Hooked On Twitter

SOMEHOW, YOU KNEW it was coming. You just knew that someone would notice that most of us spend most of our time walking around like zombies, texting, and reading text messages, would get curious, do the research, and find out why. And sure enough, after irrefutable research, we know why, and really, it isn't surprising. People love to text because they get a big emotional buzz out of it, cocaine-like. There's just something about 140 letters, brief, intense messages, the anticipation of it all, the social contact, that goes right to the emotional centers of the brain, and gives a person a hooked in with the world feeling of being connected. Brain scanning and careful monitoring of the states of mind of many average texters clearly shows this. People do not text to save time or communicate more efficiently. they do it because they are hooked on a drug, the drug of emotional connectivity. Electronic Communication Addiction.(ECA) How familiar that sounds! I remember having the same feeling back fifteen years ago, on AOL, when AOL was king, in chatrooms, and instant messages. If not mistaken, text messaging is nothing other that the result of AOL being forced by the courts to drop its monopoly on instant messaging. Instant messaging and chatrooms were very addictive, back in the day, some of the older folks might remember. Now we have Facebook and text messaging, which evidently have the same effect. So, no wonder. How long will it all last, and whither will it lead? Maybe Facebook is indeed a fad, a bad habit we'll eventually break, like cocaine rehab. And maybe we'll someday cut back on the screen time and get back to actually talking to each other. One can hope. It is allegedly liberating.