Warning signs of a Social Media addiction:

- You miss, or even reject, opportunities to connect with people in “real life”
- You start to neglect basic neccessities like eating, sleeping, and bathing
- You think about it whenever you’re not actually doing it and constantly planning and obsessing over your next “fix”
- Your mood and self esteem rises and falls according to what’s going on in your online world
- You put your job at risk by engaging in social media on the boss’s dime

Social Media is fun, useful, and has it’s place. However, it clearly becomes a problem when it escalates from just one more point of connection to your only means of connection it’s no longer a choice but a driving need.

In some cases it is obvious what they offer like YouTube but with others it can be hard to judge if they are right for you, so you register anyway, just in case. If only there where a way to link ALL the social networks together. This can not be done you say, well that is what they said about computer networks when when Linux, MS and Mac where running their own networks, now look at them.

One day…

Even then, though, I still find myself largely devoted to Twitter, a handful of blogs, and to some extent FriendFeed and Tumblr. Those last two, for me, are a bit of an attempt to catch content that’s more topical or in media sharing space; videos or pictures for instance.

The challenge for heavy users is always going to be the decision to add a new tool to their frequent use; what value does it offer?

The challenge for these environments and tools is always going to be an effort to insert themselves into the repertoire. Either you make yourself available where I’m at already, or I’m going to think long and hard about adoption.

And that’s coming from an early, motivated adopter.