Are You ‘addicted’ To Your Phone?

ONLY WHILE AWAKE (OR NOT) –

Aug. 26, 2024 – “It’s hard not to resist picking it up and swiping it open,” Gloria Mark, chancellor’s professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, who studies the impact of digital media on people’s lives, tells Fortune. “There’s often not a clear reason for doing it. It’s a habit.” … In this context, “addiction” is a word that many technology researchers, including Mark, tend to stay away from.

“I would be careful with using the word ‘addiction,’” Mark, author of the new Attention Span, says. “Addiction happens when it really interferes with a person’s life, like they can’t work anymore.”

Researchers in Barcelona questioned this language in a 2018 study, concluding that “a behavior may have a similar presentation as addiction in terms of excessive use, impulse control problems, and negative consequences, but that does not mean that it should be considered an addiction,” and instead suggested referring to “problematic use.”