THE CONVERSATION: We can’t quit smartphones, but we can manage digital junk food better
Digital devices have become a kind of essential infrastructure for daily life. How, then, do we develop a sustainable relationship with technologies such as smartphones that are both indispensable and potentially harmful?
Smartphones and digital devices have become indispensable infrastructure for daily life, but their potential harm is well-known. Amy, a software developer and former disordered eater, struggled with both issues until learning coding helped manage her eating. However, her psychiatrist warned of replacing one compulsion with another.
"Digital addiction" is often used to describe our relationship with smartphones, social media, and other digital technologies, implying a physical need for dopamine, similar to substance addiction. This leads to solutions like digital detox, but Amy's story shows a more complicated reality: digital technologies are not just distractions but key components of education, work, and social mobility.
Unlike substances, opting out of digital life is difficult when schools, banks, and public services increasingly rely on them.
Comparing smartphones to addictive substances can be misleading, as they have become essential infrastructure. Given our reliance on them, avoiding digital technologies is nearly impossible. So, how can we develop sustainable relationships with these technologies? The sugar model offers insight. Rather than eliminating food, recovery involves learning to live with it.
Similarly, we cannot remove digital technologies from our lives, so the challenge is developing ways to coexist with them. Just as sugar is regulated through public health measures, digital technologies need similar governance at the state and industry levels. This includes regulating platform design to limit user attention capture and disclosing data collection and psychological techniques used to engage users.
The UK's decision to ban social media for under 16s while expanding digital literacy reflects this approach - not all digital technologies are equal, and the focus should be on quantity, conditions, and the role these technologies play in our lives. Understanding digital technologies through the lens of food, rather than addiction, shifts the emphasis and offers a more sustainable approach to managing our relationship with them.
Written by urgent.news from Daily Maverick's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
