Running for Your Life: Internet Addiction

Item: Nokia slashes price of Lumia 900 Windows phone to $49.99 with a two-year contract.

Item: Young man in Prospect Park flogging cut-rate mobile-phone service near-interrupts me, thrusting a promotional postcard, while I’m on a fast-paced run.

It’ll get you, Internet addiction. Read the “iCrazy” Newsweek cover story, if you dare. http://bit.ly/LDSy5j, as in:

Item: The brains of Internet addicts look like brains of drug and alcohol addicts.

Item: A researcher on aging and memory selected 12 experienced Web users and 12 inexperienced ones and passed them all through a brain scanner. The difference was striking, with the Webbies showing fundamentally altered prefrontal cortexes. The novices went away for a week and were asked to spend a TOTAL of five hours online. The brains of the novices had rewired and were similar to the Webbies.

Item: The average teen processes 3,700 texts a month (123 texts daily).

Item: Teens fit some seven hours of screen time into the average school day; 11, if you count the time spent multitasking on several devices.

How hypocritical of me. People turning to this blog – either on a mobile device, a PC, a Mac, etc. – are adding to their screen time. And too often every day I find myself checking to see how many visits my blog posts have attracted. I’m typing into a computer screen right now, my rewired brain piqued by the rush that I’m attracting readers, maybe even followers.

In the event of followers, listen to this: Log off. Go out for a run. Pet the dog. Pick up a pen and journal and write. Call a friend and make a plan to play tennis, or golf. You can be assured that Facebook and Twitter – and yes, Running for Your Life – will be there when you get back.

Next: Running for Your Life: Reverse Aging