I do have a FB account, a blog, and email but the time required to maintain those things is very high and the return is rather low. It occurred to me one day that I am exchanging my life for those items…especially when one gets sucked in to the internet! Now my laptop stays in one place in our home (upstairs) so when I am busy with real-life things, I don’t see the computer or spend time on it and my life becomes filled with more meaningful things.

I schedule time for the computer and do everything in my power to avoid spending too much time on it. My family is more important! This development is new to me and I’m much happier with my own productivity.

It was good to see your post. I feel like I’m in a minority on this subject. Maybe others are beginning to feel similarly.

I guess the telling point – as with any compulsive behaviour – is: does your usage result in negative outcomes? Are you late with work? Do you take shortcuts on family times? Are you skipping ‘healthy’ routines like exercise, cooking real food, doing house work?

I’ve screwed both of those up in the past by playing games – video games online and card games offline in college. Or by socializing – long coffee talks with other procrastinating friends at work and long IM’s and facebooking online.

So in the end I made it game like – I get to check blogs, email, facebook, twitter, etc. on a schedule and I compete with myself to see how quickly or well I can handle it.
.-= See Elaine’s latest blog post: The Shop: I Love Beads =-.

I joined most social networks for business purposes, but soon found I enjoyed the personal connection, too. The good thing about sites like that is you only need to participate to the level that you are comfortable. I recently set my Facebook preferences to stop sending me email every time someone commented on something of mine. It was surprisingly liberating! Now I check it when I have time, instead of letting it summon me there every few minutes.