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
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.
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
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.
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.