A new AOL survey proves that we are co-dependent with email:

Signs that we're hooked on e-mail:

• We wake up and check it. Forty one percent check e-mail first thing in the morning, 18% check it right after dinner, 14% say they check e-mail right when they get home from work, and 14% do so right before they go to bed.

• We can't make it through the night. Forty percent of e-mail users have checked their e-mail in the middle of the night.

• We can't live without it! More than one in four (26%) say they haven't gone more than two to three days without checking their e-mail.

• We have multiple accounts. Most e-mail users have two or three e-mail accounts (56%). The average user has 2.8 accounts.

• We check it anytime, anywhere. E-mail users have checked their e-mail in a variety of locations, including:
  • In bed in their pajamas (23%)
  • In class (12%)
  • In a business meeting (8%)
  • At a Wi-Fi hotspot, like Starbuck's or McDonald's (6%)
  • At the beach or pool (6%)
  • In the bathroom (4%)
  • While driving (4%)
  • In church (1%)

As usual, the natural, knee-jerk reaction to continuous partial attention is that it is nutso, addictive, bad for your health. Ok -- I agree that emailing while driving, at least if you are the driver, is a bad thing. But not the implicit "this is stupid" reaction.

I am not a great fan of email -- it is bad at what we want most to do: stay close to those we are close to -- and it is really great at spam, and anything that smells like spam, like a company President's monthly pronouncements to the troops. But I am a fan of people remaining in close contact with partners in work and in life, and if people are channeling that social interaction through email instead of media better suited for it (like instant messaging, and blogs) so be it. better to have emailed and connected, than never to have connected at all.