It's Saturday morning. You wake up out of the fog. You manage to open one eye and reach for the iPhone. You push the little round button so you can say good morning to your friends. Since the rest of the family is still asleep you think “hmmm… I'll just go into my office and send a few tweets, see what's circlin' on Google+ and upload the photos from the seminarthis week to Facebook.”
Well, that was at 7:00 am. It's now 11:00 and you are still in your jammies with messy hair. Your significant other has made breakfast. The kids are watching cartoons & fighting and the house is a mess. The big plans of mowing the lawn, cleaning the garage and hittin' the gym all before noon are history. You would much prefer to stay in the safety and quiet of your little tweet heaven just for one more hour.
You have experienced this situation before. You have friends who do the same thing. You have wondered if you might have a slight addiction problem to the twitter bird and all his friends. Below are a few (50 of them) signs that you might want to seek professional help.
Disclaimer: I am a marketing nut and by no means should you take the advice written in this post to determine if you need professional help. Only you can figure out if you have the will power to put your tweet weapon of choice away this weekend!
I wrote a similar post “60 Signs You're Addicted to Social Media & Twitter” earlier this year. Figured it was time for an update. I'm pretty certain there are no duplicates.
50 Signs of Social Media & Twitter Addiction & Need for Professional Help
1. You have a tweet station installed next to your toilet inclusive of a few mags, extra toilet paper & a special iPhone charger extension cord.
2. Your kids were jealous, so with a little Jerry riggin' the toilet tweet station now doubles as a Nintendo potty station.
3. Your cute little twitter bird dreams have unfortunately turned into nightmares of entire bird families.
4. The grocery store clerks are all trained on twitter & know your Twitter handle by heart. Too bad they don't tweet.
5. If you had to choose between one whole day without eating or one day without tweeting you would toss the eats & keep the tweets.
6. Granny officially knows what twitter is. By the time I write my next list granny will probably be tweeting.
7. If necessary you could type a tweet on your iPhone or Android with eyes closed.
8. You knew Google+ wouldn't kill Twitter no matter what they say.
9. Even the most unsocial savvy guy at most unsocial savvy client now tweets and love it.
10. Your kids can better explain social media than most of your clients.
11. Your kids have twitter handles of their nick names.
12. Your kids tell other kids their parents should really learn how to tweet.
13. Your dog has a twitter account and barks in 140.
14. You know the Klout score of your dogs twitter account.
15. According to Klout your dog has influence on YOU.
16. 140 x 1000 = number of days since you had a life.
17. Thanks to Foursquare you now know all of the other social media addicts in the area.
18. You have at least one social media stalker.
19. You have been proposed to at least 5 times on Twitter.
20. You at one time were mayor of your church.
21. When you go out to eat your 5 yr old always says “mom don't forget to check in.”
22. Your kids try to sell you on going to Chili's as they know they can get free chips and salsa for checking in
23. Your kids don't understand why you haven't put any of your own deals on Foursquare
24. Your kids are a top source for leads.
25. Kids at school know you by videos their parents have watched on YouTube.
26. You are no longer bothered by bullies & trolls. You laugh and also feel sorry for them.
27. Even if you don't frequent Empire Avenue often you still know your stock price within a few bucks.
28. You have a Google+ account but don't consider yourself addicted yet.
29. You know who @TwitJailWarden @TwitChiefJudge are.
30. You have been or know someone who has been in twitter jail.
31. You know the secret ninja api's & tools to avoid Twitter jail.
32. You already have the words in your head for almost every 80's tune that would be perfect for a viral video
33. You are glad not all of your neighbors and family are on Twitter or Google+
34. You can write an entire blog post on your iPhone while on the elliptical at the gym.
35. Your family has given up trying to understand what you do for work.
36. At least 80% of your family has de-friended you on Facebook.
37. You want to pull a big chunk of hair out of your head when you see people begging for Facebook likes.
38. You could place bets (and win) on the local small businesses in your area who will be out of business within 2 yrs who still think Internet is a fad.
39. You have fired a client (or 2) for refusing to acknowledge social media is about the people.
40. You wish you could quit your day job.
41. You may not have a day job if you don't get this social media addiction thing figured out.
42. You are thinking how you could implement #1 on this list to save time & keep your day job.
43. You can already think of at least 5 people to share this list with who are worse than you.
44. You are now questioning if you are more addicted or if your friends are.
45. You are now thankful you thought of at least one friend who is more addicted than you.
46. You are wondering if you are the only one of your friends who is seriously thinking about doing #1 on this list.
47. You read this entire post on a smart phone.
48. You will retweet this post via a smart phone.
49. You just now realized what an addiction you have. You wasted 2 min reading something that confirmed what you already know.
50. You are mad about #49 and know you better get back to work (your day job).
51. You read all the way to the bottom of this list. Need I say more?
Bonus: you are wondering why there are 51 signs and not 50. Don't recount them. Get a life!
p.s. I have not yet built a tweet station as referenced in #1.
What You Say?
How many of these are true for you? If at least 5 of them, might be time to put the mobile phone down for at least a couple hours. There is more to life than tweeting, Google+, Facebook & LinkedIn, right?? ;)
