VYou combines the intimacy of one-to-one conversation with the reach of broadcast. It feels like a typical video chat, but the responses are pre-recorded and can be played by anyone, anywhere. Users interested in creating their own accounts can establish a one-[wo]man audiovisual archive of useful information on any topic of their choosing. It just takes you, the viewer, to ask questions.

Here’s my VYou:

Last week, University of Maryland researchers found that college students who swore off social media and texting showed signs of withdrawal similar to what drug addicts experience after quitting cold turkey. Sound familiar? Here are some highlights from their “Day Without Media” experiment:

Students use literal terms of addiction to characterize their dependence on media.
“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.”

Students hate going without media. In their world, going without media, means going without their friends and family.
“Texting and IM-ing my friends gives me a constant feeling of comfort,” wrote one student. “When I did not have those two luxuries, I felt quite alone and secluded from my life. Although I go to a school with thousands of students, the fact that I was not able to communicate with anyone via technology was almost unbearable.”

And here I thought I was going crazy; that my dependence on social media was a sign of some yet undiagnosed psychological problem. But if I’m nuts, then so are you. And so are America’s youth.

This week, New York’s Riverdale County School ran a two-day experiment similar to the Blackout, prohibiting middle school students from texting, IM-ing, and engaging in any kind of social media. As you might predict, the kids suffered varying levels of anxiety during the study. But they survived, and they were better for it.

Here’s an excerpt from “Encouraging the Text Generation to Rediscover Its Voice,” a New York Times article that references the experiment:

This text-free Sunday, the Riverdale students said, was unusually relaxing. They were shocked at how quickly they finished their homework, undistracted by an always-open video chat, or checking in on Facebook or responding to the hundred messages they typically get in a day. … “I had to look for things to do,” said [student] Zachary, who ended up watching a movie with his mother.

A movie? With his mother? Even for a young teen, this really shouldn’t be a last-resort activity. Family bonding should be commonplace.

When you have down time, your activities might include landscaping the yard. We did just that on Sunday.

This leads me to some of my own conclusions:

Since I ended my Blackout more than a week ago, I’ve found myself being more cautious about my social-media postings: links, photos, videos, status updates, private notes, private and public blog entries, etc. I find myself checking Facebook and Twitter a few times per day, but this is nothing compared to my previous almost constant use of these sites. I actually now set aside specific times for goofing off.

I’ve made good on my word to not use my iPhone in the car, except for important calls. (Remember that I’m the passenger, not the driver.) I can tell that this was probably my biggest vice, as I’ve seen more of this town in the past week than I have in an entire year of living here. I’m still ill about the time I wasted just waiting for pages to load.

I no longer feel a constant, nagging compulsion to check my favorite sites “simply because” the opportunity exists. Why pick up my smart phone when I can grab a book, spend more time with my husband or go for another run with the puppy? Why debate politics through my fingers with friends-of-friends when I can have rousing, in-person conversations with people I actually know?

Over the past week, I’ve found myself filled with creative energy. I’ve become even more productive at work, and have ended up with a lot more down time. (That I was so productive before the blackout still baffles me.)

We used some of this down time to landscape the yard this weekend (see image above right). I also try to use the time to read up on corporate policies for renovations, management and modifications, so now I’m not just thinking weeks ahead, but months. I hope that this will translate into greater career success.

Finally, I feel, for lack of a better term, more… alive. Life becomes very two-dimensional and gray when you’ve got your faced shoved into a computer screen all day. Any time away from the technology translates into reconnecting with people, animals, trees, society, and good old-fashioned mortal existence.

I will always be the News-Geek, the multimedia nerd who loves to create, to teach, and to connect through all kinds of new media. But even geeks need moderation. And for once, I’m ok with that.

It’s actually not this simple.

I took the challenge a step further and did away with unnecessary Web surfing altogether. I even banned myself from using my iPhone for checking e-mail in the car. (I couldn’t get rid of e-mail completely as I needed it for work.) Since my husband, Steve, does all of the driving, I didn’t want to put myself in a situation where I could spend entire car rides playing with my phone.

I decided to chronicle my experiences as an internet luddite. Surprisingly, I learned a lot about myself in the process:

Day 1
8:57 a.m. – We’re in the car on the way to work and my fingers are twitching like I’m some sort of addict. (And maybe I am.) This is prime e-mail-checking time and my hands don’t know what to do with their new-found freedom from iPhone enslavement.

Suddenly, I realize I haven’t Tweeted about the blackout experiment, so I start digging through my purse. How can such a small bag be so cavernous? Finally, I find my phone and start typing as fast as I can. Like Indiana Jones grabbing his hat before the stone door shut forever in Temple of Doom, I manage to get my Tweet in before my 9 a.m. cut off. It’s going to be a long 48 hours.

11:02 a.m. – It’s been a busy morning, but I’m back at my desk now. I’m starting to realize just how much of my typical day is spent goofing off online, and it’s kind of scary. So how on Earth do I manage to stay so productive? I have no idea. I just know that I’ve been plugged into the Internet since I was 14–that’s half of my life–and it didn’t prevent me from graduating college with high honors, researching/writing a 153-page masters thesis in less than a year, or gaining some pretty successful career opportunities at NOVA Online and Boston University.

I’m not even bored right now and I definitely have work to do, yet the compulsion to “just check” all of my different sites of interest hits me every time I sit down. In a split-second, my mind thinks “Let’s go to Facebook–wait, I can’t do that; Twitter! Nope, can’t do that either; Flickr! Sorry, not happening…” etc.

My phone is ringing. Saved by the bell.

12:16 p.m.. – It’s almost lunchtime now, and one of my clerks is standing at my door, going over this morning’s crazy events. (At our hotel, every morning is sprinkled with a touch of crazy.) I look up at her as she talks, neither of us realizing that I’m absentmindedly typing “facebook.com” into Firefox’s address bar. I get as far as entering in my password before I notice what I’m doing.

What’s wrong with me?

I exit the browser as a guilty feeling builds in the pit of my stomach. That was close.

For the record, I do realize how absurd this sounds.

2:05 p.m. – I notice that every time I sit down to get a little computer work done, my cursor drifts toward the Firefox icon. It’s happened at least 10 times today already–probably more. I’ve actually stopped counting.

Steve shot this with my iPhone. I fully admit that in a moment of weakness, I asked him to upload it to his Facebook account. He declined.

I’m beginning to see that my problem isn’t really the conscious desire to connect with people, but something more deeply ingrained in who I’ve become. I’ve spent most of my formative years online. The compulsion to surf is like muscle memory, hardly any different from walking around without realizing on any conscious level that I’ve even stood up.

I’ve been following the same internet routine for 14 years. The sites have changed, but the habits remain the same. I wonder if I’m now hardwired to be a geek.

3:42 p.m. – My subconscious is getting clever. I’ve had a little bit of down time this afternoon and without realizing it, I’ve been taking actions that, if completed, would require me to log into Facebook. About 20 minutes ago, I started thinking to myself, “I’ve got some time–why not experiment with some potentially useful code for my blog?”

It just so happens that I’ve been planning on implementing Facebook Connect features that would allow people to comment on News-Geek via their Facbook accounts. This would prevent users from having to go through the hoops of registering or retyping all of their personal information to post to this site. It’s all about convenience, right?

Wrong. Well, sort of. It’s partially about convenience, but today it’s also about having an excuse to log into Facebook. I can’t implement this feature without getting an application programing interface (API) key, a unique Facebook-generated identifier that will allow users to interact with my site. I’ll have to play with this functionality another time.

5:45 p.m. – It’s after work and we’re running errands. I still don’t miss my social networking sites, but I do find myself thinking about them frequently. Every time I get into the car, I have to remind myself to not reach for my phone. So, I stare out the window–and wow, it looks like there’s a new tattoo/massage/goth attire/head shop just outside the really nice part of town. How the hell did that get there? And when?

I thought that being plugged in kept me informed, in the know, aware–and it does. It keeps me in touch in the world. But what about my own backyard?

6:28 p.m. – I cooked with quinoa for the first time tonight. I have the urge to take a picture of the tasty meal with my phone and to Tweet it, but only as a passing thought. Current realization: I am incredibly lame.

9:45 p.m. – I’ve enjoyed a nice, quiet evening with Steve and our puppy, Herbie. I’m grateful because I’ve learned I’m not so attached to the internet that these nights aren’t common. In fact, it really feels like any other night, only I’m not mindlessly playing with my iPhone every few minutes. For the first time today, I don’t feel like an addict.

Day 2
6:00 a.m. – We’re going into Nashville today and I don’t want to get up. My usual morning ritual begins with my alarm, followed by at least 15 minutes of Web-surfing via my phone as I wipe the sleep from my eyes with my free hand. Unfortunately, staring at the ceiling doesn’t have quite the same waking effect. I begin wonder how impractical it would be to get a coffee maker for my nightstand.

6:45 a.m. – It’s hard to disconnect when so many aspects of your real life and social-media life are intertwined. I haven’t given up e-mail because I have a lot of work information saved in messages and drafts.

I notice that there’s a “3″ beside the Google Buzz link underneath where it says “Inbox.” That’s way too convenient. I don’t click on “Buzz,” though, because it’s the Valhalla of social networking. It all too easily aggregates your activity on sites like Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr, and shares it with other Buzz’ers (and vice versa).

When did we all go meta? And why?

I understand the need to reach our entire potential audience, but no one cares (or should care) enough about what I say to be willing to read the phrase “I just had my first glass of soy milk since leaving Boston” three times across three different sites.

1:30 p.m. – I see an NRA poster that reads “Insure Your Gun Rights!” I cringe. My inner grammar Nazi wants to take a picture with my phone and upload it to Facebook along with some sort of snarky “fail” caption.

Once again, it’s more reflex than desire. I realize how obnoxious it is to nitpick a poster. I don’t even dislike the NRA or disagree with a lot of what their less paranoid members stand for. I find out later that insure/ensure faux pas wasn’t a one-time mistake. They’ve got the phrase all over some reading materials and this Web site.

I twitch a little.

I wonder: In an addiction scenario, would my iPhone be the dealer or just an enabler?

4:42 p.m. – It’s a long drive home, and in between conversations with my husband, I wonder what my frenemies are up to. (A frenemy is someone who pretends to be a friend but is actually an enemy. I argue that in the social-networking world, the term should extend to rivals who maintain a continued interest in one’s life or vice versa, regardless of whether the two parties even speak. Online, you don’t have to talk to someone to legally and secretly keep tabs on them.)

We are the millennial generation, sometimes called the “net” generation. I believe that we all passively stalk people from our past, simply because we can. The only difference between us and creepsters with restraining orders against them is our motivation. While conventional “stalkers” are driven by obsession and a side of chemical imbalance, we’re just curious. Any malicious intent on our part could be likened to what you might feel during a class reunion: We want to ensure that we’re happier and more successful than our frenemies, and we want to see if they’re as lame/sketchy/weird/mean as they were when we still spoke to them.

In the interest of full, embarrassing disclosure, I admit that I have a couple of frenemies I check up on every few months. I know for a fact that many of my friends, acquaintances, former students and employees do the same.

I’m fairly certain that this is why the various social-networking sites won’t add a “see who’s looking at your profile” feature. Can you imagine the drama that would ensue if you suddenly learned that your proctologist, who isn’t even your Facebook friend, looks at your account more than your wife does?

10:30 p.m. – I’ve enjoyed another great evening in with Steve and Herbie. I don’t really want to go online at this point.

Day 3
7:24 a.m. – I wake up with the realization that this hiatus is almost over. I feel guilty, like I really shouldn’t go back to life as I knew it two days ago. If you do the math, a minute here and a minute there can add up to hours wasted online.

I want to keep fasting, but I also want to publish this post and share it across my various social-networking accounts. I want to connect with others out there who can relate to me and to this entry.

I’ll compromise: I will go back to my sites, but I’ll limit my use. There will be no more idle surfing in the car, and conversations with real, physical people will have to trump internet usage altogether. This means that if I’m at a restaurant with my husband, I will not grab my iPhone at any point as we wait for our meal.

12:55 p.m. – I’m publishing this blog entry. I haven’t been to Facebook or Twitter yet. I suspect I’ll have a lot to catch up on, but I think I’ll have some lunch and pick up around the house first.

I’m angry that nobody wants to hear my simple solution to the ‘they’re stealing our work’ problem. Here it is: Instead of posting stories online as HTML text, which can be read by search engines and copied-and-pasted by anyone, just convert the text to an watermarked image of the text. It would appear no different to the reader (except for the watermark, which could include a copyright notice), but nobody could copy the text (to paste elsewhere) because it would be a .jpg or .gif file and not text. If they copy/paste the text-image then the watermark and copyright notice have to go along for the ride. Search engines couldn’t read it without OCR processing, which they wouldn’t do (except for the largest major market papers) because that’s processor-intensive and they’re rather just steal from the next source than go to the trouble of transcribing yours. Problem solved (no charge).

In short, AJ8010 wants all copy text to appear as an image on his Web site, thus preventing search engines (and the people who use them) from finding them. In a later post, he writes:

If I want my stories cataloged by a search engine so they’ll send hits my way to read my stories and SEE MY ADS, then I’ll gladly send them a feed of tags in whatever format they need. They all have back doors for that purpose. But bloggers won’t be able to steal my text and reuse it without my ads because there won’t be any machine-readable text at the deep links I provide to the search engines.

Now on to why I think this journalist is barking up the wrong tree: Not only will bloggers be able to embed his JPEGed articles onto their blogs as he notes (still bypassing his ads for their readers), but he obviously has no real understanding of how search engines work.

Here are a few points I think he should consider:


Angry Journalist image courtesy of Gawker.

1. Bloggers will almost always cite where they get their news. Most people want to validate their arguments by saying things like “Hey, see? This was in the Times!” Also, though perhaps to a lesser extent, no one wants to take the blame for writing something that’s potentially inaccurate or controversial, so they give credit where credit is due. If anything, bloggers might end up driving more traffic to AJ8010′s site, particularly traffic that wouldn’t have gone there to begin with. Why pass up free advertising?
2. If bloggers are such a threat that their actions are noticeably taking away from his readership, AJ8010 should spend this time and energy trying to figure out why he and his news site aren’t getting more traffic. The key is to entice people to read your articles, not punish the few who were so enticed they decided to post your work on their own blogs. Logic dictates that people would prefer to read the news from the source, and not just from a blogging “middleman.” So if a blogger intrigues his or her readers with your work, those readers will eventually go to your site.
3. Search engine optimization: Let’s look at Google because it’s the big dog right now. Google’s algorithms still read meta tags, page titles, and URLs, but they put huge value on what’s visible on a page because that’s what readers want and because that’s what readers will see. If there is no or little text available with the article, Google will simply throw it out. Also, even if Google keeps the article, its ranking in a search will be lowered considerably because so many important key words from the article have now disappeared. (If you’re one of my students, you’ll remember my discussing all of this during our talk on search engine optimization. If you’re not one of my students, you can read a quick overview in the Week 2 lecture.)
4. What about visually impaired readers who require larger fonts, or the blind who use text-to-audio software to get their news?
5. By passive-aggressively only posting articles as JPEGs, AJ8010 will only end up sending whatever readers he has left away from his news site. People expect a certain freedom on the Web. If they don’t get it, they go elsewhere. Even if AJ8010 writes for a small-town paper, there are surely other regional papers or those from neighboring towns that wouldn’t mind absorbing his online readership. Print is suffering and newspapers are hungry.

All in all, I suspect AJ8010 is only going to hurt his readership. But what do you think? Does he have a case? On one hand, we’ve seen extensive digital rights management in the realm of music and movies–why not print? On the other, we’re now seeing a trend away from DRM, particularly with iTunes because DRM only really hinders those who buy music or DVDs legally–those who take these things illegally always find a way to get around DRM.

So, what do you think?