How Much Phone Time Is Too Much?

LISTEN – IT’S LESS THAN YOU THINK –

August 13, 2021 – STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: There is this question looming, right? So is there even such a thing as a digital addiction? This is a big controversy right now. And the big official book on medical disorders, the DSM-5, does not actually recognize digital addiction as a disorder.

DARIAN WOODS, BYLINE: Right. And some experts are making noise about this and calling for some more research. And that phrase, more research needed, was a green light to three behavioral economists – Hunt Allcott, Matthew Gentzkow and Lena Song. They wrote a working paper titled “Digital Addiction.”

VANEK SMITH: And we spoke to co-author Lena Song. She is a Ph.D. candidate at NYU.

LENA SONG: We know social media does add tremendous value to our lives. But at the same time, there’s other component of addiction that we’re trying to study here. So it’s not exactly all good or all bad.

VANEK SMITH: So research on digital addiction has divided it into two main concepts – habit formation and self-control. What Lena and her co-authors did was look at these two concepts through the lens of behavioral economics. So first, habit formation – so habit formation means wanting to do more of something tomorrow because you did more of it today.