Comment by mym1990
14 hours ago
About as useful as telling a heroine addict to get off heroine, except that screen addiction is much more subtle in the harmful effects, but is incredibly corrosive over time. Almost all tech products in the world are pushing for more and more screentime, there is really not much regulation in sight, in the US at least(go Australia!). The best hope is that one day an Ozempic for screen time comes out!
Screen "addiction" isn't a real thing. Addiction is a specific medical phenomenon, not just any bad habit. Go find me a study in a medical journal that quantifies the physiological effects of smartphone withdrawal.
I do think people spend too much time on social media, but it's not helpful to frame this by analogy to something it simply is not. Bad habits are bad in their own right. We don't need to appropriate medical language to discuss them, and doing so is misleading. You can actually just stop using Instagram Reels. It's nothing like heroin. It's a bad habit, and you can just turn it off.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12401922/
"In contrast[to drug withdrawal], smartphone dependence is driven by digital stimuli and psychological-behavioral mechanisms, with almost no physical dependence; withdrawal mainly causes psychological discomfort (such as restlessness) without severe physical reactions. Its health risks are mostly indirect (like vision loss, sleep disorders), and withdrawal can generally be improved through behavioral adjustments."
I can find you 10 more but I doubt it would change your outlook.
It's a bit more useful, in that the consensus on "phone use bad" is still a lot more shaky than "heroin bad".
Sure, I would agree my comment was hyperbolic. If the consensus on "phone use bad" is still shaky, wouldn't telling someone to get off their phone actually be less useful, because there would be more skepticism over the harm being done?