Is the internet eating your life?

This description comes from a feature written on Salon by a woman who was feeling stressed by the constant demands of her online life and her inability to get anything done. So she downloaded Freedom to get some. She writes:

I needed to stop. I’d like a world in which I didn’t check my e-mail
for the last two hours of the evening, or on the weekends. On
vacations, I’m very good at slapping up a “Nobody’s Home” automatic
message and disconnecting. But in daily life, it’s not so easy.
Professional communications (and expectations) now roll in on a 24-hour
cycle, and as long as I’m at my computer, maybe I should just glance at
Eater.com and see if there’s anything interesting …

I needed
restriction, and not the kind my boyfriend offered when he suggested
helpfully that he take the modem away. I didn’t need a minder to ground
me. I needed to ground myself.

After starting with a 5 minute trial, the author went back for more. Here’s how it turned out:

It’s been about a week with Freedom, and I like it, I really do,
even if I’m a bit ashamed that I need it. I still use it mostly for
about 15- or 30-minute periods.

I have gotten an immense amount
of work done, and it has demonstrated, again and again, in ways that
I’ve known intellectually but not viscerally, how Web-dependent I have
become. And I’m not referring to connectivity simply as a time-waster
or procrastination tool, but as a work resource. Where once I would
have reached for dictionaries or thesauri, or written notes and
references, I have found exactly how hungry — and temporarily starved
— I’ve become for all the instant information I’m so used to having at
my fingertips.

Yes, the whole thing makes me feel infantile and weak. Like a tween
whose parents have put some kind of monitoring software on my computer;
except in this case I am both tween and parent. But I’m not alone. In
other corners of the Internet universe, people are turning to programs
like RescueTime and MeeTimer to monitor, track and limit the time they
spend on Twitter, and something called LeechBlock to prevent themselves
from even going to certain sites for certain times of the day.

Has
it come to this? To a point at which the Internet is so damn convenient
that instead of dialing up and searching for Wi-Fi and complaining
about slow connectivity I’m actually able to not only take it for
granted but also see it as my jailer? Or my dealer? Must I give myself
over to some computerized policeman or censor rather than simply revel
in the abundance of online resources in my life and then turn them off
when work — or life — calls?

As news reports confirm that Facebook etc is harming university results for students, can you relate to all this? Would you try Freedom? Do you need some?