Addiction beyond ActiveRain - Is It Real

Addiction beyond ActiveRain - Is It Real

Recently Pat Kennedy came up with a great idea and wonderful concept in creating a contest to blog about how addicting ActiveRaincan be, and how many of us spend an unusual amount time on the platform. I took the not so serious path in responding to the task, writing about my need for a program. While it was somewhat tongue in cheek as I do spend a large amount of time in front 4 large screens getting way deeper into the workings of websites and crawlers, bots, meta tags, I am hooked. But I digress, the ActiveRain contest has been fun, however since responding to Pat's contest two articles have come out that take a much more serious look at the problem than I did.

Is it Addiction or Work

The Wall Street Journal recently came out with a piece by Elizabeth Bernstein, Your Blackberry or Your Wife.While the article does have it's humor, it does cut close to the bone and it got me wondering. Our lives seem to be playing out in front of "screens", the computer screen, the phone screen, the Kindle screen, heck the poor TV screen has been reduced to an occasional glance. Ms. Bernstein makes the case that maybe it is time technology detox. There is a great 10 signs list that Ms. Bernstein refers to, to establish a level of addiction. Luckily I can say that only two apply to me. That doesn't mean that I have my ticks, how many of us have been in a social situation when one person in the room checks their phone, what happens? The entire room picks up their phones and checks, it has become reaction, we are now Pavlovs phone dogs. Below see how much time we are really spending in front of a screen. The number thing, Social Networks/Blogs took up 23.8% of our time. Maybe this isn't so funny after all.

Do We Have Justification

To complicate matters,Sarah Lundy recently wrote about the job opportunities and the growing need for such social media marketing guru's, as the business world is now on board, and needs people to show them the ropes. Businesses are seeing the positive bottom line in marketing through the Internet and social media. We as Realtors have figured the out already, hence our participation on ActiveRain. The success is real, Dell Computers reported  that last year it generated $3 million in sales from links from it's Twitter accounts. That is nothing to sneeze at. So does this information give us tech geeks an excuse, or does it justify our behavior?

Summary

 I know for me personally the rules have changed, I am much more connected than ever before, and there are times when I think to myself, man just put it down, walk away. Then I realize I would have to pull the car over before I could do that. Seriously, all of us here at ActiveRain talk often about achieving that balance between life and work. Yes the demands in today's business world are great, but the question we need to be asking is "at what cost?" I know I will be thinking twice or three times before reaching for the phone now, at least until the new latest and greatest app comes out. Oh cool is that....