A typical day is an addiction

When we hear the word addiction, what are the first things that come to mind? Drugs? Alcohol? Cigarettes? Not to minimize those struggles, those are truly addictions, but what I am thinking of is so insidious that we do it and even incorporate it to most of our daily activities. Until about age 15, I grew up with 98% of my days being spent outside playing sports with the neighborhood kids, the other two percent was spent eating and sleeping. But that all changed when my brother walked in the house with a brand new HP.

E-mails, facebooks, blackberry's, twitter, myspace, texting, and on and on and on. These have become such normal things in our day to day life, that we see them as just that, normal things. But could there be a massive problem that we are ignoring? I mean, when is it healthy to wake up and the first thing you do before brushing your teeth or grabbing a glass of water is check the latest and greatest on your blackberry? Or perhaps, checking e-mail as you eat breakfast, so that the breakfast table is now a relic of the past which has a current use of a mail sorting center for your household? Some have SO disconnected from human interaction (in person), that Japan is reporting an increase in men checking into hotels with...VIRTUAL WOMEN on their laptops! (LOSER)

Our fathers are addicted to Xbox, our mothers addicted to facebook, and our kids addicted to texting. Magazines online, Newspapers online, shopping online, work presentations are online and you could even go to CHURCH online! I am not saying that this advance in technology is a bad thing, I admit that I have an xbox, a facebook account and a blackberry, but I think its time that I disconnect from a few things for the sake of keeping the gift of HUMAN interaction alive. I've read articles on divorces announced through facebook, resigning from work, firing an employee, long declarations of love, and my favorite... communicating with the dead on facebook!

My point is this, when our kids turn into the third wheel, while we are on a date with the world through a screen... we've lost something that is critical and before we know it, we'll lose our kids to it as well.