Addicted to the Internet
May 27th, 2008By Marijean Jaggers
A couple of months ago, my colleague Amber goaded Melissa into writing a blog post by calling her a hypocrite. In her follow-up post, Amber said, “I can completely understand and empathize with Melissa’s concern about finding the time to blog. It’s a common response to social media – at least for me and others who aren’t addicted.”
When I read that I thought, “That’s me; she’s talking about me — one of the people addicted to the internet.” I took umbrage at that post, and thought, “I’m not addicted! I can stop any time I want to!” In fact, I took a little break from my personal blog for about a month, turning away from my online life to focus a bit more on my offline life. In this space, I’ve stepped aside briefly to allow my colleagues to have more presence in this collaborative corporate blog. My respite from blogging, however, did not make national news as the unplugged project of Ariel Stallings, fellow blogger and BlogHer pal, whose 52 nights of text, Twitter, IM and blog-free living did.
Am I a tech junkie? Yes, I guess I am. Even while I’ve managed weekends of online-free life, it never lasts long. And even while I’ve taken breaks from contributing online content, I have never stopped reading and absorbing. It’s that, more than anything, to which I am addicted. Like a true addict, here comes the rationalization: I’m doing it for clients! It’s my job, my responsibility! But it’s really more than that; I have a driving need to know what’s going on in people’s minds, in my industry, with people I care about and people I find interesting.
I’ll let you know when I need an intervention.
