Most people don’t think of themselves as addicts but we reckon over 99% of people living in the Western world are.
Of course, it depends on how we define ‘addicts’.
For most of us, the word “Addiction” makes us think about alcohol, powders or pills, etc.
And whilst that can be true, it actually reaches much further than that.
Dr Anna Lembke, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine defines it as,
Now, that we have a clearly defined meaning, let’s talk about it in the context of smartphones.
A research study surveyed 1,000 Australians of all ages and the results were, … in our opinion, simply horrifying.
It turns out the average daily phone ‘screen time’ is 5.5 hours a day.
That’s more than 30% of our waking hours checking social media, finding information, using apps, playing games, taking photos, and just ‘consuming’ content.
These are ‘behaviours’ that are cleverly manipulated by teams of very clever software engineers.
But once you understand the neuroscience of how they achieve these staggering results, you can start to wean yourself off these ‘reward drug’ inducing activities and clawback huge amounts of time for what matters most.
So, would your answer to my opening question be different now?
If you actually knew how many hours a day you spent on your smartphone, would you consider yourself an addict?
How many hours a day do you spend using your smartphone?
