Ask the expert: Why smartphone addiction is a flawed idea

Smartphone addiction, also called problematic smartphone use, is a widely studied and discussed topic. A search for “smartphone addiction” on Google Scholar shows over 40,000 results, and researchers have created many tools to measure it. Studies suggest about 27% of people worldwide may show signs of smartphone addiction, and research has linked it to depression, anxiety, poor sleep, low physical activity and changes in the brain. Overall, a great deal of time, effort and money has been spent trying to better understand smartphone addiction.

Dar Meshi, an associate professor of advertising and public relations at the Michigan State University College of Communication Arts and Sciences, investigates the psychology of technology use. He recently co-authored a piece in the journal Addictive Behaviors arguing that most of the existing research on smartphone addiction is misguided because the idea itself is flawed.

Meshi and his co-author, Jens Binder, an associate professor of psychology at Nottingham Trent University in the United Kingdom, contend that if researchers shift their focus away from smartphones and toward the specific rewards people get from them, everyone could benefit. Clinicians could design better treatments, the media could explain the issue more clearly and policymakers could make more informed decisions when creating laws about smartphone use.

Here, Meshi discusses more about addictive disorders, reward systems and smartphone use — and effective ways to examine their effects.

What is the relationship between rewards and addictive disorders?

All addictive disorders stem from rewards, which are substances or activities that activate the brain’s reward system. For example, alcohol or opioids are taken into the body and act upon the brain’s reward system. A disorder can develop if repeated use of alcohol or opioids causes psychological distress or problems with daily life. These conditions are called alcohol use disorder or opioid use disorder due to the rewards that cause them.

Similarly, winning money through gambling activates the brain’s reward system, and gambling disorder can develop as a result. Importantly, in all addictive disorders recognized in the American Psychiatric Association’s “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,” one type or category of reward causes the disorder, and the disorder is named after the behavior used to get that reward (for example, “opioid use” in opioid use disorder or “gambling” for money in gambling disorder).

How does this apply to smartphone use?

A smartphone is not inherently rewarding. Instead, smartphones are tools that deliver many different rewards through the internet and cellular connections. For example, these rewards can be social or financial, such as getting “likes” on social media or winning money on gambling websites. The biological nature of these rewards is supported by many brain imaging studies showing that the brain’s reward system becomes active in response to social and monetary rewards.

Clinicians do not diagnose people with disorders based on reward delivery tools. For example, alcohol is usually consumed using bottles or glasses, and opioids are often taken using syringes or pills. However, clinicians do not diagnose people with “bottle and glass disorder” or “syringe and pill disorder” when problems develop from use. When explained this way, the problem with smartphone addiction becomes clear. Yet, as far as we know, this issue has not been discussed before in the existing smartphone addiction literature. As a result, many studies have been carried out to better understand and describe the flawed idea of smartphone addiction.

How should addiction researchers change their approach to studying smartphone user behavior?

The field should focus on specific rewards and the behaviors used to obtain them, rather than on broad tools that deliver many different kinds of rewards, such as smartphones, computers or the internet. This approach would greatly improve research results and the clinical treatments and interventions that are developed. In line with this idea, we suggest two changes for the field.

First, researchers should stop using the flawed idea of “smartphone addiction” and instead focus on possible addictive disorders tied to specific rewards and the behaviors used to obtain them. For example, in smartphone research, addiction scholars could study gambling disorder, in which money is gained through gambling, or problematic social media use, in which social rewards are gained through social media. While specific social media activities may involve more specific rewards, focusing on general reward types helps prevent the overuse of addiction labels.

Second, researchers should consider smartphones and other tools that deliver rewards as “cues” for possible behavioral addictive disorders. Cues are environmental in nature, and in substance use disorders, include sensory reminders of a drug or related items, such as a syringe. Seeing these cues can trigger cognitive and physical responses in people with substance dependence, and treatments based on cue exposure have been developed.

If smartphones aren’t addictive on their own, how might their design still encourage compulsive use?

While smartphones mainly function as tools that deliver rewards, they could still play a role in the development of behavioral addictive disorders, especially because of their hardware and operating system design. Similar to how a bottle’s design could make it easier to access the alcohol inside, smartphone features such as physical design, interface layout and software structure may increase awareness of and access to rewards.

For example, smartphones may encourage repeated use through frequent push notifications, constant prompts and automatic app installations. These features, whether added on purpose or not, are worth closely examining because they may push users toward using their phones more often. Importantly, researchers have not traditionally focused on separating these design features from the rewards that are delivered through smartphones.

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