Great topic!
A pet peeve of mine is this with my wife. She freaks out when her cell phone is missing for more than 3 seconds, spends more time texting a simple message to her mother than actually talking with her, then 10 minutes later she ends up calling her for 30 minutes anyway. I'm just trying to get to bed when the "tweeting whistle" repeatedly goes off at 11pm to find out what her 51 year old girlfriend should do about her 3rd husband acting up. Then I get tired waking up at 5:30am to get ready for work.
I'm all for the internet and cell phones, but it has become an obsession with many people I know. I'm tech-wise in between my dad (no tech) and my adult kids (newest tech) and I actually like it like that way. This site saved me probably thousands of dollars on car repairs, but I know when to turn it off too. I have a Trac phone which is nice, but I use it sparingly and it works great for me. I think the internet allows people instant gratification and people can end up revealing more to a stranger online than they would ever think to do in real life. I don't Facebook, but almost everyone I know that does, seems to think of that more highly than if they have food in the house or if the bills are paid.
A friend of mine who is 1 year younger than me (46), does not work and gets money from his mother so he can surf the web, tweet all day, and "live" in the cyber world. Asking to get the lawn mowed only takes a couple days to schedule in....
If you ask me, it is an epidemic. The computer is one of the best and WORST things to come out of technology. Trying to stay out of religion here, but I have often wondered if the computer could be the anti....? (I don't even want to say it or write it).