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Are You Addicted to Your Phone or Just Using It a Lot? Experts Weigh In
This study proves your brain reacts to smartphones like a drug
Sometimes it’s hard to imagine that we haven’t always had our smartphones.
In reality, however, it’s been just over thirty years since IBM introduced an early phone/computer prototype in 1994, and less than twenty years since Apple first offered the iPhone.
Smartphones have, arguably, changed our lives. And now, finally, more scientists are asking questions like, how do they change our brains?
More researchers are studying how we use smartphones
As smartphones become ever more embedded in our lives, researchers are becoming more interested in problematic behaviors associated with their use. In particular, scientists are crafting studies to try and assess what constitutes simply frequent use of our phones, and what is addiction.
Psychologists have come up with multiple names for our phone habits, including both “smartphone addiction” (SPA), and “excessive smartphone use” (ESU). Smartphone addiction is considered to be a “behavioral addiction including mood tolerance, salience, withdrawal, modification, conflict, and relapse.”
