Electronic addiction I can relate to, but for me it is mainly a matter of checking e-mails 20 times a day (recipients who respond to my messages two weeks later puzzle me no end). My cell phone (the old-fashioned kind) I hardly ever turn on; I am a little socially phobic, which is why I love e-mail: it enables me to feel connected to others without actually having to talk to them. It also is a great diversion from what I should be doing (like writing this column). Anyway, I am done trying to imitate Andy Rooney and will now say a few words about how social media, and electronic devices generally, can get people in big trouble.

I live off a winding canyon road in the foothills west of Denver, and twice I have assisted drivers who drove into a stream or ditch when checking a text or answering a phone call. The teenage daughter of a friend sailed through a red light and totaled her car while distracted by an incoming text message. Most tragically, I knew one person who had a fatal head-on collision while fiddling with his Blackberry. I can understand the desire to always feel connected, but I cannot understand risking one's life in the pursuit of that end. (Much as I love receiving emails, I am willing to wait a few minutes when a more pressing matter demands my attention).There has of course been a lot of media attention paid to the physical risks, especially distracted driving of cars and trains, associated with device-addiction; however, there has not been nearly as much attention paid to the social risks. My self-assigned role over the years has been to correct such an ignoring of the social domain, as when I was one of the first to point out over thirty years ago that social intelligence may be more important for life success or failure than academic (IQ-related) intelligence. Certainly, one can make the case that social harm is much more likely to come to people who cannot control their networking compulsion than is physical harm.

Three forms of social harm will be discussed briefly: (a) retaliation for device-driven rudeness; (b) contributing to and establishing evidence of professional negligence; and (c) posting things that could get one in job or legal difficulty. Although old age is not a barrier to any of these outcomes, they are more likely to afflict younger people, for the simple reason that compulsive use of social media seems to be more an addiction of the young. There is, however, one major exception to this generalization about age, and that involves older politicians, some of whom are, shall we say, less than fully grown up.

It is bad enough to see people checking their hand-held devices when they are walking down the street, riding on a bus, or sitting in a public place (such as a Congressional hearing, which has been described as "almost like attending a computer convention"). But such behavior definitely crosses the line when one does it while engaged in a conversation with others. Former Governor and US Senator Jon Corzine, has been characterized as a "Crackberry," who would compulsively carry on trades on his handheld while having meetings with associates at the company he headed, MF Global (which he drove into bankruptcy in part because of such impulsive trades). Such offensive behavior is boorish when conducted in the presence of underlings, but it is foolish (i.e., risky) when conducted in the presence of people whose good will you are trying to win. French President Nicolas Sarkozy (a boorish man by many accounts) found this out when he so annoyed Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 by sneaking a peek at his smart phone that the Pontiff later refused to grant an audience to the Gallic leader and his girlfriend (and later wife) Carla Bruni, ostensibly because they were living in sin.

The classic morality tale of how poor Blackberry etiquette can backfire big time came in 2008, shortly after the Democrats in the New York Senate won a two-vote majority after 40 years of Republican dominance. Tom Golisano, the billionaire founder of New York's Independence Party, felt that he had helped the Democrats win that majority, and he met with the new Senate president, Malcolm Smith, to discuss his plan for budget reform. Smith could not be bothered to even pretend to be paying attention, and he spent much of the meeting looking at his Blackberry. Golisano got his revenge shortly after that meeting when he persuaded two Democratic Senators (who were in legal difficulty) to defect to the other side, thus teaching now ex-Senate leader Smith an important lesson about the need to turn off your device when meeting with someone possessing the power to derail your career plans.

Just as device addiction can cause physical harm to oneself if done while driving, it can cause grave physical harm to others--and grave social harm to one's reputation, finances and freedom--if it is done while one is supposed to be attending to someone's medical needs. Certainly, that is one of the factors that contributed to the involuntary manslaughter conviction and four-year prison sentence (not to mention license loss and grave financial consequences) of physician Conrad Murray, who caused the death of superstar Michael Jackson when he was attending to his handheld device rather than his unconscious patient. According to a December 14, 2011 New York Times story by Matt Richtel titled "As Doctors Use More Devices, Potential for Distraction Grows," there is growing concern within the medical profession about the problem of doctors and nurses using technology (such as iPads routinely given out for case management and research) for unintended purposes-- such as email, buying items on Amazon, and checking the price of plane tickets-even in the middle of surgery. In one Denver case which resulted in a large malpractice settlement, a patient became permanently paralyzed after his neurosurgeon, using a wireless headset, made no fewer than 10 cell phone calls to family and business associates while the operation was going on. The article went on to blame the problem on the inability of many young medical professionals, who have grown up with those devices and activities, to put those activities on the shelf when full attention elsewhere is called for.

A third area where social networking can have major social consequences involves the thoughtless sending of Facebook or Twitter mesages. Consequences can be relatively benign (a high school teacher of my son was severely embarrassed when her message about how much she disliked her current crop of students was tacked by one of them on her classroom door) but they can also be relatively serious. Many corporations now warn their employees not to make any reference to their place of employment on Facebook or Twitter posts, after incidents such as one in which Goldman-Sachs trader Charlie Barrow was fired for placing a warning letter from his employer on his Facebook profile (there now are websites with titles such as "How to Avoid Getting Fired by Facebook"). Foolish tweeting seems to be especially problematic for athletes or media celebrities, as was the case for comedian Gilbert Gottfired. He was dropped from his lucrative gig as the voice of the duck in commercials for the supplemental health insurer Aflac (which gets 75% of its revenue from Japan) after he tweeted many tasteless jokes (such as "I just split up with my girlfriend, but like the Japanese say ‘There will be another one floating by any minute now' ") about victims of the tragic March 2011 tsunami in that country. Gottfried later apologized, lamenting that he was born without a censor on his mouth or "send" finger.