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My article down below, shows on how the way our phones take an enourmous toll on our lives. We as people do not realize the damage it does twoard our society, our mental, physical, and social health. Including being so addicted is probably the biggest "thing" right now with social media (etc.) and we are to naive to say "I am addicted, I should slow it down." or "help my well being

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Why is it so hard for humans to detach from cellular devices?

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Why is it so hard for humans to detach from cellular devices?

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You've temporarily misplaced your cell phone and anxiously retrace your steps to try to find it. Or perhaps you never let go of your phone-it's always in your hand, your pocket, or your bag, ready to be answered or consulted at a moment's notice. When new models come out, you feel bad about saying goodbye to your electronic pal. And when your battery life runs down at the end of the day, you feel that yours is running low as well. New research shows that there's a psychological reason for such extreme phone dependence: According to the attachment theory perspective, for some of us, our phone serves the same function as the teddy bear we clung to in childhood.

Attachment theory proposes that our early life experiences with the major figures responsible for our well-being, namely parents or other caregivers, are at the root of our connections to the adults with whom we form close relationships. Importantly, attachment in early life can extend to inanimate objects. Teddy bears, for example, serve as what the attachment theorist D.W. Winnicott calls "transitional objects." The teddy bear, unlike the parent, is always there. When children can't be with their parents, they can still be with their teddy bear. These stuffed animals also serve as a transition between dependence and independence when young children begin to develop a separate sense of self. We extend our dependence on caregivers to these animals, and use them to help us move to greater autonomy and an independent sense of self.

As suggested by Veronika Konok, of the Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest, Hungary, a cell phone has the potential to be a "compensatory attachment" object. Although phones are often castigated for their addictive potential, Konok and her collaborators cite evidence that supports the idea that "healthy, well-functioning adults also report significant emotional attachment to special objects" (p. 538).

Indeed, cell phones have become a pervasive feature of our lives: The number of cell phone subscriptions exceeds the total population of the planet. The average amount of mobile or smartphone use in the U.S. is 3.3 hours per day; young adults (ages 18 to 24) report 5.2 hours on an average day. People also like to be near their phones: A 2013 survey cited by the Hungarian team reports that 79 percent of users keep their phones with them for all but two of their waking hours. Nearly as many people report being distressed when they're separated from their phone.

As compensatory attachment figures-adult teddy bears-phones have distinct advantages. They can be kept by your side and they provide a social connection to the people you care about. Even if you're not talking to your friends, lover, or family, you can keep their photos close by, read their messages, and follow them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat. You can track them in real time but also look back on memorable moments together. These channels help you "feel less alone" (p. 538). You can also play interactive video games with friends and family, swap "pins," and even share fitness updates and progress on your weight goals. One important distinction the Hungarian team made, taking this into account, is the difference between using a cell phone as an actual phone and using it as a smartphone. (Previous research on cell phone behavior, including use of phones as attachment figures, only focused on their direct communications functions.)

The purpose of Konok's research was to determine the extent to which phones, both mobile and smartphones, serve as attachment figures. To that end, her team administered a standard attachment-style questionnaire, which assesses two dimensions of attachment style- anxious ("I find that people are never there when you need them") and avoidant ("I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others").

They measured phone attachment on a Mobile Attachment Scale (MAS) with items that sought to capture the need for proximity ("If I left my phone at home, I would be willing to go home for it") and the need for closeness ("I'm nervous if I can't be reached on the phone"). Participants were also asked to indicate the frequency of their phone function use, such as texting, chatting, playing games, and browsing the internet.

The sample, which consisted of 142 Hungarians ages 18 to 25 (two-thirds were female), completed their online questionnaires in one brief session. In general, if the authors were hoping to find a good distribution of scores on the mobile phone attachment scale, they would have been disappointed. Most of the young adults in this sample scored at about a four on a five-point scale, indicating a strong desire to be near their phone and a feeling of distress when they are separated from it.

Relevant to the main questions of interest was whether the clingiest phone users differed in attachment style from the ordinary, already phone-attached young adults in this sample. The MAS items were divided into two subscales-the need for contact and need for proximity. The anxiously attached weren't particularly likely to need to be near their phones. However, the scores of the entire sample were already so high on the proximity scale that it became statistically impossible to detect that relationship.

Those high in anxious attachment were higher on the need for contact subscale, meaning that they felt they needed to be near their phone so that they could be reached and could reach others in chats and social network sites. Rather than improve the psychological outcomes for the anxiously attached, communication via cell phone may actually make things worse. As the authors note, "The reliance on the outside validation of their inner states through the mobile (and internet) communication may increase their dependence on others and also expose them to the danger of oversharing'" (pp. 542-543).

The upshot: We apparently never outgrow our need for some form of teddy bear. For people with a more anxious form of attachment style, the teddy bear they need is one that keeps them connected to their larger social world. If you've become unable to get through your day without holding your phone and frequently checking your social networks, it may be time to question whether you can find fulfillment in your connections with others in a real rather than virtual space.
Follow me on Twitter @swhitbo for daily updates on psychology, health, and aging. Feel free to join my Facebook group, "Fulfillment at Any Age," to discuss today's blog, or to ask further questions about this posting. Reference

Konok, V., Gigler, D., Bereczky, B. M., and Miklósi, Á. (2016). Humans' attachment to their mobile phones and its relationship with interpersonal attachment style. Computers in Human Behavior, 6, 1537-547. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2016.03.062

Copyright Susan Krauss Whitbourne 2016

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This Is Why We Can't Put Down Our Phones

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You've temporarily misplaced your cell phone and anxiously retrace your steps to try to find it. Or perhaps you never let go of your phone-it's always in your hand, your pocket, or your bag, ready to be answered or consulted at a moment's notice.

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Addicted..this might be why.

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Nir's Note: This guest post by Avi Itzkovitch offers some clues as to why we can't seem to put our cell phones down. Avi (@xgmedia) is an Independent User Experience Consultant. He is currently working from his Tel-Aviv Studio XG Media.
Do you constantly check your smartphone to see if you've received messages or notifications on Facebook? Does your phone distract you from your studies or work? Do your friends, parents, children, or spouse complain that you are not giving them enough attention because of your phone? You may be addicted to your phone.

The smartphone has become a constant companion. We carry it throughout the day and keep it by our bedside at night. We allow ourselves to be interrupted with messages from social media, emails and texts. We answer phone calls at times when it is not socially acceptable, and we put our immediate interactions with friends and family on hold when we hear that ring tone that tells us a message is arrived. Something fundamental in human behavior has changed: our sense of phone etiquette and propriety has caused us to get out of whack in our interactions with one another.

So why is it that we allow ourselves to be interrupted? Why do we feel it necessary to answer these calls? Maybe the addiction started long before cell phones even existed, with the advent of the phone itself. Albrecht Schmidt speculates in the Interaction Design Foundation Encyclopedia:

This behaviour is perhaps rooted in the old model of synchronous telecommunication where phone calls were expensive and important - which is less true nowadays. Also, before the advent of caller-id, you could not simply return the phone call as you would not know who had called you unless you actually answered the call. Although technology has changed a lot, some of our behaviours around new technologies are still rooted in an understanding of older technology.

Long before cell phones existed, we began to assign importance to every interaction on our phones because if we didn't act in the moment, we'd miss the opportunity. With smartphones, however, a host of features make the addictive nature of the phone even worse.
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Smartphones Offer Variable Rewards

Schmidt may have a point, but I believe it goes further. Many smartphone users have never experienced the older technology and so, for these users, there are no such roots to old technology. The truth is that we have become so addicted to our phones that we feel compelled to allow these interruptions, even to the point where we no longer even consider them interruptions. Just like an addiction to gambling and the alluring sounds of slot machines, we addictively react to the sounds our smartphone makes. Some have postulated that the theory of variable rewards could explain what makes us addicted to the digital world of Facebook, Twitter and the ringtone from a smartphone.

Nir Eyal has written about this technology addiction on this very blog, with specific attention to the nature of variable rewards. He describes a study by B.F. Skinner in the 1950s that demonstrated the theory of the variable schedule of rewards. Skinner observed that lab mice responded most voraciously to random rewards. When mice pressed a lever, they sometimes got a small treat, other times a large treat, and other times nothing at all. Unlike other mice that received the same treat every time they pressed the lever, the mice that received variable rewards pressed the lever more often and compulsively.

Similar to how mice behave when expecting to receive treats, we eagerly check our phones at the slightest ring or buzz, because the dopamine trigger in our brains compels us to answer. The everyday mundane phone messages that we receive frequently throughout the day are akin to the mice's small treats. The big treats are the messages that give us pleasure - a message from a friend, a phone call from a loved one, or that funny video we must see. It's the big treat that is addictive to us and, since we don't know when that big treat is coming, we "press the lever" compulsively and as often as the ringtone calls us. We are compelled to look at the screen and answer, regardless of where we are and who we are with.

Of course this mobile device addiction goes further. There is a clear human need for self-expression - and especially self-expression that prompts feedback from others ( Signs of Facebook Addiction). Our need to immediately share sometimes causes us to forget to enjoy and embrace the moment. This point is illustrated clearly in the YouTube video " I forgot my iPhone," an exaggerated but accurate reflection of our social behavior. As social animals, we need human contact for emotional and psychological health. Our mobile devices have enhanced our ability to have that contact. They have become a tool important for social interaction.

There ARE Solutions to Mobile Device Addiction

There are many causes and effects of this mobile device addiction, which is also an issue with our computers and other communication devices. However, if we learn to manage this mobile device addiction, we can increase our productivity and free up time during the week. It is not only the wasted time that results when we allow ourselves to be interrupted, when staring at the screen, when replying to emails or answering the phone. We also lose valuable time recovering from these interruptions after our attention has been diverted.

This has become recognized as enough of a problem today that we are starting to see some technological solutions being developed, including research on context aware management of interruptions or guidelines for the workplace that could increase productivity For example, a Loughborough University study recommends a set of guidelines for email usage that will increase employee workplace efficiency by reducing interruptions, restricting the use of email-to-all messages and reply-to-all responses, setting the email application to display just the first three lines, and checking for email less frequently.

Freeing ourselves from this mobile device addiction will not be easy for many, but there are some technological solutions worth exploring. An android app called " Human Mode" allows the user to disconnect from his mobile phone and become human. It allows the user to place phone calls and messages on hold until a time that's more convenient. Jake Knapp's article in Lifehacker, " How I Turned My iPhone Into A Simple, Distraction-Free Device," describes how a one-week experiment to disconnect from distraction has now become his lifestyle. He makes the point that sometimes we must take serious action to resolve our addictions. But it has always been true that the first step in overcoming any addiction is to admit that it exists. If we identify how the variable rewards of our smartphones are affecting us, we can implement appropriate solutions and break the mobile device addiction.
Note: This guest essay was written by Avi Itzkovitch.
Photo Credit: Ron Bennetts

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The Real Reason You're Addicted to Your Phone

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Nir's Note: This guest post by Avi Itzkovitch offers some clues as to why we can't seem to put our cell phones down. Avi (@xgmedia) is an Independent User Experience Consultant. He is currently working from his Tel-Aviv Studio XG Media. Do you constantly check your smartphone to see if you've received messages or notifications on Facebook?

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We also need to be aware what cellular devices impact our society.

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Mobile phones have become a staple of our society, with everyone from elementary school kids to senior citizens owning at least one. Although mobile apps and texting have made our lives easier, some question the impact they've had on the relationships we have with one another.

After losing part of her vision three years ago, Dr. Lisabeth Saunders Medlock, PhD, CLC, owner of Life by Design Coaching, can no longer see her cell phone. She replaced her Blackberry with a flip phone that reads out loud to her.

"I have a mobile phone that is a basic flip phone where it talks aloud to tell me who is calling and reads all the screens and text aloud," she says. "I really love the fact I am not always looking at a phone. I can interact and socialize and truly have to be in each moment because I cannot distract or amuse myself with my phone.

"It is also freeing to not really have to respond to emails or even text messages when I choose to not be available. What it forces me and others to do is pick up the phone and talk. Having those dialogues has deepened friendships and allowed me to get to know people better."

"And if I really needed to use GPS or look up a number, I am usually with a person who can do that for me," she continues. "I am glad I cannot use a smartphone because it would waste time and energy and probably make me less smart."

Addicted to Mobile Phones

Todd Starkweather, General Studies program director at South University, Richmond believes a lot of people are at least somewhat addicted to their cell phone.

"I see it frequently in my classes," he says. "I make certain that students using their phones don't disturb the learning of others, but do not make an active effort to police an individual who may not be paying attention."

Starkweather says it's up to the student whether or not they choose to spend class time listening and learning, or wasting their time on the phone.

As for the impact mobile phones have made on his own personal life, Starkweather says it's helped him to stay more connected to family and friends than he was in the past.

I never take my phone into my classroom when I teach. Somehow I'm able to get through that hour and 40 minutes without my phone.

"I suppose I'm in much more constant contact with individuals, getting frequent updates," he says.

He remembers the days before mobile phones when it wouldn't seem like a long time to go eight hours not hearing from close friends or family members.

For example, before everyone had mobile phones, he says if a friend went on vacation you probably wouldn't hear from them while they're away, but now you often receive frequent updates of their journey from the road.

Although having the ability to connect with anyone, at almost anytime, is convenient, Starkweather doesn't feel it's necessary to have the device glued to his side at all times.

"There are times when I simply put the phone away, times I don't need it," Starkweather says.

"I never take my phone into my classroom when I teach," Starkweather adds. "Somehow I'm able to get through that hour and 40 minutes without my phone."

Mobile Phones Changing Interpersonal Communication

Saunders Medlock advises mobile phone users to set rules and practice good phone etiquette.

"Some of these are no phones at a meal, whether it be at home or eating out; no checking the phone on a date or when you are out with friends; phone is off at critical meetings and set to vibrate at others," she says. "And it goes without saying you should not be on or using your phone while driving."

She says people are in the habit of checking their cell phone in short intervals of time, like every five minutes.

"I have heard people say that they are afraid they will miss something if they do not do the checking," she says. "And when people are not doing anything else they tend to interact with their phones to distract or entertain themselves. I have seen people in the line for the bathroom playing with their phones."

She believes this constant reliance on mobile phones is having a negative impact on people's interpersonal skills.

To understand the effect of Smartphones and social media on interpersonal communication, she recommends reading the book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, by Sherry Turkle.

"The use of texting and Facebook and Twitter and other sites as a form of communication is eroding people's ability to write sentences that communicate real meaning and inhibit the art of dialogue," Saunders Medlock says. "It also allows people to communicate without ever seeing each other or hearing a voice, and this has a huge impact in that much communication is done nonverbally or in inflection and tone of voice. We will have a generation that has no clue how to read any of these cues."

On the other side, Starkweather doesn't believe mobile phones have necessarily had a negative impact on people's intrapersonal skills.

He notes that people still need to do the same things when they're communicating, such as making sure conversation is suitable for the audience they're addressing.

"People still need to make sure they're saying appropriate things, no matter what the situation," Starkweather says. "The mobile phone has made it easier to amplify those mistakes."

Monitoring Children's Cell Phone Usage

"Research demonstrates that phones are eroding our ability to communicate in face-to-face dialogue and reducing family conversation," Saunders Medlock says. "Gone are the days of sitting together at a table and asking the simple question of 'how was your day?' But that should not be the case."

She advises parents to set time aside, where no mobile phones or other devices are present, just to spend quality time together as a family.

"Playing old school interactive games as a family is a way to have family fun time," she says. "And of course any outdoor family activity is important. It is hard to use a mobile phone and go on a hike or a bike ride."

She recommends that parents limit their children's access to certain websites, and the downloading of specific mobile apps. She says children should have prepaid phones, so there are limits on talk, texting, and data usage. Parents should check their children's mobile phones at least once per week, to keep a close watch on what they're up to, she says.

"My child has an iPod Touch and I have a security access code for the Wi-Fi and I also hook it up to iTunes every week to check what apps she has downloaded," she says. "If I see one I don't like, I remove it."

"In addition phones could be seen as a privilege so are earned and can be taken away for misbehaviors," she says. "Parents can also limit phone usage time to a set number of hours per week or day."

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Mobile Phones and Society - How Being Constantly Connected Impacts Our Lives

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Mobile phones have become a staple of our society, with everyone from elementary school kids to senior citizens owning at least one. Although mobile apps and texting have made our lives easier, some question the impact they've had on the relationships we have with one another.

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Did you also know being addicted to your phone causes anxiety.

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Spending too much time on your phone may be causing you to feel stress and anxiety, experts are warning.

"The more people use their phone," Dr. Nancy Cheever, who spearheaded research on the relationship between cellphone use and anxiety at California State University, Dominguez Hills, told ABC News, "the more anxious they are about using their phone."

Cheever's research suggests that phone-induced anxiety operates on a positive feedback loop, saying that phones keep us in a persistent state of anxiety and the only relief from this anxiety is to look at our phones.

She warns that there is little known about the long-term effects that phone-induced anxiety can have on your overall health.

"If you're constantly connected, you're going to feel anxiety," Cheever said. "And the more people feel anxiety, that can lead to other things like mental health and physical ailments." Her research comes at a time when teens may be on their phones for more than six-and-a-half hours a day, according to the nonprofit Common Sense Media.

Cheever demonstrated her experiment on ABC News' T.J. Holmes, as well as two teenage girls, measuring the amount of stress that being away from their phones caused them.

She initially told Holmes, as well as the two teens, that they were going to take part in an experiment on test anxiety, and then strapped measuring equipment to them to track changes in heart rate and even record perspiration levels.

ABC News

"I'm just going to put your phones back here because they might interfere with the equipment a little bit," Cheever told her subjects, moving their cellphones out of reach but still within hearing distance if the phones started to ring.

Cheever then sent text messages and called their phone numbers, and as their cellphones started to go off, Cheever used her equipment to measure their stress levels. Most people experience an emotional response that floods their body with stress hormones when they hear their phone go off, according to Cheever.

"His physiological arousal spikes quite a bit right after he hears the text come in," Cheever told ABC News of Holmes' reaction to hearing his phone go off.

"You could see immediately he ... started sweating quite a bit. He's anxious about his phone ringing," Cheever added.

The two teenage girls, Keke and Gabby, also responded with symptoms of stress and anxiety when their phones were taken away from them during the experiment and they could hear them ring. Keke's stress levels on Cheever's equipment measured four times higher than Holmes' levels. Meanwhile, Gabby had the highest stress response out of all three of them.

Nancy Colier, a psychotherapist and author of the book, "The Power of Off," emphasized to ABC News that the long-term dangers of this anxiety remain largely unknown.

"Let's meet in 30 years," Colier said when asked how much damage is being done to a child who goes through these levels of anxiety every day, "and we'll know the answer to that."

"My experience in talking to teenagers is if it's 'My heart rate is higher' versus 'I have a social life,' they're going to choose social life," Colier added. "But the way we're living doesn't actually serve our deeper well-being."

"All of this attention to technology, and the mind, and thoughts is coming at a great expense to the other aspects of what ... human beings need to feel well," she said.

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Excessive cellphone use may cause anxiety, experts warn

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Spending too much time on your phone may be causing you to feel stress and anxiety, experts are warning. "The more people use their phone," Dr. Nancy Cheever, who spearheaded research on the relationship between cellphone use and anxiety at California State University, Dominguez Hills, told ABC News, "the more anxious they are about using their phone."

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You should also be aware of the radiation of your phone

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A fact sheet that outlines the available evidence regarding use of cellular/mobile telephones and cancer risk.

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what cellular devices do to your brain.

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Scientists aren't sure if technology is destroying our brains, but they're pretty confident it can trigger some obsessive behaviors that look a lot like addiction, and lead to depression.

It's also slowing down our thinking processes.

Some tasks are better done off the phone, research suggests.

This is an installment ofBusiness Insider's "Your Brain on Apps"series that investigates how addictive apps can influence behavior.

All day long, we're inundated by interruptions and alerts from our devices. Smartphones buzz to wake us up, emails stream into our inboxes, notifications from coworkers and far away friends bubble up on our screens, and "assistants" chime in with their own soulless voices.

Such interruptions seem logical to our minds: we want technology to help with our busy lives, ensuring we don't miss important appointments and communications.

But our bodies have a different view: These constant alerts jolt our stress hormones into action, igniting our fight or flight response; our heartbeats quicken, our breathing tightens, our sweat glands burst open, and our muscles contract. That response is intended to help us outrun danger, not answer a call or text from a colleague.

We are simply not built to live like this.

Our apps are taking advantage of our hard-wired needs for security and social interaction and researchers are starting to see how terrible this is for us. A full 89% of college students now report feeling "phantom" phone vibrations, imagining their phone is summoning them to attention when it hasn't actually buzzed.

Another 86% of Americans say they check their email and social media accounts "constantly," and that it's really stressing them out.

Garry Knight/Flickr (CC)

Endocrinologist Robert Lustig tells Business Insider that notifications from our phones are training our brains to be in a near constant state of stress and fear by establishing a stress-fear memory pathway. And such a state means that the prefrontal cortex, the part of our brains that normally deals with some of our highest-order cognitive functioning, goes completely haywire, and basically shuts down.

"You end up doing stupid things," Lustig says. "And those stupid things tend to get you in trouble."

Your brain can only do one thing at a time

Scientists have known for years what people often won't admit to themselves: humans can't really multi-task. This is true for almost all of us: about 97.5% of the population. The other 2.5% have freakish abilities; scientists call them "super taskers," because they can actually successfully do more than one thing at once. They can drive while talking on the phone, without compromising their ability to gab or shift gears.

AP/Rafiq Maqboo

But since only about 1 in 50 people are super taskers, the rest of us mere mortals are really only focusing on just one thing at a time. That means every time we pause to answer a new notification or get an alert from a different app on our phone, we're being interrupted, and with that interruption we pay a price: something called a "switch cost."

Sometimes the switch from one task to another costs us only a few tenths of a second, but in a day of flip-flopping between ideas, conversations, and transactions on a phone or computer, our switch costs can really add up, and make us more error-prone, too. Psychologist David Meyer who's studied this effect estimates that shifting between tasks can use up as much as 40% of our otherwise productive brain time.

Every time we switch tasks, we're also shooting ourselves up with a dose of the stress hormone cortisol, Lustig says. The switching puts our thoughtful, reasoning prefrontal cortex to sleep, and kicks up dopamine, a brain chemical that plays a key role in pursuing reward and motivation.

In other words, the stress that we build up by trying to do many things at once when we really can't is making us sick, and causing us to crave even more interruptions, spiking dopamine, which perpetuates the cycle.

More phone time, lazier brain

Our brains can only process so much information at a time, about 60 bits per second.

The more tasks we have to do, the more we have to choose how we want to use our precious brain power. So its understandable that we might want to pass some of our extra workload to our phones or digital assistants.

But there is some evidence that delegating thinking tasks to our devices could not only be making our brains sicker, but lazier too.

The combination of socializing and using our smartphones could be putting a huge tax on our brains.

Researchers have found smarter, more analytical thinkers are less active on their smartphone search engines than other people. That doesn't mean that using your phone for searching causes you to be "dumber," it could just be that these smarties are searching less because they know more. But the link between less analytical thinking and more smartphone scrolling is there.

We also know that reading up on new information on your phone can be a terrible way to learn. Researchers have shown that people who take in complex information from a book, instead of on a screen, develop deeper comprehension, and engage in more conceptual thinking, too.

Recent research on dozens of smartphone users in Switzerland also suggests that staring at our screens could be making both our brains and our fingers more jittery.

Last year, psychologists and computer scientists found an unusual and potentially troubling connection: the more tapping, clicking and social media posting and scrolling people do, the "noisier" their brain signals become. That finding took the researchers by surprise. Usually, when we do something more often, we get better, faster and more efficient at the task.

But the researchers think there's something different going on when we engage in social media: the combination of socializing and using our smartphones could be putting a huge tax on our brains.

Social behavior, "may require more resources at the same time," study author Arko Ghosh said, from our brains to our fingers. And that's scary stuff.

Flickr/André-Pierre du Plessis

Should being on your phone in public be taboo?

Despite these troubling findings, scientists aren't saying that enjoying your favorite apps is automatically destructive. But we do know that certain types of usage seem especially damaging.

Checking Facebook has been proven to make young adults depressed. Researchers who've studied college students' emotional well-being find a direct link: the more often people check Facebook, the more miserable they are. But the incessant, misery-inducing phone checking doesn't just stop there. Games like Fortnite or apps like Twitter can be addictive, in the sense that they will leave your brain craving another hit.

Getty Images/Spencer Platt
Addictive apps are built to give your brain rewards, a spike of pleasure when someone likes your photo or comments on your post. Like gambling, they do it on an unpredictable schedule. That's called a "variable ratio schedule" and its something the human brain goes crazy for.

This technique isn't just used by social media, it's all over the internet. Airline fares that drop at the click of a mouse. Overstocked sofas that are there one minute and gone the next. Facebook notifications that change based on where our friends are and what they're talking about. We've gotta have it all, we've gotta have more, and we've gotta have it now. We're scratching addictive itches all over our screens.

Lustig says that even these kinds of apps aren't inherently evil. They only become a problem when they are given free rein to interrupt us, tugging at our brains' desire for tempting treats, tricking our brains into always wanting more.

"I'm not anti technology per se," he counters. "I'm anti variable-reward technology. Because that's designed very specifically to make you keep looking."

Lustig says he wants to change this by drawing boundaries around socially acceptable smartphone use. If we can make a smartphone "addiction" taboo (like smoking inside buildings, for example), people will at least have to sanction their phone time off to delegated places and times, giving their brains a break.

"My hope is that we will come to a point where you can't pull your cell phone out in public," Lustig says.
This story was originally published on March 10, 2018 as part of Business Insider's "Your Brain on Apps" series.

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This is what your smartphone is doing to your brain - and it isn't good

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Scientists aren't sure if technology is destroying our brains, but they're pretty confident it can trigger some obsessive behaviors that look a lot like addiction, and lead to depression. It's also slowing down our thinking processes. Some tasks are better done off the phone, research suggests.