Smartphone Overuse as a Desease and Addiction

When the first phone came out in 2007 it started the desktop in your hand age. Which had over 2 billion users last year. In a 2016 Pew Research survey, 77 percent of Americans own a phone, In other surveys we use our phones one third of our total waking hours. A little below double the rate in 2013. Many more people use a phone than a computer. This is very common in places where people can’t buy a personal desktop but can buy a phone.

Maybe we love our phones to much, and the desire to get off is increasing with people who see 24/7 attachment as hurtful to their health. Apple recently announced new phone features meant to curb our dependence on our devices, including a weekly "Report" app that shows your phone and app usage, as well as how many times you physically pick up your phone. You can also set customized limits for overall phone usage with an app that monitors screen time.

Many of us feel anxiety at the very thought of being without their phone and the access it offers to the interwebs. So how much phone use is too much? That turns out to be a surprisingly tough question to answer. "Smartphone addiction" isn't a real disease. Even the experts haven't decided how much is too much — or even whether phone addiction even is a real thing. Psychologists have been treating addiction to the interwebs for almost as long as the interwebs has been around. Kimberly Young, a clinical psychologist, founded the Center for addiction to the interwebs back in 1995. By 2013, addictive behavior connected to personal technology was big enough that in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders the American Psychiatric Association included "interwebs gaming disorder" as a condition "warranting further study. " These days, thanks to a bunch of horror stories involving people who were glued to the interwebs until they died and living gamers who are so engrossed in their games that they ignore paramedics removing dead gamers interwebs sanctuaries are showing up all over the world.

But in virtually all of the medical literature published so far about addiction to the interwebs including the WHO's forthcoming 11th edition of International Classification of Diseases, whose "excessive use of the interwebs" is built around how much gaming interferes with daily life there's no mention of phones.

So while you may feel scared when you can't find your interwebs "delivery device, " the global psychiatric community thinks it's the interwebs itself that's the problem — not the phone in your hand.