BlackBerry Use or Corporate Addiction

You are in your department’s meeting, fully aware of everything happening around you, from unnoticeable nods from your colleagues, smirks or even sweat drops. You are alert and ready to answer, contribute, and learn. Yet you always have time to take a pick on you faithful companion for new mail notification. Not this time? Well give it a minute and check again.

Blackberries have become so much of a habit that for a few out there its use has developed to compulsion. In some occasions users need psychological treatment similar for drug addiction, in order to control the use and maintain it within “normal boundaries”. Studies in Rutgers University, New Jersey explained how and why Blackberry overuse leads to a new short of corporate addiction. Unfortunate individuals hooked up on emailing and Internet browsing fail to ignore their inbox for more than a few minutes. The fast paced working environments many of us are used to work in produce "a level of mental and physical stimulation" signifying a potential addiction.

It may sound irrational, but how is checking your e-mail inbox at 3.30am you woke up to use the toilet very quickly sound to you? Or ignoring those around you in social gatherings, isolating yourself from conversations and finally becoming a weirdo who sometimes talks to himself?

Several suggestions can be made to the blackberry addicts, but lets face it, it all comes down to rational use of a device supposed to save you time and certainly not take over your life. If by reading the above you feel you might fit the blackberry addiction standards, give yourself a simple test. Switch it off, lets say at 22.00 tonight and switch it back on when you leave your house next morning. Sounds dreadful?