psychiatrist John Ratey, believe that the neurochemistry of addiction may underlie our compulsive use of cell phones, computers and "CrackBerrys." They say that dopamine, a neurotransmitter involved in seeking rewards and stimulation, is doubtless at work. "If we could measure it as we're shifting [attention] from one thing to another," says Ratey, "we would probably find that the brain is pumping out little shots of dopamine to give us a buzz." Psychologists call the increasingly common addiction to Web-based activity "online compulsive disorder." Hallowell has a more descriptive term: screen sucking. "These screens have a magnetism we haven't quite figured out."

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