But you knew that, right?
These days it’s unusual to find the Back Page and the Back Page’s phone in different rooms.
At times the absurdity of this dependence hits hard, although apparently it could be worse: a friend recently marvelled at my ability to still read books, books made of paper no less, when “my phone sits there all pretty and shiny”.
The word “addiction” is thrown around lightly in non-medical circles, so how literally accurate is it when it comes to our phones?
In a study published in Computers in Human Behavior, German researchers say smartphone addiction is a controversial term “frequently criticised for its inaccurate description of a complex with multiple cognitive, affective and behavioral facets”, but that evidence is mounting that excessive smartphone use (ESU) “may lead to a plethora of adverse somatic and psychosocial effects”.
ESU may be related to or a variant of internet gaming disorder, a diagnosis recently added to the DSM-5 and ICD-11, they say.
Building on a previous study and focusing on cue reactivity – the psychological and physiological changes when an addicted person is presented with stimuli related to the addictive substance – they (virtually) confiscated the phones of 25 young adults and MRIed them before and after to see what this withdrawal did to their brains.
Following 72 hours of heavily restricted phone access, they measured subjects’ responses to images of neutral scenes, smartphones switched off and smartphones switched on.
Psychometry tests showed no increase in craving after 72 hours’ restriction (though the craving test was designed specifically for substance use, not technology), nor was there any significant change in mood (consistent with previous research, though several subjects did report improved wellbeing and quality of life).
Scans, however, found increased activation in brain regions including the left anterior cingulate gyrus, part of the anterior cingulate cortex. Changes in the ACC are often seen after withdrawal in substance addictions, and are considered a correlate of craving and impulsive behaviour, the authors write.
Let’s be honest, there’s a lot more neuroscientific detail here than any of the Back Page’s brain regions are equal to interpreting, but the authors are satisfied that something like addiction is going on:
“Although no increased behavioral correlate of craving in terms of [psychometric testing scores] was found, our data suggest that craving-related neural processes in terms of brain-activation changes over time, ROI-based brain-behavior correlations, and correlations to addiction-associated neurotransmitter-systems are evoked by 72 h of smartphone restriction,” they conclude.
Smartphone restriction thus “seems to show parallels to abstinence of respective drugs in other addictions or even craving food”.
The Back Page would try this at home, if the very thought didn’t make me break out in a cold sweat. Maybe intermittent fasting could be a start.
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