Addiction is when you no longer have control over doing, taking or using something to the point that it is causing harm to you or those around you - Health Navigator New Zealand
For most of us, device overuse does not meet all of the above conditions so does not qualify as an addiction, according to behavioural sociologist Nir Eyal.
Photo: Ralf Steinberger / CC BY 2.0
He tells Kim Hil the myth that we're all now addicted to technology teaches 'learned helplessness' when the real problem – distraction – is something we can actually work on.
Excessive time looking at one's phone – like every human behaviour – is something we instinctively do to avoid discomfort, Eyal says.
"For the majority of people these are not addictions, they are distractions, but we don't like calling them distractions because addiction makes us feel so much better.
"Society has always blamed the proximal cause instead of the root cause – and the root cause is much deeper."
Although we are now being told that technology is hijacking their brains, many people are yet to actively address their own tech use, he says.
"Two-thirds of people never change their notification settings.
"Can we really say with a straight face that technology is addicting all of us when we haven't taken five minutes to turn off those blasted notifications that keep interrupting us all day?"
Nir Eyal, author of Indistractable Photo: Supplied
The myth of tech addiction has us playing into the hands of social media and gaming companies, Eyal says, who should be responsible for identifying and assisting the small percentage of people who truly have an 'internet disuse disorder'.
These companies know exactly how much time we spend using their products, he says, so they should reach out to, say, the top 1-to-3 percent of excessive users with a message like 'You are using this product to an extent that may indicate you're struggling with an addiction – can we help?'
"Internet disuse disorder has a 100 percent comorbidity with something else going on. There's always obsessive-compulsive disorder, severe trauma, something going on in one's life and they are using the internet, pornography, alcohol, something to escape that discomfort."
Humanity's current relationship with tech is akin to someone waking up with a terrible hangover and swearing they're never going to drink again, he says.
"We went a bit overboard with these technologies and now we're waking up with a hangover from overuse.
"We're not freebasing Facebook, we're not injecting Instagram, we're not snorting Snapchat.
"These are not substances that enter the body and pass through the blood-brain barrier. These are behaviours … and behaviours can change.
"If you're not a child and you're not pathologically addicted [to technology] the responsibility is on you."
Nir Eyal is the author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.
