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Survey Finds Tampa Area Among Nation's E-Mail Hotbeds

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By KEITH MORELLI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 4, 2008

TAMPA - You see them on park benches, hunched over their tiny BlackBerries, thumbs pumping at blur. In the coffee shops with free wireless Internet, their laptops are smoking.

People love their digitals, and a recent AOL survey says the Tampa Bay area is more addicted than most.

According to the survey, 49 percent of area residents say they are hooked on e-mail, and that is 3 percentage points more than the national average.

According to the poll of 4,000 e-mailers in the 20 largest U.S. markets, New York, Houston and Chicago are the most addicted e-mailers.

And, like true addicts, 8 percent of the Tampa area respondents noted they have, at times, hidden their habit of checking e-mail from a spouse or family member.

Shocking, but there's more unsettling news from the cyber underbelly of Tampa. According to the survey:

*Six of 10 Bay area e-mail users say they have been known to check their e-mail from the bathroom; 63 percent said they have checked while clad in pajamas in bed; seven in 10 while in a restaurant; and 63 percent while driving.

*One third — the insensitive boors — have checked e-mail while on a date; 33 percent checked while slurping margaritas at happy hour; and, oh, my God, 30 percent — shhhh — have done it in church.

*At least, there are effective communicators in the Bay area: 88 percent say they watch their spelling, grammar and punctuation. Two-thirds says such mistakes by their counterparts irritate them. But they are forgiving. Three-quarters say they excuse the errors when they come in from BlackBerry senders.

*Some, 27 percent, say they have declared "e-mail bankruptcy," a condition that results in them flatly deleting all their messages to start anew. And one in three has established a new address to start over — or is at least thinking about it. The average Bay area e-mail user has between two and three e-mail accounts.

So is written electronic correspondence taking the place of face-to-face conversation? The survey suggests this may be so:

One in 10 local respondents say they have asked out someone on a date over their e-mail, and 5 percent dumped their (not-so) significant others the same way. Four percent say they quit their jobs via e-mail

Admit it. It can get addictive. Consider: The average e-mail user in Tampa area checks personal e-mail more than three times a day, and he or she checks work e-mail more than three times on any given weekend.

And like the more hopeless, hapless junkie, one in every five e-mail users plan vacations at places they know they can access their e-mail.

One of four local respondents say they check their e-mail as part of their get-out-of-bed morning ritual, and one in 10 say they check the computer for mail as soon as they get home from work.

Nearly half have admitted getting a fix of e-mail in the middle of the night and that they have their mobile device or BlackBerry on the nightstand so they can hear the little chime of new mail arriving.

Reporter Keith Morelli can be reached at (813) 259-7760 or kmorelli@tampatrib.com.

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