Are new communications tools filling up our hours with wasted activity?

I have a confession to make: I am guilty of "screen sucking."

According to Time magazine, screen sucking is the new term for "wasting time online long after you have finished what you signed on to do."

For example, I'll be drawing a caricature of Samuel Alito and I'll go online to find a photo for reference. On my way to a photo file, I get distracted by an opinion column on Slate, glide into its library of political cartoons, bump over to MSNBC to check the latest crazy thing Pat Robertson has said and somehow follow a trail to comments Pamela Anderson has made about the mistreatment of chickens. By the time I have clicked a path to celebrity bikini shots, an hour has passed and I still haven't drawn Alito.

Checking my e-mail is even worse. Every morning I resolve to zip quickly through the dozens of messages that await me. But then I'll find a nice note from a reader that needs a quick answer. After that, I must reply to a request to reprint a cartoon. Then, once I've dumped a load of bogus messages from PayPal, several banks I do not have accounts with and the alleged wife of the former foreign minister of Uganda, I come upon a link to a Web site that some e-mailer I don't know thought I should see. I follow the link back to the Internet and Pam Anderson and -- voila! -- another hour of my life is banished to oblivion.
And not much work has gotten done.

Computers, cell phones, BlackBerrys, e-mail, text messaging -- all these techno toys are supposed to be making us more productive worker bees, but sometimes it seems as if we're just buzzing frantically from flower to flower without picking up much nectar.

Time claims the interruptions and distractions cost the U.S. economy $588 billion annually. The temptation to multitask is causing too many people to look awfully busy while not doing anything very well. (Time has a word for this, too -- "frazzing.") Are you a screen sucker? Are you frazzing? Here's my Burning Question:

Are new communications tools filling up our hours with wasted activity?