Let’s face it, we are all “users.” Anyone who accesses a computer software program has been known as a “user” for many years now. No doubt, the term originated somewhere back in the mainframe age when people had to sit at a terminal, log on, and identify themselves before they could access the mammoth machines, machines that filled whole buildings in the sixties and whose power is now dwarfed by that on your average smartphone. Today, however, many experts from various specialties  are starting to denounce the addictive capacity of the latest technologies. They are saying many users are in fact becoming addicts. But how meaningful is it to talk about addiction when referring to people who constantly or continually use computers and their mobile devices to surf the Web, text with their friends, and check for email?

The latest draft of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a set of standards published by the American Psychiatric Association, posits a new category of mental disorder, called “Behavioral Addictions,” and it suggests, for starters, just one such disorder: gambling. The physiological rationale for the new category is that such behavior has the same clinical pattern as substance addictions, that is, an activity originally undertaken for pleasure becomes compulsive. The addicted person ceases to derive much pleasure from the activity but continues to pursue the pattern despite diminishing gains and increasing cost. Addicts lose control over their behavior. The activity begins to control them. Neurobiologically, experts claim, addictive behaviors follow the same path in the brain, generating the euphoria that dopamine creates, and leading addicts to repeat their behavior in search of new pleasures.

So how do experts define the criteria for “Internet” addiction? To begin with, they’ve identified six criteria that must be present:

Preoccupation—Thinking constantly about previous online activity or anticipating the next one.

Tolerance—Needing longer periods online in order to feel satisfied.

Lack of control—Finding it impossible to cut back or stop.

Withdrawal—Stopping induces restlessness, irritability, other changes in mood.

Unintended overuse—Repeatedly staying online longer than intended.

Also, the user must also experience one of three criteria that indicate the online activity is negatively affecting his life. These include (1) losing or jeopardizing the loss of something important, such as a job, a big opportunity, or personal relationship, (2) concealing and/or lying about time spent online, and (3) using the activity to escape real-life difficulties.

Psychologist Sherry Turkle doesn’t like the idea of labeling computer overuse as an addiction because, she claims, it calls for one solution: stopping. And she believes we must learn how to live with our technologies, that we can’t go back. “The idea of addiction, with its one solution that we know we won’t take, makes us feel hopeless. We have to find a way to live with seductive technology and make it work to our purpose,” Turkle writes in her new book Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other.

 It is certainly true that we can’t go back—the Internet and cell phones aren’t going away and there will no doubt be even more seductive technologies to come. Still it is hard to ignore the neurological science that tells us some people are rewiring their brains in ways that make them crave more media use, causing them to lose control of their time and how they spent it. Yet it may also be true that only those types of personalities are at risk who are predisposed to develop some sort of compulsive, addictive behavior in any event. But I do have one more nagging thought that just won’t go away. It’s what one of Sherry Turkle’s young research subjects observed about the pull and the power of our modern technology: This sixteen-year-old girl perhaps identifies the real problem with this postmodern life of ours: “Technology is bad because people are not as strong as its pull.”

The art of conversation is so twentieth century. It seems that Web 2.0 has replaced the need for conversing entirely. For those who send hundreds of text messages each day, who constantly check and updates their Facebook Walls, even phone calls are passé—they’re far too time-consuming, too emotionally demanding, and just plain too complicated. Deval, a senior in high school whom Sherry Turkle cites in her new book Alone Together, observes: “A long conversation with someone you don’t want to talk to that badly can be a waste of time.” By texting, Deval explains, he only has to deal with direct information and not waste time on conversation fillers. At the same time, however, the high school senior confesses that he doesn’t really know how to have a conversation, at least yet. He thinks he might soon start to talk on the phone as a way to learn how to have an actual conversation: “For later in life, I’ll need to learn how to have a conversation, learn how to find common ground as I can have something to talk about, rather than spending my life in awkward silence.”

Neurologists and psychologists worry a lot today about the lack of face-to-face and voice-to-voice interaction that Web 2.0 enables. They point out that it is especially important for adolescents to have direct interaction with others because it is during the late teenage years and early twenties that the brain develops the ability to understand how others feel and how one’s actions may affect others around them. The underdeveloped frontal lobes of younger teenagers, explains Dr. Gary Small, Director of the UCLA Memory and Aging Research Center, lead teenagers to seek out situations that provide instant gratification. Younger teenagers tend to be self-absorbed. They also tend to lack mature judgment, are unable to understand danger in certain situations, and have trouble putting things in perspective.

One prevalent habit that impedes the normal development of the frontal lobes to the level of maturity one expects to see in adults by their mid-twenties is multitasking, says Dr. Small. The ability of multiple gadgets to allow young adults (and others) to listen to music, watch TV, email or text, and work on homework at the same time can lead to a superficial understanding of information. And all this technology feeds the desire for novelty and instant gratification, not complex thinking or deep learning. Abstract reasoning also remains undeveloped in such an environment.

High school senior Deval believes he can learn to have conversations by talking on the phone. But mastering the art of conversation is not the same kind learning as figuring out how to use the latest smartphone. Experts say it takes practice in listening to other people and learning how to read their faces and other gestures to fully understand what another person is feeling and saying. There are deeply intuitive aspects to learning how to fully converse with someone, what Gary Small calls the “empathetic neural circuitry” that is part of mature emotional intelligence. Researchers say it is too early to know how and if  “Digital Natives,” those born after 1980 who have grown up using all kinds of digital devices as a natural part of the rhythm of their lives, will develop empathy at all and if they do develop it, how it might differ from what empathy means today.

What the experts do know is that the more hours spent in front of electronic screens can actually atrophy the neural circuitry that people develop to recognize and interpret nonverbal communication. And these skills are a significant part of what makes us human. Their mastery helps define personal and professional successes as well.  Understanding general body language, reading facial expressions, and making eye contact are all part of the art of empathy. So in this age of superconnectivity, where communications are everywhere and we always on, we seem to risk losing many of the basic skills that are the hallmarks of effective communication itself.

See also

Alone Together by Sherry Turkle


iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind by Gary Small MD and Gigi Vorgan