In need of a fix

It starts slowly. You feel a bit edgy, fidget a little, check your watch. Another two minutes crawl by. You really shouldn't. Was that a beep? Your fingers itch... Just once, you think, No one will notice. You reach for your pocket.

For many, checking e-mail, Facebook and Twitter is a behaviour as habitual and compulsive as smoking. It may not have the physically harmful effects, but there's an unquestionable addictive element to it. It's seen in the constant, almost urgent checking of one's phone, or the fact that the first thing many do when they wake up, or get out of bed even, is log in for a quick fix.

We do it while driving, in meetings, walking in the street, at gym, even while we're busy talking to someone else. Teens are notorious for standing in huddled groups, silently, chatting furiously on their phones. The steady stream of e-mails, messages, tweets, and status updates makes switching off increasingly harder to do, and increasingly, it seems people don't want to.

In a small experiment by UK research firm Intersperience, participants were challenged to go without the Internet for a day. Of the more than 1 000 participants aged between 18 and 64, 53% felt "upset" when they couldn't access the Internet for a length of time. Another 40% of participants felt "lonely" when they were barred from their usual online interaction.

Just a heartbeat ago, lonely people used to be those without physical friends, and their Web-based social lives were an object of pity or ridicule. Now, being barred from online friendships seems unimaginable, even when these friends can easily be contacted offline.

While the Intersperience study was limited in size and context, it does reflect a growing dependency on the Internet and social networks to simply feel normal. One participant said it was like "having a hand chopped off”, while another called it "my biggest nightmare".

Dramatics aside, the fact that social networking - and access to technology in general - has become so integral to daily life that it's likened to a limb reveals major changes in our perception of reality and relationships.

Like substance addictions, social networking brings a sense of contentment and relief, but can also result in constant anxiety, because one can never be wholly present in both virtual and physical realms (not yet, at least). We feel guilty when we're online, ignoring the “real world”, and when we're offline, we worry about missing something in our virtual communities.

The extent to which social networks in particular have transformed communication norms is parodied in a new film The Man without a Facebook. It tells the tongue-in-cheek tale of two men who become friends without first connecting on Facebook, spending time doing novel things like talking face-to-face and writing using pen and paper. It's comic, but perhaps a little close to home.

To some, a day without Facebook seems like an eternity. Others couldn't care less. But for those who are avid users, going without their Web fix for any length of time is akin to an addict trying to quit smoking or drinking, say researchers.

A close friend felt using Facebook was such a valued activity she gave up it up for Lent.

Lezette Engelbrecht, online features editor

A close friend, for example, felt using Facebook was such a valued activity she gave up it up for Lent. She made sure her status reflected this because anyone who knew her and didn't see an update for a few days would get worried. The idea of a Facebook fast reinforces the idea that social networking is a potentially harmful, addictive behaviour. There are concerns that it can become obsessive, alienating, and overwhelmingly distracting - take the woman documented in a recent University of Athens study, who lost her job due to compulsive Facebook checking.

Yet, social networking and online interaction differ from conventional addictions in that it's become increasingly difficult to live without them in at least small doses. Even if someone chooses not to join social networks, the fact that friends and family use it means they may miss event invitations, e-mails, and notifications of major changes in people's lives.

Social networking has become so ingrained in modern behaviour that it's difficult to know what counts as “addiction”. The fact that social networking has spilled over to people's professional lives also means much of what's considered “work” now takes place in online communities. Is the constant use of technology obsessive in this case, or simply good maintenance of one's professional persona?

For others, the lines are even more blurred, such as social media strategists or those whose role it is to run their company's social media activities. In this case constant contact with the social networking world is pretty much the job description. When it's one's responsibility to keep up with the goings-on in Planet social, it's difficult to know when to switch off. With the number of news stories breaking on Twitter, keeping up to speed on Blue bird has also become an imperative for journalists and newsrooms. The news never sleeps, and with it constantly available, neither do we.

For these groups, there's also the issue of creating boundaries between the personal and the professional. Making a clear break between work and play often doubles the problem: now you're checking two sets of accounts, with different purposes, members and cultures, as well as contributing to those spaces, on a daily basis. It's a wonder there aren't more social “addicts”.

There are many articles advising people on how to cope with their social networking addiction, such as limiting use to an hour a day, or avoiding social networking applications on one's mobile. But these suggestions already seem quaint in a world that's moving more in this direction everyday.

With new services popping up on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ all the time, the number of 'addicts' is only likely to grow, as social networking flows into more areas of life. In future, it won't be about how addicted people are, but simply how well they manage it - and that's likely to lead to a whole new raft of services and opportunities.