Has this ever happened to you? You call your __________ (spouse, sibling, boss) to discuss something important. Maybe it鈥檚 about an upcoming vacation. Maybe about the work you鈥檝e just been assigned. You know how busy and distracted people are鈥攁nd it鈥檚 the middle of the day鈥攕o you check first to make sure that now is indeed a good time to talk. They say yes, sure, and you think you have their full attention.
And maybe you do.
But not for long.
A few seconds into your conversation you can hear in their voice that they鈥檙e not really paying attention. The 鈥渦h huh鈥檚鈥� are coming at the wrong time 鈥� there鈥檚 an awkward silence in place of what should have been a response.
Even more tellingly, you hear the sound of a keyboard in the background. They鈥檙e listening, they really are! But only with part of their attention. With the rest of their brain, they鈥檙e scrolling through Facebook, deleting junk email from their inbox, or playing Candy Crush.
And as many times as you鈥檝e experienced that half-attention from someone else, you鈥檝e probably done it yourself to someone else.
A parent pushing a stroller while talking on the cell phone.
A boss texting directions to employees in the midst of a staff meeting.
An interrupted dinner to watch a video clip about the phenomenon of black holes the family was just discussing.
It鈥檚 yesterday鈥檚 news that we live in an age of distraction, and that this distraction comes to us courtesy of our electronic devices.
Are we, in fact, addicted to this brave new digital world?
We already know that Americans鈥攁nd people who live in every country in the developed world where electricity is a given鈥攁re spending inordinate amounts of time on their screens.
Indeed, the average American kid spends as much as seven hours a day on a screen, according to the American Academy of Pediatricians. And adults of all ages spend even more. A survey of media consumer habits done by the Nielson Company found that in the first quarter of 2017 the average Baby Boomer spent eleven hours and 12 minutes a day鈥攎ore time than they spent sleeping鈥攃onsuming media.
What are we all doing for that many hours? According to the Nielson report, we鈥檙e watching TV, playing videogames, surfing the Internet, playing DVDs, and using smart phones.
My eyes hurt just thinking about it.
Or maybe my eyes hurt because I鈥檝e been in front of a鈥攜ou guessed it鈥攃omputer screen for about seven hours already today, researching, reading on-line, and writing this article, as well as checking and answering emails, and posting updates (some about screen addiction) on social media. Egads.
The United States of Distraction? Check. Too much time on screens? Check. But addiction? Are we, in fact, addicted to this brave new digital world?
Consumers, Sure, But Are We Addicts?
Scientists, researchers, and medical doctors have long argued about the definition of addiction. While this was a word once reserved almost exclusively for illegal drug use and alcoholism, most psychiatrists now recognize that we humans can also become addicted to harmful behaviors.
In 2013, for the first time, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the definitive publication of the American Psychiatric Association that defines mental illnesses, recognized one behavior鈥攇ambling鈥攁s an addiction.
It was then that the fifth edition of the DSM moved compulsive gambling into a chapter called, 鈥淪ubstance-Related and Addictive Disorders.鈥� Though that may not sound like a watershed moment for those of us who are not mental health professionals, the publication of the DSM-5 marked a shift in thinking among addiction and mental health experts that many believed was long overdue.
Part of the justification for this new classification was that scientists found, over the course of more than ten years of research, changes in the physiology of the brains of compulsive gamblers. Several studies showed, through imaging technology, that the brains of pathological gamblers actually looked similar to the brains of hard-core drug addicts鈥攕howing impacted impulse-control and heightened activity in pleasure centers of the brain when presented with monetary rewards. These results have not been entirely consistent, and screen activities (including obsessive gaming and Web surfing) have not been formally categorized as 鈥渁ddiction,鈥� at least not yet.
Still, since 2013 the medical establishment has recognized something that loved ones of those addicted to gambling, pornography, shopping, food, and even television, have long known to be true: These 鈥渟ofter鈥� addictions are anything but. Like addiction to opiates, heroin, meth, and alcohol, addiction to digital media can compromise our health, make us miserable, and get us to a point where we find it impossible to tear ourselves away. Digital consumption has the ability to excite us, over-stimulate us, and make us irritable to the point of violent objection when we are forced to stop. Like a drug addiction, it can push us to act irresponsibly and irrationally, leave us craving more, and impact our lives with sometimes devastating and lasting negative consequences.
There is a reason why Dr. Peter C. Whybrow, M.D., Director of UCLA鈥檚 Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior calls screens 鈥渆lectronic cocaine.鈥�
Just ask Maria (not her real name). Maria鈥檚 now ex-husband, an educator in Medford, Oregon, was so addicted to on-line porn that the day their son was born he went home to watch for hours on the computer instead of staying with her and the baby in the hospital.
Or Nicholas Kardaras, Ph.D., a New York-based addiction specialist and author of the 2016 book, Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction is Hijacking Our Kids and How to Break the Trance. Kardaras describes how his patient found her son one night when he was supposed to be sleeping: 鈥溾�itting up in bed staring wide-eyed, his bloodshot eyes looking into the distance as his glowing iPad lay next to him. Beside herself with panic, Susan had to shake the boy repeatedly to snap him out of it. Distraught, she could not understand how her once-healthy and happy little boy had become so addicted to [Minecraft] that he wound up in a catatonic stupor,鈥� Kardaras writes in an article in the New York Post.
Hilarie Cash, Ph.D., has seen firsthand how screen addiction can lead to this kind of disturbing behavior. 鈥淚t鈥檚 really a brain disorder,鈥� Cash says when I interview her by phone as she is driving to work. Cash is one of the founders and the chief clinical officer of reSTART, a residential digital addiction treatment program based in Washington State. 鈥淲e produce neurochemicals to function and we all need those neurochemicals in a certain normal balance. If that balance is off, we experience various mental health problems. One of the problems we experience is addiction when we鈥檝e over-stimulated the pleasure centers of the brain.鈥�
Cash says reSTART鈥檚 services have been in increasing demand since they opened their doors eight years ago. In fact, a new program for younger adolescents is so overflowing with applicants that they can barely hire employees fast enough to staff it. The problem of screen addiction in America, according to Cash, has been steadily getting worse.
鈥淧eople really totally lose control, and they cannot stop themselves from engaging,鈥� she explains. 鈥淭here are all kind of negative consequences that they experience鈥攍ike being seriously underweight or overweight, being sleep-deprived. Some of them have serious strains on their tendons and back. And then there are social and academic consequences. That鈥檚 what digital addiction is.鈥�
The Biggest Candy Store In The World
It may seem easy to shrug off these examples鈥攁 6-year-old in a catatonic stupor and a new father neglecting his wife on the day of the birth of his baby鈥攁s extreme. But even ordinary people who don鈥檛 tend towards addiction find themselves having extraordinary problems controlling their screen use.
I first met Stephen Sloan, a business consultant and father of three, at a parent gathering hosted by the school his two younger children and my seven-year-old all attend. Today we鈥檙e sitting at the dining room table in his brightly lit home on a cul-de-sac in Ashland, Oregon where he works from a home office.
He has a standing workstation in one corner with an oversized computer monitor, a second desk by the window, and walls that are covered with bookcases holding hundreds of books.
Sloan tells me he鈥檚 been an avid reader his whole life, and that he loves to learn about new things. He was the kind of kid who read the encyclopedia as entertainment in the summertime, he says, but he doesn鈥檛 read paper and ink books much anymore. The Internet is so much faster鈥攁nd so much more enticing. Sloan says it鈥檚 easy for him to lose himself in reading on-line, surfing from one news article to the next, and going down information rabbit hole after rabbit hole. And he finds it very difficult to limit the time he spends on-line.
Sloan, who identifies himself as a digital addict, is of two minds about it鈥攐n the one hand having this much information at his fingertips is exciting and helpful, no, essential, for his job. On the other, he is disturbed by how many hours he is spending on the Web and how much time has disappeared from his life because of it. He believes that his Internet addiction and what he calls his love of 鈥渋nfo-bathing鈥� has cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost income and may be getting in the way of other aspects of his life.
鈥淭he Internet is the biggest candy store on earth, it鈥檚 like a giant dopamine hit waiting to happen,鈥� Sloan says. 鈥淭here are wonderful things out there to experience. And a lot of dross.鈥� He鈥檚 quiet for a moment, considering his next words. 鈥淚t鈥檚 really an amazing tool. I use it all day every day for business. I do a huge amount of work on my phone. I can鈥檛 turn mine off very easily.鈥�
Given he has a successful career, three healthy kids, and a good relationship with his ex-wife, I ask him if the time he spends on-line is really a problem. 鈥淢assive,鈥� he says without hesitation. In many ways, though some are more difficult to articulate than others, he feels that this addiction may be getting in the way of him having a more productive and meaningful life.
One Doctor鈥檚 Concerns
Now, tell the truth. Have you ever:
1. Guiltily stuffed your smart phone into your pocket or closed your computer to hide what you were doing on it from a friend or loved one?
2. Lied to yourself or others about how you were 鈥渨orking,鈥� when you were really on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, or _______ [fill in the blank with your website or social media channel of choice]?
3. Thought to yourself, 鈥淚鈥檒l hop on for twenty minutes,鈥� but stayed on-line or on a videogame for two hours or more?
4. Had an overwhelming urge to get back on-line though you haven鈥檛 been off-line for long?
5. Felt sick, ashamed, or physically in pain (backache, carpel tunnel) after being hunched in the same position playing a videogame or consuming media on-line?
If you鈥檝e answered YES to even one of these questions, you may have a problem.
鈥淚t becomes a problem when you find that [you or] your child is not able to go without it, when they start to exhibit withdrawal symptoms,鈥� says Diane Hennacy Powell, M.D., a psychiatrist in private practice in Medford. 鈥淲hen you鈥檙e not doing it you somehow don鈥檛 feel normal, you don鈥檛 feel good. You also have a craving for it. You exercise a lot of your mental energy trying to think about how to get it back.鈥�
Powell insists that the litmus test for digital addiction is not just how many hours a day or a week you waste on-line, but if you find yourself spending time you had no intention of spending, lying about your use, or upsetting those closest to you by your incessant digital activity.
鈥淲hen you have these negative feedback systems saying to you, 鈥楾his is not good. We think you should stop doing this so much,鈥� and you don鈥檛 listen to that negative feedback because it鈥檚 more important to you to continue to engage in the activity, then you know you have a problem,鈥� Powell explains.
鈥淧articularly when you start to see someone living a double life because they know that this is not okay in other people鈥檚 opinion but they still want to do it.鈥�
One of Powell鈥檚 biggest concerns about the over-use of digital technology, among both children and adults, is how it has the potential to disconnect us from each other, making it harder for humans to be together in community. I鈥檓 sitting on a couch in the downstairs of her house but I find myself thinking of a time when I was overseas leading a media and communication training for a non-profit. After a long day of teaching, there was a party at the director鈥檚 house. During those awkward moments at the beginning of the party, three of the young staff members pulled out their phones. I looked over the shoulder of one. He was mindlessly scrolling through Facebook with his thumbs. We were at a party together鈥攍ess than two feet away from each other鈥攂ut his attention was completely engaged elsewhere. There was no way to start a conversation. It felt like a missed opportunity to meet, connect, and create opportunities.
So when Powell tells me she thinks children and adults alike are not spending enough time face to face, I find myself nodding vigorously. Being overly stimulated all the time, especially overly visually stimulated, Powell continues, creates a kind of attention deficit in all of us, an unfortunate and potentially mentally compromising need to be constantly entertained.
鈥淧eople are getting less direct feedback from interactions with other people,鈥� Powell explains, adding that this is problematic, especially for younger children. 鈥淵ou can be horribly nasty [on social media]. You can kill and slaughter, rape and pillage [in videogames]. And there鈥檚 no feedback telling you that鈥檚 not a good thing to do. If anything, it鈥檚 validated.鈥�
It鈥檚 not an accident, Powell goes on, that gaming and social media are addictive. The more media we consume, the more lucrative it is for Silicon Valley. 鈥淭hey want your eyeballs because that makes money,鈥� Powell points out. 鈥淲e鈥檙e living in a culture where there is an attempt to get you addicted. They want consumers to come back.鈥�
Tips For Healthy Screen Use
It鈥檚 something of a clich茅 to point out that the older generation is often suspicious of and judgmental about the next generation鈥檚 technology.
But though media attention tends to center around children and screen time, we know that we adults are actually spending nearly twice as much time as youngsters consuming digital media. Perhaps it鈥檚 not our children we should be worrying about, but ourselves.
So how do we set limits on our screen use so we can reap the benefits of the Internet Age without its ills? How do we make ourselves turn off these oh-so-enticing devices when our eyes start to hurt and our sleep starts to suffer or when a loved one points out that we鈥檝e been overdoing it? How do we keep ourselves and our children from getting full-blown addicted?
Stephen Sloan, Hilarie Cash, and Diane Hennacy Powell all offer lots of good advice. I listen to their many and varied suggestions: sunset your house鈥檚 Internet access at the same time every night; block problem programs with Apps that allow you to use them for a prescribed amount of time; interact with social media via a program like HootSuite, Buffer, or SproutSocial, where you can schedule a week鈥檚 worth of updates so you aren鈥檛 actually visiting the social media site itself; never sleep with your phone in your room or allow your children to do so; monitor your time playing videogames and enlist help from others to make you don鈥檛 overdo it; have a screen-free Saturday or Sunday (at least one day a week where devices stay OFF all day); make sure you do at least an hour of exercise a day, preferably in nature, preferably with your phone at home; schedule screen-free together time that brings you joy with friends and family; talk about the problem, the potential for the problem, and the possible solutions with your loved ones and anyone else who will listen.
But all of this, I realize as I close the computer and turn off my smart phone, is so much easier said than done. In our family it鈥檚 a work in progress with more 鈥渨ork鈥� happening than progress. Fights, nagging, contracts with our 13-year-old son that are signed but then broken have become the norm.
My son鈥檚 not the only one who worries me. My office is behind the house and recently we鈥檝e found bear cub scat on the path leading back to it. At the end of the day, I leave the laptop and smart phone in the office to deter myself from obsessively checking Facebook, breaking health news, and emails after supper. But at 10:00 p.m., a half an hour after my son was supposed to dock his phone in the living room, he鈥檚 alone in his room playing Clash Royale and I鈥檓 shivering my way back to the office. I forgot to add tags to the post that is set to publish first thing in the morning. That鈥檚 all I鈥檒l do with my computer, I promise myself. There鈥檚 no way it can wait.
Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., a frequent contributor to the 老夫子传媒 Journal, is an award-winning investigative journalist. A Fulbright grantee and graduate of Cornell University, she is currently writing her eighth non-fiction book. The book, co-authored with Portland-based Dartmouth-trained integrative physician, Paul Thomas, M.D., is about addiction. Read more about her鈥攚here else?鈥攐n-line at www.JenniferMargulis.net.
