DISCUSSION: Are we all addicts?

A collaboration by Harri and Beth Broom

Addiction is defined to be a psychological, sometimes physical, inability to stop exhibiting a certain behaviour. And after reading that sentence, you’re probably thinking, ‘blimey calm down with the psychology’, but if we can increase our understanding of addiction we perhaps could learn something new, and question one of society’s most ingrained and unquestioned habits.

Alcoholism, drugs and gambling are all well-known addictions that in many ways are social taboos. What preconceptions do you have of people suffering addictions like this? Many of us tend to believe that only certain people are susceptible to addiction, maybe that they lack enough willpower, are lazy or have no control. But, have you ever thought of looking closer to home? As humans, we are all susceptible to addiction; it’s just how the human mind works. When we like the feeling of something, we tend to repeat it over and over. Whether that be a *large* glass of wine, exercising or eating. But as the feeling becomes overwhelming, control is usually either lost or obsessively exerted, creating unhealthy behaviours. Recognising addiction can be difficult, within ourselves as well as in others, and usually the intervention is too late. 

One of the most addicting machines in existence is the fruit slot machine. Flashing lights draw us in, but what keeps many of us on the edge of our seats as to whether we will FINALLY get those three matching fruits, is that we just don’t know what is going to happen once that lever is pulled. The unpredictability of the outcome is what fuels this addictive behaviour. Experiments have been carried out demonstrating that if we reward animals for a certain behaviour 100% of the time they’ll quickly lose interest. However if they are rewarded randomly, making the outcome of their behaviour unpredictable, they become addicted. 

Now what if we told you that you engage with, carry around, and obsess over your own personal slot machine every day? You probably use it first thing after waking up, some of us sleep with it, and more than half of us in the UK say we’re hooked to them. Our phones, and the apps we install into them have been designed taking full advantage of the knowledge we have from psychology to create the perfect breeding ground for addictive tendencies. 

To refresh our endless page on Instagram or Facebook we have to pull down on our screen which mimics the behaviour of the slot machine lever. The bright red notification icon whenever we receive a new message pays homage to the flashing lights of an arcade. When we unlock our home screen we do not know if we are going to be inundated with a plethora of messages, or if we are merely going to be greeted with some boring update notifications. These ideas were well-known by the people who created these apps and devices that we use constantly. Our phones have been designed to get us to spend as much time as possible on them, in other words, they were designed to be addictive. Like ACTUALLY addictive.

So as you can see, judging an addiction before looking a bit closer to home is easily done. Many of us joke about being addicted to our phones, but we don’t really see it as anything to be concerned about. But by comparing larger scale addictions to what is considered to be ‘minor’, we are hopefully able to give some insight into the ways that we are all susceptible to addiction. Circumstance dictates if this happens to be addiction to our phones, or a more taboo substance. Just one more drink, just another pill, just one more notification to respond to. In no way are addictions trivial, from phone addictions to eating disorders, from drug abuse to gambling, none should be taken lightly and each have their own types of responses in order to recognise and recover from an addiction. 

If you’d like to change your phone habits there are a few small things that we use which have been helpful for us. If you have used anything different that works for you feel free to share them below!

1) Changing your phone screen to greyscale is a function in settings in most phones

2) Clearing your home screen to only include apps you use to fulfil daily tasks such as calendar, calculator, camera etc. (This creates an additional obstacle, albeit small, in the way of spiralling on your favourite social media platform for hours.

3) Using an app, such as SPACE to track the amount of time you spend looking at your screen (this might surprise you as we tend to underestimate how long we actually spend looking at our screens).

Phones provide a connection, and in times such as this, feeling some form of human emotion through a message or facetime is paramount. But don’t lose sight of your own health over those extra ten swipes on Instagram. Current technology is great at allowing us to keep in touch, but it seems that we’ve lost the ‘social’ aspect in ‘social media’. How can we implement more meaningful social connections than simply passively scrolling and passing it off as ‘socialising’? The world that phones create can be as equally destructive as it can be amazing, so let’s focus on making our engagement with our phones as positive as possible.

DISCLAIMER

In no way are we experts in addictions, psychology or social issues. We are simply sharing our experiences and knowledge on the subject.

Please call CALM, or visit the website if you have been affected by this information. 

0800 58 58 58