The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: February 25, 2007

Official News - page 9

REAL LIFE NEWS: MIGHT AS WELL FACE IT, YOU'RE ADDICTED TO MAIL

by Hazed

These days it seems you can be addicted to anything, and not just physical substances that have a chemical effect on the body. Sex addicts, computer addicts, and now email addicts have their own 12-step programmes to tackle their problems.

A new programme aims to help people who are addicted to email, and will start by getting them to admit that email is managing them rather than the other way round. It will help them to tackle their obsessions with reading or replying to emails no matter where they are - such as on holiday, in the car, or even in the bathroom.

A life coach for business executives in America has devised this plan for serious cases, such as a golfer who checked his BlackBerry after every shot (and lost a potential client who thought he was a socially-inept obsessive) or a women who could not walk past a computer - her own or anyone else's - without checking it for messages. Another of his clients had 3,600 emails in his inbox.

It's tempting to scoff and just say "get a life" to people who think they are addicted to email, but recent research says being addicted to technology depletes a person's cognitive abilities more rapidly than drugs. Email users suffered a 10% drop in IQ scores. Read more about this study here.

So if you want to keep on switching away from the Fed2 screen to go check your emails, maybe you'd be better off leaving them until you've done just one more job...


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