Dang, another traffic jam on a Seattle freeway. As my car judders (stop and go, stop and go) forward at an agonizingly sluggish pace, I become aware that every other the driver in adjoining lanes is eyeing a smart phone or similar device. Though distracted driving is illegal in Washington state, as it is nearly everywhere, scofflaws continue to pay more attention to their little screens than they do to traffic. Judging by my cursory observations of other drivers caught in backed-up traffic on I-5, I wonder how many of us have Screen Addiction Disorder? How can we sit and do nothing when we have the diversion of fingering our little devices that allow thoughts to be absorbed by a brain-numbing digital elixir? The illuminated screen is so much better than twiddling one’s thumbs, I suppose, but, really, what is so alluring about those small rectangles of brightness? Is the craving to fix our eyes upon our smart phone screens the equivalent of heroin, digital heroin? Are the text messages, emails, memes, streaming films, and video games so important that we eagerly risk our lives and regularly demonstrate appalling behavior as well? Sure, you bet they are!
The evidence is all around us. A surgeon takes a cell phone call during an open heart operation; the best man checks his smart phone while standing with the groom as they wait for the wedding march to begin; each member of a family of six each looks at his or her phone while they wait for the server to bring their orders—these occurrences no longer shock us, though we may raise an eyebrow, because we see or hear about them every day. Criminy, I recently attended a funeral, and the fellow sitting in front of me, I could not help but notice, kept checking his phone for baseball scores. And who hasn’t been in a public place and been subjected to a loud voice yapping into a cell phone, imposing one half of a conversation to all those nearby? To many of us little screens induce bad manners and discourteous behavior, and we, unaccountably, have agreed to accept the results. Well, no, perhaps not all of us.
Many observers suggest that digital craving is just another obsession like drug, alcohol, gambling, and sexual addiction. I mean, an addiction is an addiction, isn’t it. The standard line: an addiction is an impairment in behavioral control. In other words: an addicted person has got to have it (whatever it may be). The craving trumps an ability to abstain. The craving enslaves its victim. In the end, interpersonal relationships are impacted, and significant emotional problems inevitably arise. No surprise there, I suppose. But, addiction is too strong a word for someone who thoughtlessly pulls out his or her cell phone whenever the outside world does not offer enough stimulation. To that person, myself included, the attention paid to the little screen is a bad habit, not a pathologic condition. Not to make light of bad habits, but many people have a real addiction to screens. In South Korea, in fact, the government sponsors detox centers for teens whose lives have become overdependent on their phones and other screens.
Such a remedy might be a good idea here in America. My computer at work was acting up, so I called our IT guy to come have a look. While he was updating my software, or some such remedy, I asked him about a certain video game that my son had mentioned. The IT guy froze, turned his head and stared at me as if I were a demon sent to poke him with a red-hot pitchfork. “What?” I asked. Shamefaced, he explained that the game I had mentioned had cost him his marriage. “How?” I asked. Turns out that he had become so addicted to that game that he grossly neglected everything: his wife, his children, his job, and, well, everything including his health and hygiene. He skipped meals, forgot to bathe or change clothes, and remained in the basement playing his game as if nothing else mattered, which, he confessed, was self-assigned madness. When his wife announced that she was leaving, divorcing him, he barely looked up from the monitor to dissuade her. At the time, he thought she was being melodramatic and would be upstairs making him a sandwich when he finally took a brief break from his game. Months later, he received counselling, professional withdrawal help, and recognized that while his video gaming gave him a distraction from the important components in his life, it had become his life in sum. All those important elements that comprised his life had wasted away. In his case, a video game had kept him from dealing with the people, responsibilities, and duties, all foundations of his life pushed aside for (ding, ding, ding) playing a video game.
For most of us screen time is an annoying habit rather than an addiction, but if you must have your smart phone with you (even when you go to bed), if you are having trouble with dry eyes because staring at a screen means you do not blink as much as you should, and if you refuse to take that wilderness retreat trip because there will be no Wi-Fi, no internet connection, then you may be crossing the line from a bad habit to a real screen addiction.
Beware, in 2018 the World Health Organization recognized “gaming addiction” as a mental disorder. They could easily have conflated that conclusion to include all compulsive screen gawking. To revise and update Marx’s maxim, “Religion is the opium of the people,” one might substitute: Smartphones are the opioids of the people.
In my case, stress or anxiety trigger an instant response for my digital pain-killer. If I am at the dentist’s office waiting for that root canal that I have been putting off, I instinctively reach for my phone so I can anesthetize worries if only for a few minutes.
Finally, most concerning, screens have become blinds to keep many of us from seeing the outside world, as well as hindering our view to look inward. We are missing the grand landscapes around us and the meditative galaxies within us.