Are you a Social Addict?

Are you addicted to posting, poking, pinging, tweeting, texting, IMing, checking in or emailing? Scary to think but you may be a digital social addict. According to Judith Horstman’s new book, The Scientific American Brave New Brain, research suggests that these actions trigger the release of dopamine to chemically reward you.

Here’s a quick list of behaviors that could determine if you are a digital social addict:

• You lose sleep keeping up with e-mail & social networks. E-mail’s the first and last thing you check each day.

• You spend more than 3 hours a day trolling, obsessed with checking to see who’s writing to or about you. How many “results” do you have on Google? How many Facebook “friends”? How many hits on your blog?

• A lost Internet connection, cell phone dead zone or computer crash puts you in a panic.

• Internet social networks are your main way of connecting with others. You have more than one such account. In fact, you have more friends on Facebook & Twitter than you do in real life. What is real life?

• You procrastinate and ignore work in favor of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, email… The list goes on but your work doesn’t.

Ouch. Hello Pot, It’s me, the Kettle, calling you black.

The upside for me is that I’m one of the very fortunate few in the world who are lucky enough to get paid to have this addiction because I can turn it into a business ROI.

Score!

“The problem’s plain to see, Too much technology” – Mr. Roboto Styx

Kim