Digital addiction

By Patrick W. Andersen

It would be tempting to date the beginnings of the addiction to the mid-1990s. That was when senior management and field personnel were issued Blackberry PDAs so we could all get in touch with any of the organization’s 7,000 employees whenever needed. According to theory, this was done so we could get Very Important Messages while sitting in less important meetings, or while at lunch, or between appointments away from the office.

In reality, though, it put us all on 24-hour call. When one receives upwards of 100 emails per day, in addition to phone calls, snail mail and routine office communications, the Blackberries gave us the chance to respond to emails at home after dinner. It soon turned out that when bouts of insomnia hit, some of us would get out of bed in the wee hours and look at the little screens. Many employees would go to the office in the morning to find emails from us that were time-stamped at 3 a.m.

Yes, that would look like the red flag. But the addiction probably started decades earlier.

Young people nowadays may have to use their imagination to picture a time when the landline phone was the only avenue of two-way electronic communication for the entire household. The parents and all their children had one line. So, when the phone rang, sometimes we would race to answer it, hoping the call was for us rather than some less deserving member of the family. That urge to answer the phone immediately carried over to my work life, and I almost always answered my office…