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For over a decade, Apple has introduced a new iPhone every year. Every year, the number of smartphone users increases, from 25 percent of adults in 2011 to 46 percent in 2012, up to 56 percent in 2013, according to a Pew Research Center survey statistics. Such luxuries are becoming staples of high middle-class households and children are becoming familiar with these devices by the age of two.
The issue isn’t necessarily with the device, but with the use of it – mainly, the habit of checking your phone or tablet, scanning for emails, mindlessly refreshing social media or simply long durations of Internet browsing. These seemingly inconsequential activities add up; a study conducted by James Roberts, Ph.D., a Professor of Marketing in Baylor’s Hankamer School of Business, identified that female college students spend an average of 10 hours a day on their cellphones and male college students spend nearly eight. It’s not surprising then that this study also showed that, “60 percent of college students admit they may be addicted to their cell phone, and some indicated they get agitated when it is not in sight.” We, as early 21st century individuals, have developed a condition that is uniquely ours: Screen Addiction.
Screen addiction is a dependence on electronic devices, whether it be a smartphone, a tablet, or a computer. What may present itself as merely a distraction has greater consequences, on both our dopamine reward systems and the neural development of children.
Addiction manifests when the reward system in our brain is responsive to a specific activity. In the same way that cocaine or nicotine release dopamine as a positive reinforcement upon consumption, the chime that signals a text, email, or some other notification can elicit a similar response in the brain, flooding it with dopamine. This is why you feel excited at the chime. This is why you feel anxious when you can’t respond to the chime. In fact, according to a poll by SecurEnvoy, 70 percent of women admit to having experienced phone separation anxiety, as well as 61 percent of men. The fact that not having your phone out, or God forbid, leaving your phone at home, can cause sentiments of stress is indicative of withdrawal, the most common symptom of addiction. Not to mention, that feeling when you feel your phone vibrates only for you to check your phone and realize that it was a false alarm is a real thing, and has been studied and dubbed by a study published in the May 2013 issue of Psychology Today, as Phantom Cellphone Vibration Symptom. That’s your brain telling you to check your phone, for no reason.
With all the functionality smartphones and tablets allow for, it’s understandable how these devices have become regular habits, or why we feel so attached to them. This is why, according to a study published by Leslie Perlow, PhD of Harvard Business School, 70 percent of adults check their smartphone within an hour of getting up, and why 56 percent check their phone within an hour of sleep; we are slaves to utility, or the perception thereof. These phones aren’t doing anything that a laptop can’t do; they’re simply making it more convenient, and making distraction more accessible.
The prevalence of this technology has allowed the current generation of children to grow up surrounded by screen, to be raised by them (even more so than the television generations of children). Children are being exposed to and becoming familiar with these devices as early as the age of two. The affects of internet and gaming addiction have been studying in young developing minds, and the findings demonstrate deleterious affects in brain growth. According to researchers at the University of Montreal, this “addiction is associated with structural and functional changes in brain regions involving emotional processing, executive attention, decision-making, and cognitive control.” This study and others like it show several harrowing effects: shrinkage or loss of gray matter tissue (where “processing occurs), damage to the insula (develops empathy and compassion), loss of white matter (connects different parts of the brain), a thinner cortical thickness (the outermost part of the brain), and overall impaired cognitive function, such as reduced impulse inhibition, and increased sensitivity to rewards. So if our children develop addictions to these screens and spend eight to 10 hours a day on them, their brains will develop differently, and they’ll go on to have children and those children we be susceptible to screen addiction and they will develop it on their own to the point where whole new alleles are introduced to the human genome and the human race becomes cyborgs.
Perhaps this is hyperbole, and perhaps the benefits of these devices outweigh the negatives, but I can’t help but think of the implications of these developmental errors. Or the lack of societal awareness in the effects of these devices. And the progression of this technology to further convenience as well as the cultural apathy that will likely follow.
-Bryan Diaz, Contributing Writer