These Are My Confessions...

Image reproduced from http://aarontwells.files.wordpress.com/

In this day and age being attached to every facet of communication technologies has become a norm. We have devices that can connect us to email, social media, text messaging, and voice/video calls. I think that these devices serve a very useful purpose, but I also have an urge to be constantly checking for updates as if they will disappear if I don't check them right away. Right now I have checked Facebook, Twitter, my email and sent/received five texts. I am not the only one, people everywhere has experienced this feeling here is why.

Some researchers say that resisting the urge to check a social networking update is harder to resist then accepting a drink at a bar. Part of this might be that the implications for drinking can be felt physically whereas appeasing checking an update has no immediate affects. Additionally, when we power through the day and resist checking updates, our willingness to feed our urges increases, so by the end of the day we want to gorge ourselves on electronic stimulation. One student attests,

"I became bulimic with my media; I starved myself for a full 15 hours and then had a full-on binge." -Unnamed Student

Courtesy of www.heraldsun.com

Another instance that I can claim guilty as charged to is when, sometimes, whilst with friends I feel it necessary to check my phone twenty times, when the people I care about talking to are surrounding me. This is a common thing amongst students, especially those who are considered extroverts or social butterflies. In a survey, more than half of the respondents would be willing to give up exercise before their mobile devices. I'm sorry, but if you're willing to give an essential part of your well-being just to have a phone there is problem. Just for another shocking statistic from survey, about 1/3 of the respondents would be willing to give up sex, 80% of which were females. Yikes. I'll leave it at that.

We are a society that is glued to our external social interactions from many different sources. The need to know what everyone is doing at all times, also called ambient awareness, is having an adverse instillment of paranoia and craving for the social stimulation. I can say that I have done the same thing, minus the willingness to give a part of myself, and I am not afraid to admit that I sometimes teeter between consumer and addict. To combat this I will be taking part of a really sweet movement similar to this one where I will spend a weekend and avoid the use of all technologies.

Courtesy of www.causes.com/unplugging_pledge