Author's Note: Tempted to skip this article because excessive phone use has destroyed your attention span? Head straight to this link to find out how addicted to your phone you are for an upcoming study.
What do you think of when you hear ‘addiction’? Someone at a bus stop, worn and weary, clutching a cheap bottle of wine, eyes glazed as they take another swig, trying to drown out the world around them. A polished professional, hiding a stash of pills to maintain appearances. Gamblers lost in the glow of slot machines, convinced the next spin will be the big win as the sun rises outside, unnoticed. These are the faces of addiction, right? Because we would never think of ourselves.
Well, it’s time we did. The dependence we all have on phones is rewiring our brains in ways eerily similar to drug or gambling addictions. Research supports this, and industry leaders from Google, Facebook, and Instagram who’ve left due to ethical concerns have confirmed it: these apps are intentionally engineered to exploit vulnerabilities in our psychology. Just like slot machines, they transform our eyeballs, hours, and existence into profit for advertisers. Yale professor Edward Tufte summed it up best when he said, “There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software.”
Loss of self-control, poor health, lost time, damaged relationships, and bleak future prospects are all hallmarks of addiction. Social media can also lead to a loss of life; or at the very least, the loss of everything that makes it meaningful and worth living. You only have one. Do you really want to spend it staring at a screen?
North D’s Addiction
Third-year sociology student Keira* has confronted this morbid question, telling Critic she’ll “probably” regret spending so much time on her phone at the end of her life. “I genuinely think if I get dementia, all I'll be able to recite is TikTok brain rot. I'll be in the home saying, ‘Skibidi toilet rizz!’ on my deathbed. The nurses will not know what's going on, because that’s all I'll be talking about.”
Keira spends an average of 48 hours a week on her phone – more than a full-time job (“TikTok should be paying me!”). While Keira acknowledges she’s addicted, she admits she doesn’t care enough to try and stop. “Truthfully, I feel like it adds value to my life. All the memes, the fashion, the music, all of the trends I'm obsessed with. Even politics. It’s where I get most of my info, which is pretty bad. It's not a very reliable source.”
Keira is far from alone. World Metrics reports that social media is the main source of news for 58% of Generation Z. According to a study from St. Cloud State University, more than half of Gen Z spends over 63 hours a week on their phones (the maximum recommended is 14). “It definitely affects my mental health,” Keira admits. “But It's the only thing I've ever known, so I don’t think I’ll stop. I have a fear that I'll miss out on so much stuff. It’s just who I am.”
But students haven’t always been like this. Professor Phil Sheard, who has been teaching at Otago University long before social media and cell phones existed, remembers what campus life was like before technology took hold. “I wouldn’t attribute all the changes in student behaviour [...] to the emergence of those technologies alone,” Phil tells Critic, acknowledging benefits of technology like easier collaboration among students, accessing timetables, and lecture recordings.
However, Phil also points out the ways students have been negatively affected. He mentions instances of cyberbullying, the spread of misinformation among freshers vying for competitive degrees, a reduced ability to discern what’s true, and, of course, the decline in our work ethic and attention span.
Phil explains that senior lecturers, like himself, are sometimes tasked with reviewing their junior colleagues by observing them in action. From the back of the lecture theatre, Phil can view what’s on the screens of our laptops (“something the lecturer cannot see, thankfully”). While Phil says his colleagues like to think their students are following along and making notes, he notices “widespread” use of Instagram, TikTok or Facebook instead.
“I can't imagine why students sitting in lectures might think that keeping up with the relatively trivial reports of what others are doing in their lives is more important at that moment than hearing about the material that they have come to university for [...] and are currently devoting time and money [to].” Nowadays, Phil says, phones and social media have become an “irresistible distraction.”
Debunking the “Norm” of Phone Use
The evils of phone addiction can seem like a trite issue nowadays (is this a Critic article or your grandparents talking?). After all, the harm of phone usage is well-established, especially since the release of Netflix’s The Social Dilemma, the viral documentary that made everyone vow to switch to a flip phone in 2020.
If you haven’t seen the documentary or need a refresher, it’s a group of tech designers confronting how the platforms they helped build now manipulate the masses – and it’s deeply unsettling. In one scene, former Google designer Tristan Harris reflects on his realisation that everyone is addicted to screens. He sends a presentation to his colleagues as a “call to arms”. This presentation quickly gained widespread support, even reaching Google CEO Larry Page, creating what Tristan called “a cultural moment” that ultimately led to “...nothing.”
Four years later, viewers of The Social Dilemma are not much different from these Google employees. Keira recalls being “so scared” when she first saw the documentary: “When I saw it, I was like ‘Oh no.’ But that was a really long time ago. I thought about it for maybe a month, then it was like, ‘Okay, next thing.’ I haven’t thought about it since, to be honest. It’s out of sight, out of mind now.”
Associate Professor Damian Scarf, who teaches psychology, says research shows that educational approaches “don’t work” to stop addictions. “It’s like McDonald's,” Damian explains. “People know that it's not good [...] and even if you educate them on the negatives, they’re like ‘I don't really care.’” Damian attributes this attitude largely to the ubiquitous nature of excessive phone use. “It’s human behaviour to follow the norms of the group. Just like when a student comes to Otago, if [excessive] drinking's the norm, then that student’s probably gonna pick up drinking if they didn’t do it before. If it's normative [...] people don't see an issue with it.”
This begs the question, is it really an addiction if everyone has it? The answer is yes. For those of us genuinely addicted, social media use becomes a compulsion that disrupts daily functioning, our mental health, and real-life relationships. We might experience withdrawal symptoms such as anxiety, irritability, and restlessness when not online. We’ll also prioritise scrolling and para-social relationships over face-to-face interactions, and feel a persistent urge to check our devices, even in inappropriate situations, like while driving. Addiction is defined by its detrimental consequences and loss of agency; regardless of whether your flat or lecture theatre experiences it too.
But this isn’t the only myth that keeps you scrolling in tutorials (and lining Mark Zuckerberg’s pockets). Other myths include the belief that it’s simply a matter of self-control, it’s not a “serious” addiction, it’s merely a hobby; and online interaction is about socialising (and that’s acceptable), rather than the constant entertainment, information, and validation these platforms intentionally provide to keep you hooked.
The Science Behind the Scroll: Why Our Brains Are Getting Fucked
Through my undergrad in neuroscience, I’ve come to know a thing or two about the brain and its networks. They enable us to take notice of things, take action to deal with these things, and reflect on what our actions were. In combination, they help us make sense of the world and how we should interact with it.
The salience network houses our reward pathway, where we’ve all heard that dopamine acts. Now, here’s the thing: Dopamine isn’t about pleasure; it’s about wanting. When you do something rewarding, like getting the Wordle in two or scoring on your mate in FIFA, dopamine reinforces that action, making you crave more of it. But when you feel down or overwhelmed, your brain goes to those dopamine-strengthened pathways and sets one of them in motion – i.e., it makes you do the behaviour that felt good last time. That’s essentially how learning works, and is why you’ll keep running that same line against said mate until he learns how to defend it.
Now think of our phones. We use them daily to push through bad feelings or boredom. A quick scroll and you find a funny reel; and dopamine releases. Your brain learns: phone equals feel-good. After years of performing this same behaviour, it has become concrete. The die has been cast.
The way these platforms are designed takes advantage of a psychological concept called ‘random reinforcement’. Think of the pokies: give ‘em a slap and… nothing. Another slap. Nothing. Another and – BOOM. Flashing lights, money, big sounds of YOU WIN MOTHERFUCKER! Your sensory system is overwhelmed with pleasure and success – and thus a flood of dopamine, instilling the behaviour. Your brain seeks these good feelings, so there you’ll stay, sitting in front of the screen until the $20 you put, and the $80 you won, turns into $0.12.
The same applies for Instagram Reels or TikTok. Some may say, “It’s good that the algorithm rewards us with hard work,” and this may be true. You know what you like, and have learned how to manipulate the algorithm accordingly. Consciously or unconsciously, we’ve spent years building our For You Pages, brick by brick. It's the same concept as gambling. You have to sort the “good” videos from the “bad” (or the mid) and you’ll keep scrolling until you find them. That 20 minutes (realistically more) of instilling the behaviour day after day, week after week. Can you see where I’m going with this?
Switching gears, let’s talk about why you get bored from Reels after a while. Within the salience network in the brain is a mechanism a bit like an automatic car: a gas pedal and a brake. The two are inversely correlated, meaning while one is going, you can’t (or shouldn’t) use the other. The gas pedal signals “I want more” and the brake, “I’ve had enough.” After 20 minutes of scrolling, your foot may go on the brake and, feeling satisfied, put your phone down. The mechanism has worked exactly how it’s supposed to. But that isn’t always the case. Quite often, we continue scrolling late into the night – burning out your brake system**. In doing so, you shrink the part of your brain which tells you you’ve had enough.
Now for even worse news: many of us, fed up with our phones, turn to dopamine detoxes, thinking it’ll solve all of life's problems. While well-intentioned, it sadly isn’t a cure-all. Research shows that as little as two weeks of being offline can improve how you feel, but it won’t undo a lifetime of habit-building. Those dopamine pathways have been reinforced ever since you first got social media. Your brain is trained to constantly seek out new stimuli using the same scrolling action on the device that, realistically, will never leave our sides – unless we make a conscious effort to restrict or get rid of them.
The take home message from all this – the TL;DR, if you will – is that dopamine’s role is to seek out behaviours which are inherently pleasurable. It drives pleasure-seeking behaviour – and does a pretty damn good job at it. But the way we’ve used these networks over the last ten or so years isn’t what humans evolved to use them for. We’ll inevitably adapt; we always do. But surely we can do something about it right now. That’s where I come in.
Call to Action
I’m sure that, looking back, one of our biggest regrets will be that we spent so much time on our phones. After all, if you can’t recall the last reel you watched today, you definitely won’t remember it sixty years from now. The real impact will be felt in the incremental losses: grades that slipped due to endless scrolling, time lost with our parents who won’t always be around and an inability to process the painful emotions of life because we’ve numbed them with digital distractions.
Social media is the most profitable addiction in the world's history. But it comes at a cost that has yet to be accounted for: our time. The one resource we’ll never get back. Today is the youngest you’ll ever be, but the good news is, that’s still pretty young. So now’s the time to do something about it. If you spend an excessive amount of time on your phone and feel guilty about it — don’t. In fact, you’re actually a part of the solution. I’m here to do something, and I want to invite you to join me.
Starting mid-August, under the guidance of Professor Dirk De Ridder, I’ll be diving into how our brains are rewiring themselves in response to social media, and what this could mean for our mental health down the line. The goal isn’t just to understand these shifts but to challenge the companies fueling them. Your involvement will provide evidence to potentially support a lawsuit against these tech giants and hold them accountable for their role in our collective addiction.
To help drive this research forward, I invite you to scan the QR code below. You’ll gain access to a quick quiz that assesses your relationship to your phone. The 50 most and least affected respondents will be invited to participate in my study, where we’ll briefly scan your brain at Dunedin Hospital. Your contribution will help shine a light on the reality of this issue for the greater good.
Because however deep in brain rot you are, it isn't necessarily your fault. It really is that damn phone.
*Name changed.
**Note: While the analogy of the brake system works to explain the general concept, it’s not completely scientifically sound.