Slashdot Mirror
Email Addiction Runs Rampant
Rollie Hawk writes "Are you addicted to email? According to the Opinion Research Corporation, the odds are pretty good that you are.
Their study of 4,012 adults in the twenty largest U.S. cities found that 41% of respondents start the day by checking their email. On the average, respondents admitted to checking their email five times a day.
Respondents also mentioned email features they wish were available. Examples included the ability to retract unread messages (45%) and a way to track the forwarding of their own email (43%).
Just how addicted are the email-dependent among us? So heavily that one quarter of respondents won't go more than two or three days without it. Of course, by those standards, most Americans must be addicted to work, sex, and TV as well."
... if reading my email every morning is an addiction, what's the difference between "addiction" and "daily routine" ?
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
I may check my email 5 times a day, but I check Slashdot 20 or 30 times a day.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
That's just plain stupid. Just because e-mail has become a social necessity (like checking your answering machine) doesn't mean you're ADDICTED.
E-mail is a form of communication, I use it to talk with my e-friends. We live in a global society now.
(On the other hand, if you check your e-mail because you're feeling lonely, then you're not addicted to e-mail. You just need real-life friends)
I also check my voicemail every day when I get home from work, and at any other time that I think I may have a phone call.
I also check my physical mail box every day, just to see how much less money I'm going to have after I do bills.
I look in the fridge for something to eat at least 5-8 times a day.
I pee at least twice, often times around 3 times a day.
Until these people start going into withdrawal when they stop checking their email, don't call it addiction. I've gone weeks without checking my email, after having checked it about 8 times + a day for the year or two preceding that. I didn't even give it a second thought.
The real headline is that "The Opinion Research Corporation is staffed by a pack of retarded monkeys. The CEO expressed optimism that their next release will be more along the lines of Hamlet than a total pile of bullshit. High School students everywhere were known to ask 'What's the difference?'".
Yeah. To paraphase.
Slashdot user: "Hi, I'm Pat. And I'm an email addict".
Group: "Email? Email's not an addiction. I used to suck dick for coke. Now that's an addiction. You ever suck dick for email?"
Slashdot user: "Well" (blushes) "Now that I think about it... I suppose that yes... yes I have".
The Internet is generally stupid
The thing is though, addiction is considered a disease. I will wait until someone from the medical field says that this addiction exists.
Call me crazy, but I do not trust a marketing company when it comes to identifying possibile addictions.
roche
Bah Humbug!
These results, as far as I can tell, have little if anything to do with "addiction". Do people check their email often? Yup. Do they do so to the detriment of other activities? Who knows?
How about this as an interesting survey:
Unless the answers to several of those questions are "yes", I'd have a little trouble suggesting someone's addicted....
Christian Jones
Medicine. Mathematics. Mediocrity.
Looks like I'm also addicted to brushing my teeth and eating breakfast, based on that criteria.
They're addicted because they check E-mail 5 times a day? Oh my God! I eat food 5 times a day some times too! I must be addicted to food! And I read more than that! I'm addicted to reading! Not to mention I talk, answer the phone, breathe, move... oh my God! I'm addicted to everything!
My Greatest Heist - Muisc partly inspired by the unbeatable Qwantz
I'm also addicted to putting on clothes, showering, brushing my teeth, and scratching my balls. I won't go 3 days without doing any of those.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Of course, by those standards, most Americans must be addicted to work, sex, and TV as well.
What is this "sex" thing you speak of? I can find no reference to it in any of my emails.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Saying people are "addicted" to email because they check it 3-5 times a day is like saying people are "addicted" to the phone because they choose to answer it every time it rings. Or for that matter, checking your snail-mail box once a day (you ADDICT!). Oh, I check my wristwatch a few times a day to see what time it is - does this make me a TIME addict?
Amature
I keep a browser window with slashdot open for 8 hours every day, and idly mouse 'up-down' to reload the page every few minutes.
I had a hotmail account and there was no way to delete it.
The only way for the account to be removed was if it was inactive for three months.
I tried many times to just stop logging in and checking my mail, but i always caved in and looked "just in case someone had sent something important".
I was on track to never being able to deactivate that account.
The maximum number of characters in the password was 20 characters.
What I ended up doing was typing in 20 random characters, without looking, in notepad, then changed my password to that using copy/paste so I effectively locked myself out of the account. I needed the copy/paste so I could type in the new password twice.
That was what finally worked for me.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
Most Americans cannot go one day without checking their postal mail!!
In fact, in a recent study conducted by Nugneant Industries, over 100% of Americans witnessed the sight of a motorcar! When asked if they could possibly live life for three days without looking at a motorcar, they were most likely to answer "no", or offer a sarcastic wisecrack in its stead! America is addicted to the sight of wheeled machinery!
Most Americans ANSWER THEIR TELEPHONE WHEN IT RINGS!!! I don't believe I need to expungate on the addictive dangers therein!
I think the conclusion is quite obvious - we're a people addicted to communication and transport! Hopefully a nice, well meaning New Age Liberal surgeon general will issue a proclomation about these events in the future! If only that open minded and charismatic Ronald Reagan was still in office - I'm sure he could convince those bad guys in blue to stop his part in the daily addiction of postal mail.
Now, excuse me while I go light up a cigarette...
Their study of 4,012 adults in the twenty largest U.S. cities found that 41% of respondents start the day by checking their email. On the average, respondents admitted to checking their email five times a day.
I bet a survey in 1970 would show that well over 60% of people would have said that they started the day by reading the newspaper. Were they addicted to newspapers?
What a bullshit non-story. Sheesh.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
"...in my view the only reason to make the distinction is to persecute somebody." -- Thomas Szasz
Evil sig is livE.
If there's an "addiction" here, it's an addiction to calling things addictions, when they aren't. This is one of those rare instances when I have to agree with the right wing- "personal responsibility" just isn't fashionable anymore. It's not my fault that I'm out of shape: I'm addicted to TV, so it's the TV's fault. It's not my fault I'm fat, I'm addicted to food. And it's not my fault I never get any work done, I'm an email junkie (complete with track marks up and down my arms where I tried to plug in the ethernet cable). Etcetera.
Well I'm a little worried....
I probably check my e-mail (manually) 20 times a day...on a slow day. A lot of what I am checking for is things like responses to my posts on Slashdot (and many others.) I also sell photographs, and people send inquries via e-mail...I want to jump on those ASAP- because typically they will buy from the first person who responds.
That doesn't count my work e-mail, which runs a check every 5 minutes, and notifies me when I get an e-mail. I check that one manually a lot, because sometimes I figure I don't want to wait 5 minutes...
I guess I am way beyond addicted- but it is pretty nice. I have a few buddies who I e-mail regularly (some who I ONLY know via e-mail) and it is nice to have people who respond in 2 minutes, instead of two days.
I *hate* when people only check their e-mail once a day, or even worse, once a week.
SPEED UP PEOPLE!
No reason to lie.
Nope. My standard email client checks for new mail once a minute, and it is open on my desktop from when I log in until when I log out to go home. My personal account (offsite) biffs me when mail shows up there.
There's too many times my boss has come across the hall to say "I just mailed you" something I need to work on, and it is better for me to be able to say "read my reply" than "what mail?"
But on WEEKENDS, what email? Were I truly addicted, there would be withdrawal symptoms. Nope.
This is just another example of media hype. Stories don't sell if they are "things are normal, there's nothing to see here". They sell if there is some new danger to look out for. "Email addiction" is today's Chicken Little. ACM's 'Computer' carried an article about Internet addiction a while back; same deal. People were USING the internet, so they must be ADDICTED to it. Never mind that it was convenience, it was ADDICTION because they used it.
It is fallacy to claim that everthing that people do is because they are addicted to doing it. They put on their pants when they get up in the morning; not an addiction. They have a cup of coffee; still not an addiction. They wash their face; no addiction to be found. This morning, I moved a fallen tree branch out of the driveway; am I addicted to moving fallen tree branches, or was it simply more convenient to move it rather than drive over it and risk denting the car? And had I not moved the branch, would I be "addicted" to putting dents in the car? Phhhht.
This is slashdot. Didn't you get the memo about patents? :-)
Left wing: I email too much. I talked with some people about it, they agreed, so I switched to the phone.
Right wing: You email too much. Switch to the phone.
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make install -not war