© Evil Tv Wings AbstractWatch me!
The first thing she does after waking up is virtually check in with her friends again.
She keeps her page up and active all day, every day. It's a ritual, and Towner makes no apologies for it.
Suzanne Ricks' habit is TiVo.
After working all day as director of the day-care center at Four Mile Creek Baptist Church in Varina, Ricks comes home to a TV menu more appetizing than a meal: Dr. Oz and the national evening news to start, followed by whatever favorite shows happen to be on - The Mentalist, Dexter, NCIS, CSI.
She often has to delete shows before watching them because her TiVo, capable of recording up to 48 shows in high-definition, often only has 2 percent of space available because she records so much.
Ricks estimates her daily TV watching at about four hours - and that's with fast-forwarding through the commercials.
Now you're thinking, so they have hobbies. No one is getting hurt, so what's the big deal? Right?
Well, the big deal is that they aren't really hobbies - they're addictions. Soft addictions.
The term, coined in 1991 by author, life coach and lifestyles expert Judith Wright, refers to any seemingly harmless activity that is, in some way, detrimental to the way we live.
"If you're doing some activity and you get buzzed or a little anxious, you can't remember how long you've been doing it . . . if you're in that zone, then it's a soft addiction," said the Chicago-based Wright. "On the other hand, if you're doing something and feel more present and grounded, that's a passion. You shouldn't confuse the two."
There is also a distinction between a soft addiction and a hard addiction.
"With hard addictions, like drugs or alcohol, they can actually kill you. You don't die from soft addictions - but you don't really live, either," Wright said.
Soft addictions also aren't specific to any age category - Towner is 39, Ricks is 58 and Richmonder Daniel Pitts, who said he spends two to six hours a day playing the online adventure game RuneScape and one to four hours daily browsing YouTube, is 15.
While the most common soft addictions are technologically motivated - Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, Internet surfing, BlackBerry-fixation, TV - they also can include overindulging in shopping, eating and gossiping.
"Just think of how many people follow Britney Spears on Twitter," said Wright, the author of The Soft Addiction Solution and The One Decision. "It becomes this all-consuming thing, every time there is a new technology. These habits take up our time and often cost money, but the biggest impact I've seen is that they numb your feelings. You can't feel or connect with yourself or other people."
Towner said she is tied to Facebook for the opposite reason - so she can connect with people.
She also believes that her Facebook habit doesn't interfere with her personal life.
"I think it gives me more time with my husband because once I know what my friends are doing [on Facebook], I don't have to check in with them," said Towner, the former morning show co-host at WMXB-FM radio. "I want to know what these people are up to. It piques my curiosity. It's really important for me to know, which is weird and I don't know why. But to me, it's an excellent communication tool in the world we live in right now. It's an excellent way for us to be connected to all of these people we know and really like, but can't be on the phone with every night."
Wright would argue that while Towner is developing one level of communication, she's neglecting another - the one that leads to intimacy and true connection.
"Neuroscientists are finding that there is a part of the brain that gets a buzzy high and another center that gives us a different form of satisfaction. That one is bred by voice-to-voice, heart-to-heart connection. Those are the things you need to be feeding," Wright said.
Towner feels that a Facebook relationship is better than none at all.
"I don't have time to be on the phone with 50 friends every night," she said. "But in 10 or 15 minutes, I can zap off a 'yay for you' if I see something good has happened in someone's day or an 'I'm sorry' if they're having a bad day."
But, Towner also admits that on a recent morning, when the Facebook site was down temporarily, it made her feel disconnected.
"I got a little nervous about it, and I guess that's what an addiction is."
Marty Babits, a psychotherapist who teaches at the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy in New York, offered a more clinical explanation of soft addictions on a neurobiological level.
"Individuals suffering from soft addictions cannot rid themselves of feeling that something is wrong - something is wrong that having an impeccable Facebook-Twitter presence can ameliorate, or that having a tailored-to-perfection TiVo collection can soothe," he said. "Like any addiction, the attainment of the desired object leads only to further seeking of the desired object - never to satisfaction."
For someone such as Ricks, the addiction isn't necessarily a matter of having a perfect TiVo collection, but developing a reliance on a form of media that aggrandizes an already-formed diversion, such as TV-watching.
In addition to her high-def TiVo, Ricks has another TiVo unit in her guest room, "supposedly for the grandchildren," she said with a knowing laugh.
"I definitely think TiVo has changed the way I watch TV. In the old days, I might have taped some shows [on a VCR], but nothing to the extent of with my TiVo. This is just so easy."
Watching TV is still one of the most prevalent soft addictions, according to Wright, who jokes that since the average American watches TV four hours a day, "it's like a part-time job!"
Ricks is even more aligned with that average based on a survey released last March from Ball State University's Center for Media Design.
After studying 350 people for a year, researchers found that they spent more than eight hours a day in front of some form of screen - TV, computer, cell phone, GPS. Additionally, those between the ages of 18 and 24 watched about 3½ hours per day of TV, while those 65 and older spent an average of seven hours with their favorite shows.
It appears that even with the ubiquitous and ever-changing forms of new media, the old faithful - television - is the hardest soft addiction to break.
Considering the devil we know is already such a challenge to avoid, Wright cautioned that in the future, avoiding the trap of soft addictions will be even more daunting.
"The media isn't going to go away," she said. "We just need to be in charge of our relationship with it."
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