{"id":7256,"date":"2018-06-06T12:35:01","date_gmt":"2018-06-06T16:35:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=7256"},"modified":"2018-06-06T12:40:46","modified_gmt":"2018-06-06T16:40:46","slug":"tech-addiction-is-not-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=7256","title":{"rendered":"Tech Addiction is Not Real"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve written a couple<\/a> of times<\/a> about the silliness that goes by the name of “tech addiction.” It’s the notion that we\u2014and especially our children\u2014misuse our technology and have become addicted to it. Anyone with a modicum of common sense knows instinctively that the concept is hokum. <\/p>\n

Tech addiction’s proponents are fond of pointing to psychological studies claiming to demonstrate the addiction and its dire consequences. I’m unconvinced and so are others who have actual expertise in the issue. Via The Macalope<\/a> we have this article<\/a> by Psychologist Christopher J. Ferguson who’s studied the problem extensively. The article deals with 6 myths about tech addiction and concludes that there’s no such thing. <\/p>\n

Certainly some people do spend an inordinate amount of time with their technology but Ferguson says that this is almost always a symptom of other issues not an indication of an addiction. As for the claim that using a smartphone raises dopamine levels like cocaine does, Ferguson notes that that’s true but so does any other enjoyable activity such as swimming, reading a good book, having a conversation, eating, or having sex. The thing is, these raise dopamine levels about 50\u2013100% while drugs raise them 450\u20131,300%. Ferguson packs lots of facts into the article. If you’re at all concerned about tech addiction, you should definitely give it a read. It will put your mind at rest. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve written a couple of times about the silliness that goes by the name of “tech addiction.” It’s the notion that we\u2014and especially our children\u2014misuse our technology and have become addicted to it. Anyone with a modicum of common sense … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-7256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7256"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7258,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7256\/revisions\/7258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}