Screen Addiction: How we become addicted?
By: Raveel Ahmed Khan
Tags: Addiction, Mobilesmartphones, Laptop, Recovery, Screen

Look up from your screen and you’ll see most of the people in front of you staring into their screens and those who are not may have their mobile phones in their purse or pocket.

A 2019 study conducted in Germany showed that 99 percent of teens aged 18 to 19 years owned a smartphone. We can get an idea out of this about how much smart phones are being used in the world. Some teenagers use it to share their lives online but since not everyone is same, some lose control.

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How we become addicted?

It’s hard to put your phone down, I mean chances are that you are reading this on your mobile. Let’s understand by taking an example of the game candy crush, you play the game, you achieve goals causing your brain to be rewarded with little bursts of dopamine and you are also given some new content, this also gives little bursts of dopamine and together creates a ‘compulsion loop’, which is also the same loop responsible for the behaviors associated with nicotine and cocaine. That’s how our brain becomes addicted and we can’t stop looking into our phones.

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Why we spend hours in front of our screens?

After releasing iPad, Steve jobs was approached by a journalist from New York Times on a phone call, at the end of the call the journalist asked, “your kids must love the iPad?” To which Steve Jobs replied “No, they haven’t used it. We limit how much technology our kids use at home.”

People spending time on apps like relaxation, health, exercise, reading, education, weather tend to feel good and happy and they spend 9 minutes per day on each app. On the other hand, people who spend time on apps like dating, entertainment, social networking, gaming, news, web browsing tend to feel sad and they spend about 27 minutes per day on each app.

People are spending 3x more time on apps that don’t make them happy, reason is that these apps rob us of stopping cues, what is a stopping cue?, it is a signal that it’s time to move on, nowadays apps like Facebook, Instagram, twitter, news apps etc. don’t have stopping cues. They are bottom less, meaning they don’t end. These apps keep giving us new content and the brain being in a compulsion loop enjoys that, and this is also the reason we are never satisfied with the time we spend in front of our screen and we always want to spend more time on it.

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What should we do?

There can be many ways to get rid of this addiction like you can promise yourself that you won’t use your mobile phone from 5–6pm everyday but thing is 5–6pm everyday are different, you may have a situation where you must have to use your mobile phone, so, what you can do is that you can promise yourself that on certain occasions that happen every day you are not going to use your mobile phone e.g. eating dinner, you may eat dinner at a restaurant, at home anywhere else but you promise yourself that you are not going to use mobile phone on the table.

At first, it hurts. But you’ll get used to it, you’ll withdraw from this habit the same way you withdraw from a drug.

Conclusion

Nowadays screen addiction can be seen in people as never before especially in youngsters. During this pandemic situation when people are staying at home and have more free time, they are more likely to spend their time in front of screens, which is going to have an immense effect on their lives once this situation ends. So, it’s time you take control of your mind and stop it from controlling you.