Are You Addicted to Email and Messaging?

[bobusboy]

I'm more at home in the woods or my cabin (which only has power and a phone, and plumbing which is only usable in the summer;

I only text and use facebook (and barely at that) because my girlfriend does, and in highschool all my friends were getting phones and would never return voicemail/answering machine messages.

 

[jitpublisher]

Hate to say it, but I kinda fall into this. I get a least a hundred emails a day. Sometimes as many as 200. I hate it. HATE IT. But if I don't check it a few times a day, it becomes overwhelming. People have become too dependent on email, and most of my clients I know have fallen into a pattern that email is a priority, the MOST important form of communication. Not replying or taking action on an email within a few hours can lose you an account in this day in age. It's insane. I am sitting here, in the late afternoon on the day before Thanksgiving, getting slammed with emails from clients wanting to get that last order, bit of information, request, whatever in before they leave the office for a long weekend. And they expect their requests to be done and taken care of by the time they are back in the office on Monday.
Do I like it, not one bit. I want to enjoy my holiday too, but most people don't think about this, they just use email as way to impersonally fire off that "I need this done" letter and go on their merry way. So, my insight to this not so much why are we spending all our time reading emails, my take is why do so many people spend all their time sending emails? Idiots I say!
I used to work with a guy who had a office literally 10 feet from me. In a month, I would get over a thousand emails from him, and what made it worse, as soon as I saw an email coming, within 5 minutes he would follow it with a phone call. Communication can be a good thing, but as a society, we are in communication overload. There is simply no need for 90% of it. No need at all! It is time to step back and take a deep breath alright, people get a grip and get a life!

 

[cookoy]

if you're vacationing on some remote islands in the Korean peninsula, it's good to check your emails and cnn often. they got big firecrackers there and some nut decided to celebrate new year early.

 

[Guest]

I don't understand the mystery here - it is basic psychology from college. Think about the little rat being condition to push the lever to get a tasty pellet. Checking our email or getting a text is a similar "reward." In effect, we are wired to be conditioned to be obsessed with this. That has nothing to do with it's usefulness. It is, of course, almost useless, especially with teens that text hundreds of times per day. Really, it is shameful and exploitive of the phone makers and providers.