Are You a BlackBerry Addict?

“It may be one’s child complaining, ‘Dad, you’re always using that thing and you don’t listen to me,’” Epstein says.

Another warning sign, Epstein says, is if you feel anxiety when you are unable to check it.

So what’s the impact of over-doing the BlackBerry? “A person has just so much capacity to pay attention to multiple things,” Epstein says. “The ability to multi-task is probably more limited than some people think. As a result, when the person believes that he or she can use the BlackBerry while spending time with children and other significant relationships, the relationships suffer from the amount of time diverted to the BlackBerry.”

But how does a BlackBerry user know when he or she has crossed the line from efficient to rude? For this question, I called on Leah Ingram, author of  The Everything Etiquette Book: A Modern-Day Guide to Good Manners.

She acknowledges there could be a professional in a high-stress job—maybe a doctor—who has to check e-mails constantly. However, she says, “at dinner, at a party, at your kids’ school play, it is a rare occurrence that it would be necessary to have that in your hand, checking messages.”

It is also rude to use it during a work meeting or presentation, she says. You are sending the presenter one message: I am more important than you.

But isn’t it also rude to not respond promptly to e-mail? “Really, I think you’ve got two to four hours to get back to someone on e-mail before they start wondering if you are flaking out on them,” Ingram says.

And my last expert? A recovering addict. Though he will remain nameless, he’s a thirty-six-year-old who is changing his ways for love.

“I used to be a chronic user, but after my girlfriend moved in, my usage went down,” he says. “We agreed I’d keep the BlackBerry turned off on the weekends.”