IN FOCUS | HEALTH
2 with their smartphone, in particular. “What about the rest of us,” he says, “walking around, staring at our smartphones, narrowly escaping lamp posts and cars and not able to respond to the people in our lives, or not getting a good night’s sleep.” Even this level of tech use can interfere with our health, happiness and well-being, he says. Nonetheless, many of us rely on technology for our jobs, and for staying in touch with friends and family. As Graham readily accepts, technology in the modern world is not only largely unavoidable but often extremely helpful. But in cases of what’s termed life ‘disruption’ rather than ‘addiction’ – a broader category that surely many of us fall into – strategies designed to help people with technology addiction could help us to use our devices in a healthier way. It’s not just addicts who could benefit from a tech detox. A MODERN AFFLICTION To understand how devices can get such a grip on us, it’s useful to look at research into full-blown addictions. Psychologist Prof Mark Griffiths, the director of the International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University, is a pioneer of research in the area. After 20 years of study, he’s come to the conclusion that ‘internet addiction’ and ‘smartphone addiction’ are really misnomers. People who are addicted to online gaming, online gambling, online sex, or online shopping are not internet addicts, he argues, but rather gambling addicts, sex addicts or shopping addicts who are using the medium of the internet to engage in their addictive behaviour. For a gaming addict who plays on their smartphone, the structural changes in their brain’s reward system that cause cravings are down to the playing of the game, rather than the use of a phone. Repeated exposure to a game (or any other addictive behaviour or drug) causes nerve cells in the nucleus accumbens and the prefrontal cortex, areas of the brain respectively involved in motivation and decision-making, to communicate in a way that links liking something with wanting it. In other words, we start to crave it. Social networking is perhaps
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ABOVE AND BELOW: At the US-based reSTART residential programme, technology use is restricted, so residents are encouraged to take part in alternative activities. There’s a huge chessboard for games in the sunshine, while plenty of reSTART’s notebooks are on hand for scribbling down stories and essays
one of the few genuine or ‘pure’ types of ‘internet addiction’, because there is not an offline equivalent. But here, the addiction is to an app, and as such this kind of compulsion should be understood as ‘social networking addiction’, according to Griffiths. These distinctions are vital for designing treatments. In the US, Internet Gaming Disorder is now a recognised psychiatric disorder. One former patient on a US ‘internet addiction’ rehab programme called reSTART has described to The Guardian how he used to play video games for 14 or 15 hours a day, with Netflix on in the background. Any time there was a break in that, he would play a game on his phone or text an ex-girlfriend. Of the truly techaddicted patients that Graham sees at the Nightingale Hospital, gaming is also a common problem. For many of us, though, it’s texting, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook and other apps that can run on our smartphones, and are always with us, that pose a big problem. One recent survey of smartphone use among US college students, for example, found that 12 per cent identified as ‘fanatics’ and 7 per cent as ‘addicts’. “Our smartphones have turned into tools that provide short, quick, immediate satisfaction,” observed Isaac Vaghefi at Binghamton University, who led the study. “Over time this makes us acquire a desire for quick feedback and immediate satisfaction.” Checking messages via social media can become almost compulsive, because of ‘Fear of Missing Out’. This describes the anxiety that an interesting or exciting event may be happening elsewhere online. So in a world where many of us carry smartphones in our pockets, and rely on our devices to keep us connected with everyone else, how can we know if we have a problem in the first place? If gaming, checking Twitter or watching Netflix are encroaching on more and more of your life, it’s worth noting Graham’s observation that heavy use
PHOTOS: RESTART LIFE LLC X4
“Checking messages via social media can become almost compulsive”