• by Mark Naples , September 2, 2004

Tom Hespos' piece this week got me to thinking. Many in our industry have been talking about what he termed 'media withdrawal,' which begs another question that others have addressed, i.e. media addiction.

Tom's vacation in the isles of Maine sounded wonderful, and I was reminded of a column I wrote last year from Baja Sur, Mexico. Maybe I would have suffered from media withdrawal there like he did too, except there were broadband connections available everywhere on the cheap throughout the peninsula. I regarded it as a good thing that enabled me to keep in touch with home easily. Maybe I should have heeded to teasing of my fishing partners and stayed out of the cyber café altogether - who knows? They might be right in saying that I have "a problem."

We live in an era during which doctors are diagnosing patients with something called Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) which many are beginning to assert is developed as a direct result of too much exposure to electronic media by infants and kids at a very young age. I used to be a seventh grade teacher, back before ADD was called anything along those lines. Teachers I worked with usually found characteristics commonly associated with ADD in kids who were used to watching maybe five hours of TV a day - or more. When recent studies began to make this connection more directly, I wondered what took them so long.

Let's face it, the proliferation of media in the United States is a bit much, and its effects on young people are already manifest. What used to be short-term trends among a minority of teenagers 20 years ago becomes full generational fashion now within weeks, since so many kids are exposed to so much media, and so much of that media has consolidated, making what's considered "cool" far more about convention than creativity.

Try convincing any teenager today that so-called "reality TV" actually involves multiple takes and you'll see what I mean. The kid won't believe you. Even worse, they'll probably think you're subversive, after all, why wouldn't they believe what the networks tell them.

So, I think the answer I pose at the top is a resounding yes, media withdrawal does imply media addiction, and yes, media addiction in this country is alive and growing.

As I began writing this piece today, The New York Times provided me with another supporting point. Anyone who read David Pogue's piece on portable video players probably thought one of two things: Either A. That is SO cool. Or B. The Unabomber, question his methods all you want, was right and the proliferation of media will continue to isolate us and corrode our natural communities.

Okay, maybe some of you thought other things. I, for one, think it's really, really cool and that Microsoft's Windows Mobile Portable Media Center will be among my next electronic purchases. But, now that this cool gadget is upon us, just in time for Labor Day, and similar vacations where we get away from most media, how long will it be before its cousin, whatever is next in micro-appliance development, arrives - fully able to stream video or access broadcast signals?

Whenever I see a friend using a Trio or similar device, I always make the same silly joke, about whether or not they subscribe to HBO on it. It won't be long before such hand held gadgets will be able to do everything we can imagine today, and then I guess it won't be long before we get TiVo accounts for them to be able to manage what we see, and redact advertising.

At least that means we'll be managing our addiction, right?