Technology - Are We Addicted

Hey all,
        Dan here with a new blog post. This is part one of three of a series of blog posts I am doing about technology. This one is on if we are addicted to tech or not. The next two will be the Pros and Cons of Tech and then a History of tech over the last 19 years just to show how it has changed.*

Do we, as a people, suffer from an addiction to technology. The answer is yes. It isn't as simple as an alcohol or drug addiction though. These things are easily identifiable and the proper course of action can be taken. With a tech addict though, it isn't that simple. For one, there are  many different types of tech you can be addicted too. For some, it is a general over all addiction (see Chris Pirillo of LockerGnome). Then there are your smartphone addicts. Just to clairfy, a smartphone addict isn't someone who texts their friends 24/7, a smartphone addict is someone who uses their phone everywhere from their communte, to their break, to the bathroom, and even when they should be sleeping. I will admit to being guilty of the later. When I should be asleep I am often kept up with thoughts and stress and that in turn leads to me going to my phone and visiting Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, WrestleFuse (which recently overhauled and added in an iOS version of their site available at http://ios.wrestlefuse.com ), TMZ, Digg, Mashable, and a billion other sites and apps. Sometimes I get the feeling that charging my phone right next to my bed is not the best idea, but so be it, I am a happy smartphone addict. Then you have your video game addicts. These are the (usually) guys, who spend more hours killing people on "Black Ops" than they do at work, eating, bathing, and with their friends and family combined. After that you have the biggest category: computer addicts, which is a sub genre of General Tech Addiction (read: Geeks).  These are everything from your dedicated hackers to your programers and beyond. I'd like to think I am a little of all of these, not that I should be proud of that.

*My 19th birthday is on 11/5 so it will actually be an 18 and a half year look at tech :D