(Photo: Hulu)

Now that boom times are here again, it's not all that unusual to come across a company whose big swagging concept sounds like it was lifted from the pitch deck of Entertainment 720, the fictional startup from the sitcom geniuses at Parks and Recreation. (Should you ever find yourself in such a situation, it's best to imagine Aziz Ansari's voice squeaking tech jargon at you from the founder's mouth. For instance, business development is definitely getting abbreved to bizzy-bizzy dev.)

Thanks to the b-plot of last night's episode of Parks and Rec, however, you no longer have to wonder, say, who Tom Haverford looks up on Wikipedia (Ray J) or how he feels about that vaguely racist Indian guy with turban emoji ("Hold up, didn't Japanese people invent this?").

Mr. Haverford's storyline followed a court appearance for crashing into a fire hydrant for tweeting while driving. To make the punishment fit the crime, the judge sentences him to a week without screens and, with some help from Ron Swanson, Mr. Haverford learns a very important lesson along the way.

Tom reads his texts out loud in court and says the word hashtag every time:

"9.15 Four green lights in a row. Hashtag: blessed"

9.17 Drive faster, blue civic. Daaaaaaamn. Hashtag: soccermoms"

9.18 Gotta pass this lady on the ejkerkj.

That's when I hit the fire hydrant. Sorry, allegedly hit the fire hydrant.

9.20 Just hit a fire hydrant, but I survived. Hashtag: Unbreakable. Hashtag: What's Mr. Glass up to these days? Hashtag: Why no sequel?"

Tom responds to his no screens for a week punishment, smartphone in hand:

"No please send me to jail. One last tweet? Press send, bailiff! PRESS SEND!"

Favorited by Jean Ralphio, naturally. (Photo: Hulu)

Tom tries to cope:

"I can't use screens for a week? Big deal, I'm adapting! I built a real life Pinterest board. [Bangs finger into corkboard repeatedly] "I really wish you could click those."

(Photo: Hulu)

Tom tries to get his screen fix by watching Jerry's monitor from a hand mirror:

Tom: "Oh my god, Jerry, when you check your email you go to Altavista and type, 'Please go to yahoo.com?' You don't have your email bookmarked? Do you have any bookmarks?"

Jerry: "What's bookmarks?"

Tom: "God, Jerry! You don't deserve the internet!"

Ron Swanson tries to help Tommy by taking him out to his cabin in the woods where they chop wood:

"Ouww, I got stung by the wood. Oh no, it's a splinter, I need to get on WebMD now. I need an iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy. Something with 4G, there's no time for the Edge Network!"

Ron encourages Tom to purge "the garbage" from his system. "Talk about all of the things you do on those screens and let the words just float away into the fresh air," he says. Tom obliges:

"Worth a shot. Ok, everyday I start by hitting up Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram. Sometimes, I like to throw in LinkedIn, for the professional shaaaawties.

Then I like to go on Reddit. Reddit is great because it has all the important links.

Wikipedia! Mankind's greatest invention. You can learn about anything. Take Ray J for example. We all know he's a singer, he's Brandy's brother, and he was in that classic sex tape with Kim Kardashian. But did you also know he's Snoop Dog's cousin and he was in the 96th Tim Burton movie "Mars Attacks"?!! Suddenly, you're on the "Mars Attacks" page.

I love gChat, you can talk to anybody! I hit up brad.pitt. It wasn't the actor. It was actually a guy named Brad that's a teacher in Pittsburgh. We don't have a lot in common, but we chat quite a bit.

Emojis are little cartoons you text instead of words. Instead of saying, 'What up, boo?' you can type 'What up' and then a cute little ghost because that means boo. There's even a little Indian guy, but he has a turban on, which I think is racist. But the Asian guy also has a racist hat on. And it's like, hold up didn't Japanese people invent this?!

Podcasts! They're a million of them and they're all amazing! Jean Ralphio and I have one called Nacho Average Podcast where we rate different kinds of nachos."

During the after school special part of the episode, Ron tries to get to the bottom of Tom's obsession with screens:

"Ron: Why do you need to be constantly distracted, Tom?

Tom: The truth is, I spend a lot of time looking at screens because recently a lot of the stuff in my real life isn't going that great so I'd rather play DoodleJump than think about that, ok?"

Hashtag: Daaaaaaaamn. What does that say about the rest of us, then? Aside from the concluding message, the only other downside to the episode was a commercial for Intuit's new mobile credit card swiper. Where's the Jack Dorsey love, @TomHaverford?

Lean in to the CHAOS

A newly betrothed Business Insider writer has a bone to pick with Facebook: Getting engaged ruined the social network for her. "Just like that, everything changed," she reports. "Facebook knew I was betrothed. And it didn't waste any time clogging up my news feed with ads" related to weddings, weddings and also weddings.

A few relatively-relevant ads are hardly going to make my Newsfeed any junkier than it already is. (Spotify! So-and-so shared a link! So-and-so likes Sprint!) As a newly-engaged woman, however, I've found the deluge of Facebook ads is only part of the story. The Internet and its advertisers, it seems, are all conspiring to make me a cuckoo-crazy-crackers bridezilla.

Here's a brief guide to what happens once you make it official:

First you change your Facebook status, and even as the congratulations roll in, so do the Facebook ads for places like the wedding dress brand Pronovias. (Also, the occasional gym ad? Let's not even go there, Facebook.) You're not ready to buy anything yet, but those ads are an insistent reminder that you've got about a year to plan this thing so you better get cracking, missy.

So you hop over to Pinterest, which suddenly becomes approximately one thousand times more interesting. There's an entire browsing category devoted to weddings, and if you thought the community's home decor pins were aspirational, you ain't seen nothing yet. Spend a few hours on the platform and you'll become convinced that an indie D.I.Y. wedding in a mossy forest glade where your bridesmaids carry baskets of apples and all the guests receive hand-painted umbrellas as party favors is a GREAT idea. And just think! Now brands can track all this.

You spend a lot of time on Etsy, running the numbers on hand-made invitations and wondering whether those cute lacy headbands would make you look like a doofus.

Then it's time to start really planning in earnest, which is when you graduate to The Knot, which looks a lot like Pinterest but contains real information about potential vendors. You begin calling venues and caterers and florists and perhaps keeping track of your options in a Google Doc (which is probably the only piece of technology you actually need during this process; everything else is an opportunity for up-selling).

You begin to receive near-constant email offers from The Knot's many, many, oh so very many sponsors.

You realize most of the vendors on The Knot cost a small fortune, and so you disappear into the rabbit hole of boards like Weddingbee and Wedding Wire, searching variations on "affordable nice wedding." You begin scouring Yelp. You spend a lot of time Google Image searching venues that sound suspicious affordable, on the lookout for decorations that look a little too Goodfellas. 

In the meantime, there's years worth of wedding shows you can mainline on Netflix. Possibly centuries. Say Yes to the Dress, Wedded to Perfection, Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta, Whose Wedding Is It Anyway, Say Yes to the Dress: Randy Knows Best. (Oh and of course now people can see what you're watching on Netflix, so yeah, your groom-to-be is going to know about this new addiction.)

"Do we need a wedding website?" you ask yourself. "Wait, do we need a wedding app? At the very least we need an Instagram hashtag for day-of photos." Obviously.

Let's see what kind of targeted ads Googling "elope to Las Vegas cheap plane tickets" gets me.

"Any horse that has the name 'Awesome' in it? I bet on it!" Walter Hessert told us earlier this week from inside one of those noise cancel-ish sofa pods in the south wing of General Assembly. Also present in said pod: his brother Thomas Hessert. Along with a third brother (Bill) and their CTO Eric Gay (no relation), the Hesserts are the cofounders behind Derby Jackpot, an addictive online game that almost made Betabeat late for our meeting.

Showing up for an appointment seemed more professional than waiting to see if we'd parlayed the $2 offered to beta users into something more, so we sucked it up and hopped on the N. But it was a heady example of why companies like Zynga are counting on real money gaming to offer real revenue in the otherwise hits-dependent social gaming industry that relies on ad revenue or virtual sheep. 

Tom Hessert, left, and Walter Hessert

Users who visit Derby Jackpot's HTML 5 site--the company is opting for the mobile web over an app--are greeted with a big countdown clock at the top of the page that tells you when the horse race is happening. Horses are displayed according to their actual names and the odds of winning (at the time.) You can place different kinds of bets--"monkey bets" offer higher payoffs than "grandma bets"--and chat with other players. Once the race starts in real-time, you can see feed from the track. The suggested betting amounts are small, and it's easy to keep an eye on the race while toggling between tabs.

Unlike other horse betting sites, Derby Jackpot's overall effect has the come hither look of a slot machine with the friendly, simplified interface of your average social game.

"It’s built for social gamers and casual players," said Tom. "We didn’t want it to look hardcore at all. Or too intense. Or huge numbers. Just for players who want to come and test their luck and have fun."

Derby Jackpot expects to come out of private beta early next year. And thanks to a new partnership with the payments company Dwolla--hyped during a recent gambling party with Derby Jackpot winnings flashing on high-defs TV screens--users can take out their earnings immediately rather than wait for a check in the mail.

The idea came to the Hesserts during a trip to the Preakness, said Tom. The machines were complicated and the racing lingo intimidating, but it had all the components of the core gaming experience. Especially after he won $25 on 5:1 odds. "So we looked at it like why haven't we done this before and why isn't it easy to do online? Why do you only hear about this maybe once a year during the Derby or the Preakness?"

Bill Hessert, a data scientist, had been studying horse racing while getting a masters degree in quantitative finance in Princeton and knew that the 50,000 live races that happen 364 days a year (ponies get the day off on Christmas) offered ample opportunities. As a research project, he had been working with the Jockey Club to study data like efficiencies and handicapping. In fact, as Betabeat mentioned back in April, Freakonomics author and economist Steven Levitt, one of Bill's former professors, is an advisor to the startup, which also boasts an advisor from Zynga.

The brothers are still tight-lipped about the "billionaire" investor, who helped contribute to the $1 million they raised in seed funding. However, they did say Derby Jackpot's team of seven is well capitalized and not looking to raise.

They also maintain that they're not looking to get acquired, should Mark Pincus come sniffing around, which seems inevitable. Almost every question during Zynga's last earnings call was about their partnership to offer real money poker games in the U.K. Derby Jackpot, on the other hand, is able to get into the U.S. market because unlike the crackdown on online poker, online horse racing is legal in 29 states.

In order to let off-track-betting (OTB) locations call in their bets to tracks, said Walter, the Wire Act, which prohibits placing wagers across state lines, made an exemption for pair-mutuel horse wagering. "Gradually that’s evolved into including Internet ADWs or advanced deposit wagers and that’s been updated in all the online gambling laws," added Tom. Derby Jackpot is required by law to ask for the last four digits of your social security number and address.

The company's relationship with regulators and individual track owners might be enough to keep competitors (ehem) from simply copying their concept. Track owners may not be a tech-savvy bunch, but they've had rudimentary APIs in place to serve OTBs and casino for decades. "If you're betting on horses that are running around a track in Philadelphia, your bets are going to that track and betting against all the other bets," Walter explained.

"They could just copy our interface," he admitted, but navigating the industry is tough. Derby Jackpot has contracts with 100 tracks in the U.S., although not exclusive ones. It has deals with video providers and went through the year-long regulatory process. The company has rev share deals with the track owners as well. "It’s like a gas station," said Walter. "A gas station sells lottery tickets, you get a small percentage of each dollar bet. We don’t take any of the players winnings," adding, "At the end of the day, you have to get permission from the tracks to put your users’ wagers in their pools."

Among beta users, the average player typically deposits $25, and usually plays for two hours or so. "Some people like to go bigger, some people like to play the Granny bet all day long. Literally you can play that all day long. If you pick the favorite in the Granny bet, chances are you’re going to win," said Tom.

During a chat session with Derby Jackpot's fellow friendly beta users, we were buoyed by one user fondly remembering the day Walter "hit $947.00." Sadly, despite an influx of $10 offered to party-goers and a one-time high of $18.40, our account is now at 40 cents. Betabeat came close to Dwolla-ing $25, and the cha-king sound to let us know the first race just started makes us want to pull the trigger. The surprisingly fun social features also help suck you in. As do the the stream of tweets announcing tips and winnings, although our Twitter feed might be biased.

@andrewjbryk also don't bet until under 2 minutes before. odds are not locked in and change rapidly at end.

— Alexander Taub (@ajt) November 29, 2012

The public version will enable even more interaction with players. "There’s a lot of very complex things that happen in horse racing that take some creativity to turn them into a super product," Walter said. "So we’ve really worked out a lot of that. Now we’re just making it more robust in a social sense."

According to the countdown clock luring us in, Betabeat has 53 minutes and 49 seconds to decide if we're gonna pony up for the next race.

(Photo: Today's Picks)

There's already email addiction, Facebook addiction and wholesale Internet addiction. Next up on the psychological disorders docket? Kickstarter addiction: people who are "addicted" to the rush of finding and backing fledgling projects on Kickstarter.

The notion of “Kickstarter addiction,” as defined by VentureBeat, encapsulates the do-gooder rush and risk-averse anxiety rooted in crowdfunding. Throwing money at half-formed ideas and projects is kind of like gambling, argues VentureBeat, except you don’t have to be situated on a sketchy boardwalk and coated in cigarette smoke to get your fix. There's just one snag in their theory. The only evidence of this "growing number of people" addicted to Kickstarter is a single thread on the Geek and Sundry message boards.

Some serial Kickstarter backers justify their compulsions as an act of generosity. “I feel like I’m not a terribly creative person myself, but by enabling others to express their creativity, I might be helping in some small way,” one backer told VentureBeat. Of course, this is conveniently ignoring the fact that contributing to a Kickstarter campaign isn't a charitable write-off: backers also expect to get some tangible good in return.

As far as bad habits go, being addicted to giving away money to enable someone else's creative vision won't exactly land you on Intervention. Still, we eagerly await MTV’s investigative take: True Life: I’m Addicted to Crowdfunding.

Sure you are. (Photo: xkcd)

Sometimes, it feels like the Internet is one big, never-ending challenge to one's powers of self-control. Sure, you could sleep... or you could watch two hours of Say Yes to the Dress on Netflix. (Theoretically, of course.) Cleaning out your closet is one option... and this slideshow of "20 Dogs Who Don't Want the Summer to End" is another.

But if ever you find yourself unable to disconnect for an entire day, perhaps you can take some solace from this report, which says that yes, Internet addiction is a real thing and, what's more, it's rooted in your genes. It is, therefore, not your fault that you can't ignore your FarmVille game for more than a day without getting itchy palms.

CNET says:

Researchers from the school's departments of psychology and neuroscience report in the September 2012 issue of the Journal of Addiction Medicine that a simple variation on the CHRNA4 gene results in a significantly higher prevalence of Internet addiction -- and particularly in women.

According to the author of the study:

"The current data already shows that there are clear indications for genetic causes of Internet addiction... If such connections are better understood, this will also result in important indications for better therapies."

Of 843 people interviewed by researchers, an alarming 132 of them demonstrated behavior like "all their thoughts revolve around the Internet during the day, and they feel their well-being is severely impacted if they have to go without it."

When E.M. Forster said "only connect," this is not what he meant.

(Photo: Joy of Tech)

If you spent the entire weekend slumped on your couch deep in the wilds of Reddit or mindlessly clicking the Stumbleupon button, here is some good news for your Monday morning: According to a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, Internet addiction is supported largely by anecdotal evidence, so "It's not a clear enough syndrome that you can say at this point it's clearly a disease." Huh.

Dr. Charles O'Brien chaired the working group that was responsible for determining whether or not Internet addiction should be classified as an official disorder. Ultimately, the group decided that more research needed to be conducted before your World of Warcraft obsession could officially be called a sickness. We think we know a few people who'd make some worth test subjects, though.

Even more curious than their reluctance to acknowledge our inability to unplug, is the way that some doctors are treating Internet and gaming addiction:

There we met with three young men who had been in some form of treatment for their obsession with video games -- everything from "talk therapy" with counselors to "virtual-reality" treatment, which is designed to create negative associations between the player and the game they can't stop playing.

Curing an addiction to virtual reality with virtual reality? *Insert Inception joke here*

The Internet asifa at Citi Field.

On Sunday, 40,000 mostly Hasidic Jewish men in black hats and black suits gathered at Citi Field for a series of speeches concerning the corrupting influence of the Internet. The talks were broadcast to the JumboTron, betwixt the oversized bottles of Cholula censored with a white cloth over the label, which shows a woman.

The 7 train from Grand Central had become packed with men in black, all in a fine mood, before we poured out at the Mets-Willets Point train station like kids on a field trip. Now there were all kinds of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men in the stadium: fat, skinny, young, old, short, tall, with glasses, without beards, wearing watches, smoking cigarettes, talking on cellphones. "Hats off! Hats off!" the ticket-takers barked as the throng of yidden crowded around the entrance to left field. Jewish Reporter, one of the few media outlets approved by the organizers, said on Twitter that it was one of the biggest crowds the stadium had ever seen.

Yes, the stadium was full of men, and the women's bathrooms were reportedly locked. Yet there were at least three females present: a ticket-taker, an usher, and me, in a pair of $15 Payless loafers, my brother's dress clothes, and a donated kippah. Oh, and the white duct tape around my chest, G.I. Jane style.

I tested my disguise at Duane Reade and the 6 train and was relieved to see I wasn't getting any longer-than-usual stares; but it wasn't until the first Hasid asked me for directions that I breathed a sigh of relief. Or would have, if the duct tape weren't so tight.

I gave a monosyllabic response to the lost Hasid; the plan was to keep my eyes down and my mouth shut, or pretend to talk on my cell phone. "Maybe you shouldn't talk to anyone," my editor had cautioned that morning as I was preparing to infiltrate the men-only rally. "You definitely have the voice of a 100-pound girl," my boyfriend said.

Silence turned out to be impossible. Orthodox men in large gatherings are rather jolly, as it turns out, although the content of the speeches suggested a time of great siege. The Hasids were cracking jokes about the Mets in English, and perhaps the Mets but presumably other things in Yiddish, and I had several brushes with conversation. "I hope there will be English," one said, noting my non-Hasidic costume. Another tried to help me find my seat.

The most terrifying interaction happened on the way in. A very old rabbi with long gray hair reached out his hand and started pumping my arm up and down. "What brings you here?" he asked.

I had not prepared a backstory at all. Maybe I could be a tourist, who spoke another language that no one would know?

I decided to be an NYU student instead. A large part of the movement against the Internet is due to the prevalence of pornography there; the Jewish site guardyoureyes.com is almost entirely dedicated to inventing new euphemisms for nudity and sex: "the dark side of the Internet," "inappropriate material," "full blown addiction."

I put on my best "guilty porn addict" face. "Personal interest," I answered.

The rabbi smiled. And kept asking me questions. Where was I from? Where do I live? What was my name? When he finally stopped roiling my arm, I hung my blushing face and tried to melt back into the crowd—but the rabbi behind him smiled and asked if I had a Hebrew name. "No," I said quickly, and turned around lest I be subjected to another line of questioning.

Inside, Citi Field had turned to monochrome. Jews had been arriving by bus, car and train since early afternoon. "Over the past few days the discussion has been not if you’re going but how you’re going," Lakewood Local, an online news source for the conservative New Jersey community, wrote early in the day. It was a beautiful night for an asifa. The organizers, a group called Ichud HaKehilos, which advocates for purity in a time of technology, had set up two long tables in the corner across from home plate. The tables were filled with rabbis were praying, chatting, sipping seltzer and watching themselves on the JumboTron. "For many, many of us, the reality of life requires interaction with modern technology, the use of the Internet," read the English caption on one of the opening speeches.

Many of the speeches were in Yiddish, with intermittent English translation. As the speakers vented, pausing for the occasional plane flying overhead, some of them getting very worked up, a contact at the rally texted on-the-fly translations. "Aveyra means evil thing. Breaches of tzinus—tzinus means modesty. Yetzer hara is Satan."

What about chyos, we asked?

"Wild animals," he wrote back. "Basic message was that Jews are pure and by going on the Internet—especially to social networking sites, it transforms them into a level equivalent to wild animals and makes them susceptible to Satan." UPDATE, 12:15 p.m. A commenter writes: "But they didn't say "chayos" (chyos), animals. It's 'chiyus,' life force, or raison d'etre. Like 'His whole chiyus is playing tennis.'" (As in, "His whole chiyus is Facebook.")

Especially passionate was Rav Ephraim Wachsman, rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Meor Yitzchok in Monsey, New York, who opened the rally, closed the rally, and spoke at length in the middle.

The problem with the Internet is not just that it allows for easier and quicker access to inappropriate material, he said. Its effects are more pervasive. "It's a culture, it's a way of life," he said. "This is reprogramming our way of life! It's changing who we are!"

Josh Nathan-Kazis, writing in the Jewish Forward, transcribed more. "You can see it in the ebbing eyes of the younger generation, of the jittery inattentiveness of our children, in the flippant and callous language and attitude, the cynicism … the unbelievable breaches of [modesty]."

There wasn't much I could quibble with in the speech. The Internet is about instant gratification? It's "fleeting and empty"? It causes us to waste productive hours? It threatens the preservation of isolated communities with strong traditions, such as the ultra-Orthodox Jews? Well, yes, but...

"Children are being turned into click-vegetables!" Rabbi Wachsman declared.

Some Jews are already enslaved, as if caught in a spider web. "The webbed mind has to struggle to understand Torah," he said. "There are those who sit at home and click and click into oblivion."

This was getting bleak.

The rabbis behind the anti-Internet movement have come under criticism by some in the community for two main reasons. For one, the rabbis are mostly very old, and their understanding of the Internet is limited. Some community members feel they do not realize how important it is for doing business, or that it can be a force for good, as with HebrewBooks.org, a repository of more than 40,000 free Hebrew books.

The second cause of objection is more damning. Last week, the New York Times wrote about child sexual abuse in Orthodox communities, and the group's policy that such allegations be vetted through a rabbi before being routed to city authorities. A group organized a small protest outside the rally under the shibboleth, "Not the problem." The group's Facebook page read: "We are fed up with rabbinical leaders' dismissive attitude towards sexual and physical violence against children. The internet is not the biggest problem we face. Protecting children and bringing molesters to justice should be our number one priority." The issue of child sex abuse was not discussed at the rally, although the health and success of children was invoked repeatedly.

"'It's true, we [rabbis] don't know about the Internet. You may know better. But we know from the fathers who cry out from their hearts for their children because they have strayed from the path," one speaker said.

Rav Don Segal opened his speech tearfully, crying as he invoked the long exile. He told the story of a bright, young scholar who had little children. The scholar could not find a job, and so he turned to the Internet. Gradually, he lost his way and became "spoiled." Eventually he left his family. "He had nothing!" the rabbi thundered.

The rabbis did not seem to present a totally united front, but most took a hard line: No Internet in the Jewish home. The Internet is only to be used for business with a filter when it is necessary to earn a living. Children who have Internet in the home should not be allowed to attend school.

Some of the lines provoked applause, but the audience was seeded with subversives. This reporter was live-tweeting from the asifa, and we weren't the only ones. We also glimpsed an iPhone, an Android phone, and saw one attendee clearly emailing from his BlackBerry—blatantly disregarding the tinny, disembodied voice of Rav Shmuel Halevi Wosner, who was speaking over the telephone from Israel. There were at least two sites broadcasting a live stream of the event. The blog JewishHumorCentral rounded up the best asifa jokes on Twitter. Someone put a video on YouTube.

Around 9:30 p.m., when the parade of rabbis showed no signs of flagging, the audience started getting restless. Attendees started shuffling up and down the stairs, and the perhaps-18-year-old sitting next to me had started rocking back and forth, though he was not in prayer. He ate the pretzels provided in the asifa goodie bag. He pulled a watch out of his pocket and looked at it. His friend started eating pretzels. Apparently, they had no phones. Outside the stadium, a Hasidic man in his mid-20s was trying to find a way into Citi Field. He'd been at the Arthur Ashe Stadium overflow venue, which reportedly had a paltry turnout and no English translation. "I didn't really understand what they were saying," he said.

Some were affected; a fellow live-tweeter said he planned to cut back, inspired by Rabbi Wachsman. Another tweeter mentioned he'd "lost" at least on person on BBM, BlackBerry's private text messaging, during the rally.

Not my contact, who texted his closing thoughts: "This event really isn't my cup of tea and won't affect my internet usage in any way shape or form. I think this forum was a huge waste of money and time and that there are real issues of importance affecting the orthodox Jews that should be addressed instead of regulating the Internet." The rally reportedly cost $1.5 million.

As I scurried to the train, a Hasid was stationed at the stairs, collecting money for something to do with hunger. "You'll be a big donor one day, young man," he told me.

Millenials are addicted to the Internet, the story says, even manifesting physical addiction symptoms and necessitating the existence of Internet rehab clinics.

A study by the International Center for Media and the Public Agenda asked 200 students at the University of Maryland to abstain from digital media including Internet, social media, phones and music for 24 hours. "Although I started the day feeling good, I noticed my mood started to change around noon. I started to feel isolated and lonely. I received several phone calls that I could not answer," wrote one student. "By 2:00 pm. I began to feel the urgent need to check my email, and even thought of a million ideas of why I had to. I felt like a person on a deserted island… I noticed physically, that I began to fidget, as if I was addicted to my iPod and other media devices, and maybe I am."

Cue the eyerolls! But some psychologist have posited that heavy Internet usage is changing neural pathways in the brain. "My research has raised some red flags about the effects on our psyche from these new technologies," Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, director of the Impulse Control Disorders Clinic at Stanford University, told Al Jazeera. "Think before you click," he advised.

Betabeat is familiar with social media addiction thanks to Twitter addicts Diana Adams and Laurel Snyder, who described the hold Twitter has over them. "I sleep with my phone under my pillow," Ms. Adams confessed to Betabeat. "But if you think that’s bad, you don’t know any real Twitterholics."

The first comment on the Al Jazeera story: "I've been Facebook free since October. It's hard. Sometimes, especially after a bad day, I just want a little taste of Facebook. But I know it's not good for me in the long run. So, I take it one day at a time, because I know I don't want to go back to that life."

The world needs to know about this dangerous threat. Know someone with a Twitter twitch or a Farmville fetish? Get them on A&E before more children die.

"I mean, how could you NOT be addicted?" -- Apple fans. (Photo: twitter.com/DiarioLaPrensa)

Are you sufficiently alarmed about the prospect of Internet and/or technological addiction? Because solicitous local tabloid the New York Daily News has gathered up all the symptoms of nomophobia, or the fear of being without one's smartphone, for all the hypochondriacs out there.

Among the signs:

"People check their phones up to 34 times a day," says Dr. Elizabeth Waterman, whose clients at Morningside Recovery Center are typically in treatment for other issues, but discover their obsession with their cell phones is a problem in itself.

Only 34 times a day? Most of us are at double that, probably. And remember that time two weeks ago you left the house without your smartblanket and it was like missing a limb? That's a symptom, too!

"One of the biggest things is anxiety or fear or panic at even the thought of losing their phone," she said. "They make sure their phone is constantly in their reach, obsessively checking the battery life, and take their phone into inappropriate places to use it."

Don't even pretend you don't tweet from the toilet.

In fact, it sounds like one of Silicon Alley's own might qualify. The News talked to Tumblr executive director Jessica Bennett, who someone needs to inform that denial is not a river in Egypt:

"This assessment was clearly not created for any normal human living in the digital age," she wrote via email. "Do I keep it within arm's length? What?! Duh."

Now that you're all duly convinced you're helplessly in the throes of addiction, we should probably mention that nomophobia isn't exactly a new plague sweeping across the world at pandemic rates of infection. Betabeat has previously written about millennials and their Internet addictions (they even show physical symptoms!), as well as the more specific manifestation that is Twitter addiction. Back in June, the Times compared smartphones to last century's addition of choice, the cigarette (specifically, the post-coital one, which is obviously the best kind). Nomophobia specifically has been covered in TechCrunch, the Daily Mail in 2012, the Daily Mail in 2008, IT World, and the LA Times.

Buried in the Daily News piece, however, is the admission that, "While nomophobia is not a clinical disorder — Dr. Waterman is quick to note it's not something doctors technically "diagnose" — it is categorized as a specific phobia, on par with a fear of flying."

In short: This is pretty much the rainbow party of dystopian tech trends. Fun to get the readers all aflutter; probably about as likely to become a serious, life-altering problem as having your face eaten off by someone tripping on bath salts.

Text neck, on the other hand...

Image by Carrot Creative

Diana Adams dreams in tweets. One hundred and forty characters at a time, the Atlanta-based computer consultant’s subconscious bubbles up. “Sometimes I am literally sending someone a message on Twitter and sometimes the ideas just kind of come out that way,” she told Betabeat recently.

On most nights Ms. Adams wakes up two or three times to check her Twitter stream and reply to @ messages from her nearly 50,000 followers. “I sleep with my phone under my pillow,” she confessed. “But if you think that’s bad, you don’t know any real Twitterholics.”

Living among media-obsessed New Yorkers, including some who employ two computers, one for work and one for TweetDeck, Betabeat assured her we did know a little something about the siren song of the micro-messaging service. “If I’m away from Twitter for more than an hour or two, I get nervous and break into a sweat,” she countered. O.K., we admitted, you win.

Ms. Adams’s voracious use of Twitter has earned her a score of 78 on Klout, a service that measures social media influence. This put her a little below President Obama, but a little above Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, who is among Ms. Adams’s many followers on the service.

The central focus of Ms. Adams’s activity is the blog Bit Rebels, where she is a writer along with two other bloggers she met through Twitter. The site is a sort of miniature version of the better known Mashable, covering social media, web culture and viral content with plucky optimism. Over the past two years Bit Rebels has grown to several hundred thousands visitors a month, and Ms. Adams’s posts are always flush with Facebook likes, retweets and comments.

On Bit Rebels, Ms. Adams writes frequently about whether her Twitter habit is an actual problem. “I began to think about Twitter addiction. Is it real or is it just another way for the people around us to make us feel guilty about something we really enjoy?” The negative reaction to the amount of time she spends on Twitter is one reason she would rather stay in and tweet on the weekends than spend time with family or friends. “It’s not like I’m smoking crack or something,” she said told Betabeat in frustration. “Twitter is making my life better, so how can that be a bad thing?”

There is nothing inherently unhealthy about using Twitter, just as there is nothing innately problematic about playing World of Warcraft, but both of these online activities seem to lend themselves to addictive behavior which can become quite serious. According to Cosette Rae, the executive director of reSTART, the first clinic in the United States dedicated to treating internet addiction, cases related to Twitter are on the rise. “It’s a dangerous little creature,” Ms. Rae told Betabeat. “When you tell friends or family you’re addicted to alcohol or drugs, that’s something they can understand. When it comes to something like Twitter, people are less sympathetic. They think, everybody’s doing it, how come you have a problem?”

Ms. Rae said the symptoms were akin to what she saw during her time treating veterans battling substance abuse. “Individuals who have lost interest in work, whose obsession is damaging their relationships.” She warned people to watch out for warning signs, like users bringing phones into bed with them so they can monitor Twitter at all times. “It’s rare, but we have seen physical symptoms as well. People who are staring at the monitor for hours on a program like TweetDeck—they become so focused, they experience something akin to sleep apnea, where they are awake, but forget to breathe.”

A recurring theme is that many of the patients Ms. Rae treats are required to use Twitter as part of their job. “There is a big focus now in practically every industry on social media. Companies want a voice that sounds authentic, so they don’t create a separation between the personal and the corporate account. For a lot of people that is no big deal. But for some, it’s quite dangerous. Can you imagine if your boss told you one day, you have to start drinking on the job?”

Twitter is killing Laurel Snyder’s career—her primary one, anyway. One hundred and forty characters at a time, it is taking away the limited reserve of words the Atlanta-based children’s book author has left in her hands. Ms. Snyder developed rheumatoid arthritis a few years ago, and her doctor told her that over time, typing would become more and more difficult. Already she is limited to just four or five hours a day before the pain becomes too much. “I know, logically, that my fingers are only going to last so long,” Ms. Snyder told Betabeat. “Sometimes I think about how many chapters this is costing me down the line. But I just can’t stop tweeting.”

Ms. Snyder’s 24,000 tweets are a mix of parenting humor, self-deprecating promotion for her books and chatter with friends and followers. She bantered with celebs like Rosanne Cash, who recognized her from her Twitter avatar when the two met at a book signing. And no matter the time of day or night, she could always dip into her stream for a fix. “The important thing about it, for me, is not getting to follow celebs or being clever or building up followers,” said Ms. Snyder. “It’s that it never stops. When I’m up at 4 in the morning and I can’t fall asleep, my choice is basically start drinking alone or get on Twitter.”

Ms. Snyder has taken some small steps to battle this habit. She removed any trace of Twitter from her phone and stopped trying to follow people just because they followed her. And she takes comfort in the thought that while tweeting may cut short her career as an author, at least she has remained at the center of the conversation. As we spoke, she was wrapping up a vigorous online debate with other authors about whether young-adult fiction was becoming too dark. “Barring some sort of apocalypse that wipes the Internet off the face of the earth, Twitter is only going to become more central to my life as time goes on.”

Twitter’s central, and beneficial, role in today’s workplace was the key message of the 140 Character conference held recently at the 92nd Street Y. “Did you hear I got animated today?” asked NPR’s senior strategist for social media, Andy Carvin. That morning he had been immortalized by the Taiwanese animation studio Next Media. “I guess that means I’ve really made it,” he joked. “But they made me look like George Costanza!” In the video Mr. Carvin stood with his hands outstretched, a flock of blue Twitter birds circling around his head and whispering in his ear. When his young daughter saw it, she pointed at her father on the screen and declared, “That’s my Twitter!”

In real life, Mr. Carvin is an ebullient fellow with a large round head and a bit more hair than George Costanza. After a session at the #140 conference, he shared coffee and a cupcake with Betabeat at a small cafe on Lexington. “I’m going through 2,000 @ replies every day, 5 or 10 percent of which are typically real leads,” said Mr. Carvin, as he mimed an ever expanding balloon with his hands. “I’ll probably have 50,000 followers by the end of next week and I’m beginning to realize that, unless I get some new tools, I won’t be able to keep up.”

When the Arab Spring was dominating the headlines, Mr. Carvin estimates he spent between 18 and 20 hours each day on Twitter. “It got to the point where my account was actually suspended by the company. I had sent more than 1,000 tweets in a single day, so naturally they assumed I was some kind of spam bot, because what human would do that?” These days things are much more manageable. Mr. Carvin wakes up and reads what he missed over breakfast, tweets all day, then takes off a full two hours each night to cook dinner and spend time with his family. “I try and get in another 90 minutes after everyone goes to bed.”

That day we chatted, his Twitter stream mixed coverage of three women who had been detained by security forces with poetic discussion of the lunar eclipse between Mr. Carvin and Twitter users all over the Middle East. “You could feel it sweep from east to west, from Syria into Egypt and then Libya.” For Mr. Carvin, no feature writing, no matter how prestigious, could ever replace the high of interacting in real time with a passionate community of readers. “I’m DJing the revolution, curating the emotional soundtrack, and that live experience is addictive in a way that traditional reporting never could be.”

Brian Stelter, who covers media and television for The New York Times, said he doesn’t see a drawback to mixing his personal and professional life on Twitter. “When I’m tweeting at 3 a.m. just before going to sleep, I’m thinking about our audience out on the West Coast and in Europe. I am programming my personal broadcast network.” Mr. Stelter’s motto is a take off on a classic Wall Street maxim: Always Be Tweeting. “I’ve pretty much been keeping it up, except when I’m underground or in bed.”

Still, the young reporter swears he doesn't have a problem. “I’m not addicted,” he says. “I can stop any time I want.” The service is a powerful tool, says Mr. Stelter, and the persistent buzz of feedback from fans and followers is beneficial. He tapped the mix of encouragement and peer pressure to lose 90 pounds by posting about every calorie he put in his mouth, eventually purchasing a scale that would share his weight with the public every time he stepped on to track his progress. “I can’t stop tweeting, because I’m accountable.” It wasn’t an addiction; it was a positive enabler. “I am in fear of my followers, in the best way possible.”

The asymetrical follow model is at the heart of Twitter's addictive qualities. On Facebook, each friendship is a one to one relationship. On Twitter, it's one to many. The thrill of acquiring followers is especially potent when users are retweeting, amplifying the reach of the original speaker. But just like in Holllywood, fans are fickle. The high of seeing your words repeated and rebroadcast fades quickly, as Twitter users move on to the next message, the new idea, the breaking story.

This is the central appeal for today’s Twitter addicts. Heavy use of the site often provides a wealth of positive reinforcement on both the personal and professional levels. Ms. Adams, the computer consultant who dreamed in tweets, had thousands of followers constantly showering her with supportive praise, both on the micro-messaging service and in the comments of her blog. “I’ll be the first to tell you, it’s an ego thing,” says Ms. Adams, who counts among her followers the movie star Alyssa Milano and the billionaire Richard Branson. “It’s kinda crazy they pay attention to little old me in Atlanta.”

Ms. Adams recently made her first trip to Shanghai, courtesy of the Black Card Circle, a charitable network sponsored by tech titans like Microsoft and Cisco, which had chosen Ms. Adams as an online influencer. “I made a lot of new friends over there and some of them are tweeting to me late at night,” she said. “I can’t wait ’til the morning to see what they’re saying!” Besides the trip to China, other perks have included free meals and a case of wine, all aimed at getting Ms. Adams to mention the product to the masses who follow her.

Free trips to China, celebrities following you, a blossoming writing gig. Ms. Adams finds it hard to see the downside to her addiction. Occasionally a online commenter or a friend in real life will push Ms. Adams to acknowledge the severity of her habit, the way in which it is dominating her time and energy, but she maintains that her habit is under control. “Anyway, I can only really think in tweets,” she admitted. “So if someone is talking to me for more than a minute, I just stop paying attention.”