Not ecstasy, email. America Online and Opinion Research Corporation report that people are addicted to email.

Here are their findings:

• 77% of people have more than one email account (average: 2.8 accounts)
• The average person spends 1 hour a day checking email
• 61% check personal email at work
• 23% check email in bed
• 12% while in class
• 8% while in business meetings
• 6% check email while in the bathroom
• 4% check while driving
• 1% check while in church

That’s a lot of email checking. But I take issue with their claim that we must be addicted to email because they left out two major aspects.

1. Nearly every device known is email compatible.
You can check your email with your PDA, your cell phone, your blackberry, your Treo, you tablet PC, your webTV. Hell, I could practically check my email with my wedding ring. In other words, we’re surrounded by email. With so many things jacked into email, it’s hard not to check it.

2. People check email wherever they are because they are either bored or busy.
People don’t check email because they are hooked… they check email because they are bored. The college prof is teaching to the lowest common denominator. You actually read the chapter, but he has to teach to the kids that didn’t. So what are you going to do? Check email. Maybe that hottie 3 rows over will finally email you back.

Rev. Firebrand is talking (again) about how homosexuality is the highway to the Devil, and since you don’t agree with it you zone out (and grab your blackberry). But you keep going back to church because all that hate-mongering talk is suppose to make you feel closer to God – in a society where those that are supposedly Christian are taking us to war (and lying about it).

Why do people check email why in their car? Because it’s super easy (see point 1) and what the fuck else are you going to do in your car? We are trained to be master multitaskers and there just isn’t enough to do in a car to satisfy that. After you turn on your radio or pop in a CD, what are you going to do? Pop open your cell phone and check messages.

Checking email while pinching off a grumpy in the can… absolutely! My days are packed. Drop the kids off at day care, try to cram in as much work as I can around countless meetings so I don’t have to take it home (which I always do), then I pick the kids up from day care, take one to soccer practice, go home make dinner, play/bath/homework the kids, get them in bed, field a call from my parents. By the time I do that, it’s 9pm, easy. So hell yeah I’m going to pull out my blackberry while I’m sitting on the can. If it saves me 5 minutes later, well, that’s like saving 5 hours. Why? Because I still have to finish writing that memo for work the next day and prepare for a presentation. I can do that while I lay in bed, watching the shows I DVR’d because I can’t watch them when they are really on. While I’m tapping away on my laptop, Thunderbird will be checking my email every 10 minutes.

And that lunch meeting I had to sit through… boring. So I check my email because I’m still waiting to hear from a vendor if he got the files he needed. I have to keep my job because of this bad economy, if I loose it there is no telling how long it’ll take me to find another one. And keeping my job has more to do with keeping my vendor’s on track than sitting through another pie chart-filled meeting with the CFO.

Am I addicted to email? No, I’m addicted to getting my job done the best I can so I still spend time with my kids and hopefully raise them to be smart enough to invent a better way to conduct business so that I don’t have check email on the toilet.

Shitting in peace. That’s my life goal.