IS TWITTER TAKING OVER YOUR HOME LIFE?

We've all joked about the digital leash to our Blackberries and iPhones. It's hard enough to get through the weekend, let alone an hour, without checking e-mail, posting back-to-school checklists or the like on Facebook or Googling to find out some piece of trivia, like who sang "Eye of the Tiger." Some women, though, are taking their relationship with tech to a different and highly personal level.

Sara Morishige, the wife of a Twitter exec, famously tweeted updates during the recent birth of her daughter. She sent a tweet when her water broke and another after she'd decided to go with an epidural.

In pictures: 10 things Twitter says about you

Blogosphere responses mostly reflected distaste ("can't wait to hear about the colonoscopy" was one sarcastic post). The play-by-play of the birth - and the long tail of its comments - suggest that digital media is spurring changes to how we go about our analog lives.

David Weinberger, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, says what's really happening is that this constant and hyper-connectivity is happening without established social rules and etiquette; a digital dinner party without an Emily Post to guide us, if you will. "We know when we talk to a stranger face-to-face how much information is OK to reveal," he says. "But the same can't be said yet for Twitter."

At this July's BlogHer, an annual conference for female bloggers, blogger Alana Reynolds recounted how her husband exasperatedly and repeatedly asks her not to use Twitter during dinner with their children. Each time, she sheepishly puts her handheld device away. In an interview with ForbesWoman, she says they came to a truce: "I don't Twitter during family time and [he doesn't] complain when I really need to do it."

Another blogger described her pulse-pounding frustration while at the Parthenon in Athens recently; she had no Internet access on her iPhone. How could I get updates and detailed information on the ruins, she moaned to the audience, scoffing at someone's suggestion that she could have consulted a guidebook. A guidebook's information wouldn't be as up-to-date or detailed as a travel blog or site, she said.

"These are social worlds that we are constructing for ourselves that are as complex as our real worlds," says Weinberger. "People behave in them for the widest possible range of motives: to distance themselves or to involve themselves."

Danah Boyd, a well-respected expert on social media, also at Harvard, had this to say about Morishige's tweeting of her birth and the dinner-tweeter: "When 'family time' becomes obligatory, not everyone is particularly excited. As a result, you're seeing a reworking of who controls the situation. Control is the issue at stake here." In other words, women who are masters of their Facebook pages or Twitter profiles may not necessarily feel the same control over their analog environments when the screen is dark.

One technophile says she has observed - and overcome - the digital obsession. Blogger Lucretia Pruitt helps large companies reach audiences through social media. She describes a time when she decided to "go offline" for a weekend, as an experiment - no cell phone or Internet. She did, however post a message saying that if someone needed or wanted to reach her, she would answer her home phone. One friend e-mailed her 14 times. "When I called her back on Monday, she said, 'Are you mad at me?'" Pruitt reports with disbelief.

Still, she is raising her 6-year-old daughter to be a "digital native" - someone to whom technology is as innate as TVs or telephones are to older generations. "We know she's going to grow up constantly wired, where she'll have instant answers to questions and constant access to cellphones," says Pruitt. "[It'll be] a natural thing."

Pruitt proudly says that her daughter had a computer "before she could walk" and learned to spell by using the keyboard.

That said, her daughter isn't allowed to veg out in front of the computer. Pruitt insists that she play outside and limits her screen time.

Pruitt thinks the real problem is with adults - mostly mid-20s and up, who are still figuring out the relationship they want to have with connectivity. Some bloggers and tweeters, for example, think they have to respond to every e-mail and every comment on every post or tweet. It can take hours.

"In 2007, I would get up in the morning and try to respond to everyone," recalls Pruitt. "I realised you don't get up every morning and call everyone you know. You don't have to keep up on everything that's going on with everyone. If it's important, they'll re-tweet it or directly message you," she says.

In pictures: 10 things Twitter says about you

Betsy Weber, who leads online social marketing for TechSmith in Okemos, Mich., says she has made friends through Twitter - including, surprisingly, her neighbors. She organises events called Tweet-ups in which Twitter pals get together in the 3-D world. "For me, it's been great to get out from behind the computer and meet these people in person," says Weber. "And, I find that our local community is stronger and better connected because of these new connections being made online and then reinforced offline in person."

Alana Reynolds got back to a reporter seeking confirmation that she sometimes tweets at dinner. She e-mailed and said it was true, adding, "Can I get back to you a little later? I'm ironically on a date with my husband right now."