HEAVY SCREEN TIME AND PHONE ADDICTION ARE A FACT OF LIFE. ARE WE ALL JUNKIES?
When Big Tech set out to create addictive products, they weren’t kidding.
As we subconsciously reach for our phones over an over again, consciously, many of us have a niggling awareness that our screen time is excessive. At some level, our relationship with our little devices can be viewed as phone addiction.
Globally, there are 5.44 billion phone owners and 4.76 billion active social media users, all staring at our screens for hours every day.
So, how did we get to a point where so many people are dopamined-up on social media and addicted to our phones?
‘Addicted’, by Mel Barren: cartoon available to reproduce under license
Phone addiction: straight out of the drug dealer playbook
Big tech has long been accused of intentionally creating seductively addictive products. They deny that, naturally, and even make half-arsed attempts to soothe our worries. With no sense of irony, there is a plethora of easily opt-outable apps to help us regulate our screen time.
You couldn't make it up.
If we go back to the beginning, the writing was on the Silicone Valley walls, right down to describing their customers and consumers as "users".
Take note because this type of language is important. Back then, the un-street name for marijuana smokers was a stoner. Cocaine snorters were cokeheads. Heroin and opiate addicts were junkies… or users.
User was reserved just for people addicted to the hardest drugs.
Calling customers ‘users’? Really?
When I first got involved in app development, I felt alone in my discomfort calling people downloading apps' users'. It seems strange to appropriate a word used to describe traumatised addicts and apply it to people in shiny, happy tech utopia. It jarred with the beanbags, ‘stand-up’ meetings and beer fridges.
It turns out that the term had its roots in ye olde days of computing when multiple other systems - or users - plugged into a central mainframe. As the computing and mobile phone sectors forged ahead, the term stuck among the tech heads, who were coincidentally building technologies hardwired to be addictive.
The human face of big business
It is common knowledge that internal respectful language about customers is an essential building block of a healthy company culture.
Jo Brand, the London comedian, recalled a time during her young nursing days when standards of poor care and empathy had fallen in hospitals. One way to address the gaping disconnect between the medical teams and their patients was to change the dehumanising terminology bandied around. Care and compassion improved dramatically when "the liver in bed number four" became "John".
Meanwhile, in Silicon Valley, with audacious ambitions for world domination, neither Apple and other phone manufacturers nor Google, Yahoo!, Facebook or Twitter thought about using terminology that gave a human face to the billions of people making them rich. Phone addiction – and social media addiction – are big business, and they foresaw that.
So, user stuck fast.
Too little, too late
Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, realised the psychology behind a label when he founded the payment system Square. In a post to the entire company, he banished the term user in favour of 'customer' regardless of whether they paid for the service. In his favour, Square is more akin to a bank, so 'customer' is a natural term.
In the 2020 Netflix docudrama The Social Dilemma, the statistician Edward Tufte said:
"Only two industries call their customers 'users': illegal drugs and software."
Help! Is there anybody there?
As the omnipotent tech giants now enter the gloriously named enshittification phase of their business models, the space between giving a toss about us and throwing us under the bus is galactic.
From unresolved problems with ordinary people's hacked accounts to undermining elections to failing to protect children from dangerous content, customer service has left the building.
Behold a generation of dopamined-up phone addicts
Phone addiction – and social media addiction – are a uniquely modern phenomenon. While the tech creators remain unaccountable, ironically, a sector of professionals (and, quelle surprise, even apps) trying to help people regain control of their lives.
The trouble is we are heavily reliant on our phones. We've even given up our landlines and doorbells; many businesses need social media to market themselves.
The intention was (perhaps… maybe) not to breed billions of phone addicts sucked into ridiculous amounts of screen time. Yet, here we are, willing to sacrifice sleep, attention spans, real social interactions, and well-being to view our world via a miniature screen.
The mental dysregulation from easily won dopamine hits is well-documented, and, it turns out, we are now addicted junkies…
…or 'users' in polite society.
How we use words is important. Look at ‘user’.
If you like what you’ve read here, and you’ve got things to say to your tribe, get in touch – I’d love to write your words for you.
I’m a multi-talented got-a-lot-going-on freelance creative who writes, ghost blogs, draws and designs websites. Phew!
If you enjoyed the illustration at the top of the page, my original artwork is available on license or as commissioned one-offs.
