IF I asked you to describe the relationship you have with your phone, what would you say? For many, I have a suspicion that the word 鈥渁ddicted鈥� would crop up in some way. For those of us who use digital technology with any sort of regularity, there will inevitably come a point where we think we have overdone it, and that doesn鈥檛 feel good.
But does this really mean we are addicted to our screens? I would wager that, for the vast majority of users, the answer is no. Certainly not in a clinical sense, because there is no formal set of criteria for digital addiction. And while there are numerous studies attempting to identify and categorise people using that term, there are some fundamental problems with the research area that raise questions over what psychologists are measuring in the first place.
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Back in 2020, some of these issues were highlighted by a paper in which a team used standard techniques to develop an 鈥溾��. This test was given to around 800 people, and, using criteria many other studies use when attempting to classify digital addictions, the team found that 69 per cent of the participants could be 鈥渄iagnosed鈥� with an addiction to spending time with their friends.
Obviously, the aim wasn鈥檛 to stoke a new moral panic about socialising. Instead, the team was showing how easy it is to create what, at face value, appears to be a data-driven measure of an addictive behaviour, yet is actually pathologising a normal part of everyday life. The idea of being addicted to offline friendships is farcical, but swap in 鈥渟ocial media鈥� or 鈥渟martphones鈥� and that is what is happening in the digital technology research literature. We are stuck in a cycle of researchers conflating people鈥檚 enjoyment of an activity with the idea that this means it has the potential to become addictive. This leads, ultimately, to the belief the activity is inherently bad.
It is absolutely true that we can develop bad relationships with the tech we use. But because we are stuck in a way of thinking about screens that places addiction at its core, it becomes hard to talk about the positive aspects of their use. If we want to do anything about the negatives, we are left with a single solution: abstinence. Digital detoxes are touted as a sort of panacea for many of our ills, but evidence for their efficacy is mixed at best. A , for example, revealed that while some studies show positive effects, others show negative effects and none convincingly demonstrate any long-term benefits.
It is all well and good saying that we shouldn鈥檛 think about our tech use in terms of addiction, but that alone doesn鈥檛 get us very far. We all have moments where we feel unhappy with our screen time, and there is no one simple fix. But here is something that may help: an says we need to recharacterise the way we view our relationships with digital tech, not in terms of problematic use, but in terms of habits.
In and of themselves, habits, like checking our phones, are neutral. Whether they have positive or negative effects on our well-being depends not just on the type of habit, but the context in which it occurs, how frequently it occurs and what other factors might be contributing to us doing it.
Framing our tech use in this way offers us a much wider range of options when we identify the aspects of it that we aren鈥檛 happy with. Rather than ditching tech altogether, we can seek ways to curate our digital experiences that promote positive effects while minimising negative impacts.
Are you addicted to your phone? Probably not. Have you developed bad habits with it? That is likely to be true for many of us. But thinking about those behaviours in terms of habit formation offers us much more power and control when it comes to developing healthier relationships with our screens.
Pete Etchells is the author of聽Unlocked: The聽real science of screen time (and how to spend it better), out 21 March
