Certified Blogaholic

Do blog while you’re asleep?  Have you ever taken your laptop to the bathroom?  Or are you the type that starts to sweat when you haven’t checked your email in 2 hours?  If you answered yes to any of these, you may be a tech addict.

In Seattle, blogger and part-time marketing manager Ariel Stallings claim that she experiences black-outs similar to getting drunk after surfing the net for hours.  She tries to remember what she has been doing for the past hours but couldn’t no matter how hard she tried.  Taking the plunge, she decides to unplug by turning off her cellphone, computer, and television for one whole day.  She experiences some emotional withdrawal symptoms but did make it through the day.  Henceforth, she decides to regularly unplug for 52 days in a year to take care of her addiction.

Dr. Dave Greenfield, who runs the Center for Internet Behavior in Connecticut, said h was not taken seriously when he first warned about compulsive Internet use in his 1999 book “Virtual Addiction.”  Various studies estimate that 1 to 10 percent of the U.S. population uses technology in a way that negatively impacts their lives, relationships, health or jobs.