It gets bad when you stop using the thing solely for its intended purpose and start using the thing as a default, a way to pass the time when nothing else is happening. That’s how addiction works. I think it’s most noticeable with the social internet, nowadays anyway. There’s nothing to do and everything’s boring on TV and you’re too tired to read, so you pick up the phone and scroll. And it’s not because you’re looking for anything, or even because you wanted to, but it’s just kind of the default. It’s dangerous when it becomes the default.
In the world of design, there’s a concept known as skeuomorphism. A ‘skeuomorph’ is an object or design that retains elements of the previous iteration - of the object or design that it replaces. Kind of like how the email app has a picture of a paper envelope on it, even though the advent of email made letter writing and mailing practically obsolete. The phone app has a picture of an old, rotary phone, the classic landline handset used simply for calling. You’d pick up the phone, the device which lets you make calls, because you wanted to call someone, and that was it. And then you could send texts, so you could communicate with the people you wanted to, even when they couldn’t talk. And then they became camera phones, and now you didn’t have to bring a dedicated camera because your phone could do it. And once the phones shipped with internet access embedded, the communication device became a do-it-all, a swiss army knife of information and finances and calendars and games.
There became basically no reason to put the thing down, because there was nothing it couldn’t do. And if there was nothing it couldn’t do, and no reason to put it down, then suddenly you didn’t need a reason to pick it up.
I think this kind of addiction is less damaging but scarier than drugs and alcohol and gambling, because if you want to smoke or drink or bet, you probably have to go somewhere. Or, at the very least, you’ll run out of your home supply and have to go and buy some more. Either way, you’re given far more ‘outs’, chances to realise that you don’t actually want to do the thing you’re going to; opportunities to turn around. The social internet doesn’t have that. Your phone’s always there, and it’s always charged (god forbid it isn’t) and the apps always work.
And when they don’t work, when the servers are down even for a matter of hours, the public withdrawal symptoms are on full display; the angry articles and social condemnation and stock nosedives (see the #FacebookDown outrage). We’re addicted, and because we’re all addicted, and we’re all in the same boat, it makes it okay. If there were only one person acting the way we all do towards our phones, then we’d notice the problem. But it’s a hall of mirrors, and it’s comforting and absolving to know that all our friends and idols are in the same boat. So it can’t be that bad.
But we’re in uncharted waters; nobody knows what the long-term effects of being the first generation to go through our most socially-formative years with internet access (let alone whilst being locked in the house for months) will look like, how it’ll affect us later down the line. I think it’s telling that, after only a few years of having this kind of access to the social internet, there’s already a healthy presence of backlash; people dumbing down their phones, trying to use them more intentionally, having specific devices for separate functions. Keeping a physical calendar and a DSLR camera and an MP3 player again. It took decades after cigarettes became mainstream to see that kind of public pushback.
And the phone isn’t as damaging, not physically, and it’s not a perfect comparison. But it is a real addiction, and it’s one that we’ve never had to deal with before; the total access, the interconnectedness, the constant availability. It’s not chemical, or financial, or going to kill you, but it is a real addiction, and one that deserves our attention.