Technology is a new smoking.

Everybody had it: you walk or have lunch with friends, but you can't overcome the urge to check email, or Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram, or Google+, or Yammer, or some other digital serotonin. Have you ever "gone to the bathroom" to check emails, or went out with a suitable occasion to pull out a smartphone and check Twitter?

Remember when a critical mass of smokers left the table or meeting in groups to indulge in the habit? I immediately take out a laptop in bars and at parties, and then I feel more guilty about this than drinking.

New British research has come to the point that we already know intuitively: the use of the Internet is increasingly becoming an addiction. Of the 1,000 respondents after disconnecting from the Internet at 24 hours, 53% said they were upset about the deprivation of online access, and 40% said they felt lonely without being able to connect to the Internet. According to the descriptions of the participants, digital detoxification is akin to quit drinking or smoking, and one even said that he felt as if his arm had been cut off (!).

Prior to this, in April, the University of Maryland came to similar conclusions - one student even stated that she had had a drug breakdown while abstaining from any form of media for 24 hours. Lord
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Add more unconfirmed fears that using smartphones leads to cancer, and the smoking analogy will become more and more relevant (look at the illustration). But at the moment, a Google search for a movie title that you cannot remember looks much more healthy than smoking real cigarettes - at least physically. Presently.