But even iJustine is getting fed up with Twitter twits. "You realize you might be with a person but they're completely thinking something else — and they're Twittering it," she says. "My sister came to visit me and she would not get off the phone, she was constantly texting. I was, what are you doing? I never see you, can you just put down the phone?!"

For some highly connected people, especially young adults who have grown up with cellphones, their superficial online connections increasingly are their only connections.

"We reply to someone we don't know on Facebook, and we won't even look at the cashier at the grocery because we're too busy typing text messages on our phones," Gordhamer says. "Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen poet, says the most valuable gift you can give someone is your attention. The danger with this new technology is you can become less available to your children, friends and partners in your real-life world."