By Tim Ferguson, 14 March 2008 12:40
NEWS
Email addiction is taking over people's lives with almost half of silicon.com readers unable to stop themselves constantly checking their inbox during the day.
The latest silicon.com poll of more than 100 readers asked how often people check their email and 44 per cent of those who responded said they check it all the time.
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Just over a quarter of respondents (26 per cent) aren't much less addicted, checking their inbox every fifteen minutes.
But 23 per cent of readers are able to wait a little bit longer for their email fix, restricting their inbox checking to once per hour.
A few particularly restrained people said they only check their inbox once a day - although it could be argued that in this age of digital communication they may end up slightly out of the loop.
A lucky one per cent said they have someone else to check their emails for them, presumably so they can get on with something more important.
Perhaps unsurprisingly but nevertheless showing the sheer ubiquity of email, none of the respondents said they don't ever check their email.
Comments
There are 3 comments. Join the discussion
1. David Gaskill
I don't understand why you describe frequent e-mail checking as "e-mail addiction". I normally have my phone plugged into the wall socket so that people can ring me - am I "phone addicted"?
My e-mail accounts check for mail every 2 minutes and a popup appears briefly at the bottom of my screen to tell me who it is from and displays the first line of the message. This enables me to decide what priority it should receive.
Of course efficient spam filtering is necessary if this is not to become distracting - but efficient spam filtering is necessary anyway to avoid wasting significant time deleting it from the inbox.
David
2. Ollie Clark
The poll asked how often you check your email, not how often you feel you have to check it. I answered "constantly" because I tend to have my email program open and quickly check what's come in as it comes in but it's not as if I couldn't turn it off for a couple of weeks. I think you're making up an email addiction epidemic on the basis of flawed data.
3. Karen Challinor
as other respondees have said I think your data collection and subsequent analysis is flawed
the options available on your form presuppose a particular method of checking email
now I start my email program when my machine starts and I stop it when I turn my machine off
it then checks for email about once every five minutes and I'm notified when it arrives and I deal with it at my earliest convenience after the notification
so what response should I have given to your form as I'm either checking constantly, having someone else check for me (my email application in this case) or I'm never checking as I wait for notification before dealing with email