Do you spend a lot of time on your phone? How do you feel afterwards? A new study by San Francisco State University focused on the influence of technology on our everyday life. Constant need to use phones is now considered an addiction, similar to other regular types of addictive behaviours. Find out why overusing devices isn’t good for you and how to fight the addiction to digital “high”.

Why smartphones aren’t good for you

Not too long ago, something like 20 years or so, anyone who had a phone was considered cool and strange in some way. Now the strange people are the ones who do not own a smartphone. Mobile devices are now an integral part of our everyday lives. Texting, calling, playing, shopping, working, studying, or pretty much anything you could think of, can now be done online, easy and fast. This is why smartphones became so essential.

The main disadvantage of mobile phones is that many people are so addicted to various alerts from their devices that they simply cannot ignore them. This is why Professor Erik Peper and Associate Professor Richard Harvey in their study compare smartphone overuse to any other type of substance addiction.

It comes at the time when UK just launched a Ministry of Loneliness, with Canada and Australia thinking about doing the same thing. The Internet, which was supposed to bring us closer, is making people more miserable and lonely.

Smart phone addicts

“The behavioral addiction of smartphone use begins forming neurological connections in the brain in ways similar to how opioid addiction is experienced by people taking Oxycontin for pain relief — gradually,” Peper stated.

Researchers suggest that such digital addiction is above all the result of the efforts by the industry of technology to increase profit. The more people watch something online, the more money those who put it there make. Notifications on our devices basically make us check them by triggering the same neural pathways in our brains that once alerted us to imminent danger, such as an attack by a tiger or other large predator.

However, now the same mechanisms that long ago helped us survive make us addicted, weak and miserable. It does not really matter whether we need the information or not — our brain thinks we need to read it immediately.

Besides, overusing social media could even have a negative influence on one’s real social connection. The majority of students who spend a lot of time online reported often feeling lonely, depressed and isolated. They basically gave up a part of their real face-to-face communication changing it to such communication that uses no body language.

At the same time those students were noticed multitasking most of the time. It would not be a bad thing if the quality of their work was still high. However, Peper says they do two or more tasks at the same time but half as well as they would if focused on one task at a time.

In another study it was found we cannot really “multitask”: Instead, we constantly switch off from one task to another, and have to spend a lot of energy and time doing it. We would save all this energy spent in endless switching on and off if we simply did one thing at a time. Up to 40% effectiveness disappears when we try to do several things at once.

Smartphone usage replaces real face-to-face-communication

How to fight the smartphone addiction

Digital addiction, like any other type of addiction, mostly affects our minds. Fighting it is like giving up smoking, drinking or eating tons of sugar. You can take charge and train yourself to be less addicted to your devices.

First of all, you need to realize that companies use and manipulate our innate biological responses to danger to make more money for themselves. Peper advises to turn off notifications and only respond to email and social media at specific times.

Some of his students have already started the fight against addiction. One of them closed his social media accounts to build stronger face-to-face connections with people. He still uses his smartphone to reach people but makes sure that most of his time is dedicated to communicating in person.

Another student decided to stop using headphones while outside to be more aware of her surroundings. When she spends time with her friends, they all put their devices in the center of the table, and the first one to touch theirs buys beverages for all of them!

It’s not a bad idea, what do you think?

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