Technology Addiction? Say What?

From: http://www.nysun.com/article/39212

A professor at Rutgers’s School of Business, Gayle Porter, predicts in a soon-to-be-published study that disgruntled workers who feel they are unable to turn off their personal digital assistants and mobile telephones will begin suing their employers for their technology addictions — and that such lawsuits could potentially cost corporate America hundreds of millions of dollars.

“If companies develop a culture in which people are expected to be available 24 hours a day, then they should be prepared for the physical and psychological consequences,” Mrs. Porter said. “Addicts exhibit extreme behavior and have no control over themselves. So a corporation handing someone a BlackBerry on his first day of work could be seen as enabling, even accelerating, a serious addiction to technology.”

You have got to be kidding me.

I would hope that one who plans on doing this kind of study places emphasis on the difference between addiction and fascination.

On another note, many other forms of addiction (like drug and alcohol addiction) are dependent on choices made by the individual. The realization of this control by the individual allows them to recognize rehab as a possibility, and a potential cure. I would assume people who are aware of their addiction would be smart enough to partake in actions that would curb it. Any effort otherwise is the fault of the individual, and an ignorant one at that. In the end who is really at fault? It seems pretty obvious to me.

With that being, if there was a shortage of frivolous lawsuits in the recent past, Im sure this will make up for lost time.

What really irks me is that these people crying addiction fail to realize their feeble attempt is a sincere and genuine insult, a taunt, a simple disgrace to people with real addictions such as heroin and methamphetamines. Those are the ones who deserve help, and not in the form of lawsuits either. In the form of support and compassion for their own efforts to seek help, prying the chemical dependency away from their own bodies. A dependency they cannot rid themselves of on their own. They must rely on people with good hearts, experience, and seasoned professionals (ie. counselors) who specialize in chemical dependency through a rigorous life changing journey.