The only difference was that I wouldn’t be broadcasting my every move to 1,664 friends, most of whom I didn’t even know.

or more hours a day using technology had a 17 percent to 44 percent higher risk of being overweight and a 10 percent to 61 percent higher risk of obesity.

I was the guy who connected with everybody; inside, I knew I’d actually lost connection with the people I cared most about. And I’d lost connection with myself. I couldn’t take it anymore. Technology was becoming toxic. My primary poisons were social networks. I needed out.

“With iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations—none of which I know how to work—information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. All of this is not only putting new pressures on you. It is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy.”

The study found that children who spent three

increasing appetite for gadgets and the Web has made us lazy and less active.

“e-obesity” problem.

The study’s authors found this group easily distracted and incapable of ignoring irrelevant information.

“Chill out”—the next time your son or daughter comes to the dinner table with a smart phone or iPod or laptop, try putting it in the fridge during the entire meal. It won’t do any harm to the device. Then serve it as the final course, after the dessert.