The Last Word On Nothing

This week, I published a story with NOVA about the relationship between chemical addiction and screen addiction. For those of you who don’t know, screen addiction, internet gaming addiction, or basically any experience you’ve had with a Shonda Rhymes series at 3AM, are vaguely defined psychological conditions that that some experts consider to be addiction.

The story looked at some disturbing research that suggests obsessive viewing of certain computer games, social media, and entertainment can – over time – start to looks a lot like addiction. Especially when it starts at a very young age. In mouse models, there’s even evidence of permanent changes to the brain and a connection with attentional disorders and future addiction to other substances.

Addiction is one of those things where, the more you learn about it, the more terrifying it gets. For instance, some studies suggest it can impede your ability to manage pain in your body and even enjoy chocolate or sex. For years or decades.

And anyone who follows brain science knows that brain plasticity is pretty hip these days. Now we know it lasts way into old age and can do some pretty amazing things. But it’s not unlimited, especially during crucial developmental periods. In fact, there is some evidence that regular teenage drug users lose their plasticity – their ability to create new connections in the brain – which can change the way the brain is wired.

Connections in the brain are a little like roads. And you can only build so many over the landscape. This may account for some cognitive deficits observed in regular drug users. Drug addiction, it seems, may hoard all the roads for itself, which can be devastating for a teen who is building the roads she will use the rest of her life.

But what is addiction, though? How do you know if you are addicted? I spend at least 10 hours per day in front of a screen – am I addicted? Can you get addicted to Microsoft Word? Or Facetime? My sister has an unhealthy obsession with the NFL and the Patriots in particular. Is she addicted to Tom Brady (yeah right, in her dreams)? I smoked cigarettes on and off for years – just at parties and on top of rocks, mind you. Is that addiction?

Yes, actually, that one probably is. I would literally kill the next person I saw if it would allow me to smoke again. I doubt I’d even feel all that bad about it.

Now, no one is saying that screen addiction – if it even is a true addiction – is just like heroin addiction or even smoking. In one case, you are getting hooked on your own internal reward chemicals and in the other you are hooked on a chemical that is tailor made to hook you. Certainly being hooked on screen time is healthier for your liver and lungs than alcohol, drugs, or tobacco.

“We don’t think that every child that is given lots of screen time will show ADHD or will become a screen time addict,” says Susan Ferguson, an addiction expert at the University of Washington, who was involved in the mouse work. “We just don’t know how addictive it is.”

Screen time may not be as addictive as traditional drugs, but measuring addictiveness is notoriously hard to do. Indeed, gambling, running, and sex can all be addictive. And tobacco addiction is arguably more powerful than harder drugs, without considering any other factors.

Man, I could really use a smoke. Anyone want to split one with me?

Anyway, the real test of addiction is how it affects your life. Does it negatively impact you? Experts disagree over the particulars on this, which sounds like petty bickering at first, but then you realize that how you define addiction vastly changes the scale of the problem. One definition puts it at half a percent of the population while another puts it at ten percent. That’s tens of millions of people in the United States.

Mark Griffiths, a British addiction expert at the University of Nottingham Trent University (which is very different from their rivals, Nottingham University, fact I only learned about after I had gotten it wrong, sadly), had one of my favorite lists. He says addiction a) becomes the most – or almost the most – important thing in your life, b) changes your mood considerably, c) pushes you to get ever more of it, d) triggers withdrawal if you don’t, e) often triggers relapses into addictive cycles, and, most importantly, f) causes conflict.

That last one can be between you and loved ones or you and yourself. It can also be terrifying. I heard stories of families ripped apart and lives ruined by something as stupid as a smart phone. Though, I suppose it’s no more stupid than online poker, methamphetamines, or some weird leaf that’s dried out, crushed up, lit on fire, and inhaled through a filter.

God, I would kill for a cigarette right now.

Anyway, Griffiths’ list isn’t too strange, but he is unusual in that he insists that all criteria be met before using the label “addiction,” ensuring that very few people cross that threshold. And it’s interesting. Take my smoking – only b), c), maybe d), and e) really applied. I guess I have friends who experienced a) and that’s why quitting was so much harder for them.

But f) is the one that really catches my eye, because there was really only conflict later in my life, once I realized how bad it was for me. That’s when I felt conflicted about it. So, paradoxically, it was only when I saw it as an addiction that it might have actually become an addiction.

There is another reason to have such a strict criteria for addiction. It cordons off a few people who really need to focus on this as a truly life-destroying problem, ideally with professional help. It’s hard to know how many people fit into this category, but it’s likely to be less than one percent of users (given that gambling addiction, which is better studied, hovers around one percent and screen addiction does not seem to have risen to that level yet).

This creates a wide, crucial space for those who have a problem but aren’t technically addicted. Those of us who sense that maybe screens have crept a little too far into our lives but snort derisively when someone calls us an addict. It kind of frees screen addiction from the controversy of “addiction.”

Like me and my smoking. I wasn’t addicted, according to Griffith’s list, but it was a problem. And, while I would go months without a smoke, it was always there in the back of my mind as something I’d like to do. And if I had a stressful day or was out with buddies – bang! – I was smoking as soon as I could.

According to experts I talked to, this is where many people are with screen addiction. They like it a lot, do it too much, kinda know it, but manage their lives just fine. And like me and cigarettes, they will have to make a choice. Independent of labels and stigma, is this something that is lessening our quality of life? Is this causing damage to us? If so, maybe it’s time make some changes or get some help. At the very least, start a conversation with friends or family.

…

Okay, I’m being serious right now, can someone go out and get me a cigarette? Just one. I prefer Dunhills. But, really, I’d take anything you got.

Photo Credit: Brian Moore, Mister Guy 11,