Brain Rot: Internet addiction - Episode Artwork
Technology

Brain Rot: Internet addiction

In this episode of Brain Rot, we explore the complex relationship between technology and internet addiction. Through personal stories and expert insights, we examine the signs of addiction, its impact...

Brain Rot: Internet addiction
Brain Rot: Internet addiction
Technology • 0:00 / 0:00

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spk_0 This is an ABC podcast.
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spk_0 or wherever you get your podcasts.
spk_0 Okay, a thought experiment.
spk_0 You've left your phone at home for the day.
spk_0 How does that make you feel?
spk_0 Upset?
spk_0 Stress?
spk_0 In different?
spk_0 The answer might go some way to showing just how attached
spk_0 you feel to your phone or how much you need it.
spk_0 And that is the topic today on all in the mind
spk_0 from ABC Radio National,
spk_0 because it's episode four of BrainRot,
spk_0 a special series about your relationship with tech.
spk_0 In this episode, we're digging into internet addiction.
spk_0 Here's the show.
spk_0 If you're one of the world's 5.5 billion internet users,
spk_0 and let's face it, you probably are,
spk_0 then you already know what I mean when I say
spk_0 there's something addictive about being online.
spk_0 I'll be watching Netflix and also watching,
spk_0 like, BrainRot at the same time.
spk_0 If you don't have your phone on you for an outing or something,
spk_0 I'm very much like, oh, where is it?
spk_0 I'm jumping with my phone.
spk_0 I get like, sad to notifications as well.
spk_0 I find myself, you know, really not wanting to scroll,
spk_0 but it's just kind of like an addictive thing.
spk_0 But how do you know when it's gone too far?
spk_0 The moment for me was when I realized that it was destroying me,
spk_0 I was just losing days and days and days.
spk_0 I might have a night where I would just stay up
spk_0 till like 2, 3, 4 a.m. and then my child wakes me up at like 6.
spk_0 So I felt hypnotized, I guess you could say mesmerized,
spk_0 that'd be the word mesmerized.
spk_0 I'm Angela Voipier, the ABC's National Technology Reporter,
spk_0 and this is BrainRot, a series from science friction
spk_0 about how tech is changing our brains.
spk_0 Today, in episode four, the surprisingly controversial world
spk_0 of internet addiction.
spk_0 Most people who use digital media
spk_0 will not go on to develop a severe and life-threatening
spk_0 digital media addiction, but a vulnerable subset will.
spk_0 At the same time, there is a live debate
spk_0 over whether internet addiction exists at all.
spk_0 We don't yet have an official diagnosis
spk_0 that's a smartphone addiction in the way
spk_0 that you can have an alcohol addiction or a gambling addiction.
spk_0 So is internet addiction real?
spk_0 If it does exist, what are the signs you've got it?
spk_0 And how do you recover?
spk_0 Well, I was probably a late starter.
spk_0 This is Julian. She's 68 now,
spk_0 and she didn't even have home internet until 2020.
spk_0 I initially got on to the internet at the library
spk_0 to look up real estate, because I was thinking and moving.
spk_0 And even then, I was aware that I seemed to sort of like
spk_0 lingering on it just for its own sake.
spk_0 She lives by the coast, and I used to go walking on the beach.
spk_0 And I'd reach a point where I'd just be on the beach thinking,
spk_0 I want to go to the library, I want to go to the library,
spk_0 I want to be on the internet, I don't want to be wasting my time at the beach.
spk_0 By this point, she'd moved on from house hunting to social media.
spk_0 I went to a school reunion and they said,
spk_0 we're all on Facebook, get on to Facebook, I got on to Facebook,
spk_0 and just fell in love with it.
spk_0 And became obsessed very quickly with Facebook,
spk_0 obsessed with my posts and how many likes or not likes
spk_0 that we're getting obsessed with what other people were doing.
spk_0 And for some reason, that just felt fantastic.
spk_0 So when the library's shut during lockdown,
spk_0 she got wifi at home.
spk_0 And that's when things got out of hand.
spk_0 It was the time factor. I thought, I can't stop.
spk_0 I'm waking up every morning thinking I'm not going on it today.
spk_0 And I do things like put it in a drawer or force myself
spk_0 to not use it till lunchtime or put it in the garage.
spk_0 She'd always break in the end.
spk_0 And not necessarily for editing special either.
spk_0 So I kept watching this short video of Elon Musk
spk_0 being booed at Silicon Valley.
spk_0 I'm here in a world of...
spk_0 CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
spk_0 Did I have no interest in Elon Musk?
spk_0 I have no interest in him at all.
spk_0 I mean, if I think about it now,
spk_0 how I kind of felt inside, it was this sort of glassy-eyed fascination.
spk_0 The problem wasn't so much what she was doing online.
spk_0 It was just that she couldn't tear herself away.
spk_0 And then I'd go, but I'm just going to look up this one thing.
spk_0 And then I'd look up that one thing.
spk_0 And then before I'd know it was dark, the day was over.
spk_0 I hadn't fed my cats properly. I hadn't looked after myself.
spk_0 I'd put off going to the Lou. I was showering less.
spk_0 Just my whole life was just diminishing to me and the screen on my kitchen bench.
spk_0 I was just losing days and days and days.
spk_0 Gillian's also a recovering alcoholic.
spk_0 She struggled with it in her 20s.
spk_0 And the way she was using tech four decades later
spk_0 felt familiar in the worst possible way.
spk_0 I just felt as if the gates of hell were sort of clanging shut on me
spk_0 and that I couldn't do anything about it.
spk_0 That's what was most terrifying.
spk_0 It was like I could see what was happening, but I couldn't stop it.
spk_0 In 2022, she started looking for support groups.
spk_0 And after a few false starts, it's dark.
spk_0 That's where she met Kate.
spk_0 Well, so the second meeting that I went to was actually an open meeting.
spk_0 It's called a beginner meeting.
spk_0 You're invited at a specific time if you want to introduce yourself.
spk_0 But I identified myself and where I live.
spk_0 And at the end of the programme, this person piped up and said,
spk_0 I live nearby and we compare actual suburbs that turned out we live maybe,
spk_0 I don't know, 20, 25 minutes drive from each other.
spk_0 Which was quite amazing because a lot of the members are international.
spk_0 So they took it offline.
spk_0 It's a bit of a luxury to be able to meet up with somebody for coffee
spk_0 as we do every few weeks.
spk_0 And discussing person face to face rather than on technology
spk_0 is a really important part of my recovery.
spk_0 I've got to say, yeah.
spk_0 At 37, Kate's a slightly more typical candidate for screen over use than Gillian was.
spk_0 But things only got really bad for her after her kids were born.
spk_0 My child would wake me up for night feeds.
spk_0 And then I'd be awake anyway.
spk_0 And then I would start watching reality television on my phone for hours.
spk_0 So my child would be back asleep.
spk_0 And I'd still be watching, I don't know, love island on my phone.
spk_0 So I think that's where it started spiraling.
spk_0 And I got very bad mental health because of that.
spk_0 Most people wouldn't necessarily know that I have that addiction.
spk_0 But I was functioning on extremely low amounts of sleep.
spk_0 So I might have one or two good nights of sleep per week.
spk_0 But then I might have a night where I would just stay up to like 2, 3, 4 am.
spk_0 And then my child wakes me up at like 6.
spk_0 And even though there are two generations apart,
spk_0 there are some striking parallels in their story.
spk_0 Like Gillian, Kate's problem wasn't the content itself.
spk_0 You know how some people get into conspiracy theories around news.
spk_0 I sort of got into conspiracy theories around celebrities.
spk_0 I remember watching like a lot of body language analysis of like Prince Harry
spk_0 and Meghan Markle's Oprah interview.
spk_0 That's just like an example.
spk_0 But like I would get very into the conspiracy theories of trying to speculate
spk_0 about what was the internal lives of famous people.
spk_0 The real issue was the lost time.
spk_0 The time was just one long whole day rather than particular days with boundaries of this is when you sleep.
spk_0 So I think when you dismantle all those sort of normal markers of time
spk_0 then it's hard to know for me how much time I've spent on things
spk_0 that I would imagine that when I was in my addiction it would have been like,
spk_0 yeah, well over 10, 12 hours a day.
spk_0 Listening to Kate and Gillian, it's easy to forget that internet addiction
spk_0 isn't an official diagnosis.
spk_0 So if the problem was real enough to take over their lives like that,
spk_0 then why not?
spk_0 The medical consensus, the medical literature, leading medical organizations
spk_0 make it very clear that digital media addiction is real.
spk_0 This is Anna Lemke.
spk_0 She's a professor of psychiatry in addiction medicine at Stanford University.
spk_0 And as you can hear, a big believer in the existence of internet and screen addictions.
spk_0 Even if psychiatry's key diagnostic manual known as the DSM doesn't agree.
spk_0 Gaming disorder is provisional in the DSM, but social media addiction, pornography addiction,
spk_0 all the other kinds of internet addictions are not yet in the DSM.
spk_0 And actually that means very little.
spk_0 What it means is that the DSM has not yet caught up with the science.
spk_0 Because the science is robust, that people are getting addicted to the internet,
spk_0 to technology, to digital media, and in some cases developing even life threatening addictions.
spk_0 So I think it's just a matter of time before it's a diagnostic code in the DSM.
spk_0 It's not unusual for the DSM to lag behind the science.
spk_0 We only get a new one every five to seven years.
spk_0 We're currently up to DSM five, published in 2022.
spk_0 And there's no timeline yet on the release of the next one.
spk_0 But there is a debate over whether internet addiction should be added.
spk_0 You can probably guess what Annelemki thinks about it.
spk_0 Many of these platforms were made to be addictive, meaning we're made to make it frictionless and easy for us to access the content.
spk_0 And very difficult to get off because of the reinforcing nature of the medium itself.
spk_0 Most people who use digital media will not go on to develop a severe and life threatening digital media addiction.
spk_0 But a vulnerable subset will.
spk_0 And it's probably going to shake out at around the same 10% that we see for addiction to drugs and alcohol.
spk_0 Basically, there are two broad categories of addiction.
spk_0 There's addiction to a substance such as alcohol, and then there's addiction to a behavior such as gambling.
spk_0 But all addiction boils down to the same thing.
spk_0 Our tireless quest for dopamine.
spk_0 Basically, when we do something rewarding or pleasurable, or just simply something that our brain recognizes as important for survival,
spk_0 our brain releases dopamine in the reward pathway.
spk_0 The reward pathway is the brain network responsible for processing pleasure.
spk_0 The more dopamine that's released and the faster that it's released, the more likely that substance or behavior is to be potentially addictive for a given organism.
spk_0 And the reason it's called the reward pathway is that it's evolved to reward survival behaviors, like eating, drinking, and sex.
spk_0 The problem is it evolved for a way less abundant environment than the one we currently find ourselves in.
spk_0 We're all wired to reflexively approach pleasure and avoid pain.
spk_0 And it's what's kept us alive for most of humanity because for most of humanity we lived in a world of scarcity and ever-present danger.
spk_0 The problem is that now our ancient wiring is mismatched for this modern ecosystem of overwhelming overabundance.
spk_0 We're wired to survive, to find food clothing, shelter, and mate.
spk_0 And these are deeply conserved parts of our brains that haven't changed across species for millions of years.
spk_0 But we humans have changed the environment.
spk_0 And as a result, we're really struggling with unprecedented problems of compulsive overconsumption, even in people who are not necessarily innately or genetically predisposed to addiction.
spk_0 And the risk with abundance is that having too much of a good thing can effectively fry your reward pathway and set you up for a dopamine shortage in the long term.
spk_0 What happens over time is that we build a tolerance to this sort of dopamine release and this pleasure.
spk_0 And so what we find is that we need more and more of a certain substance or behavior to get that same pleasurable experience that we're seeking.
spk_0 This is Anastasia Heronas. She's a clinical psychologist and the author of a book called The Dopamine Brain.
spk_0 So there's a few key features that constitute an addiction. So one of them is salience.
spk_0 So this is essentially the idea that that behavior, that thing in our life that we feel hooked to is very prevalent in our mind.
spk_0 We keep thinking about it and we, it pops into our mind in day to day life.
spk_0 So if I'm sitting working, you know, thinking about checking social media or my phone will pop into my mind.
spk_0 There's some degree of mood modification. So when I use a substance or I use a behavior, my mood will change as a result of it.
spk_0 And we do see that with smartphones. There's some sort of tolerance that can build.
spk_0 So I need more, I need to use more, I need to experience in some way more of it to feel the feeling that I'm seeking.
spk_0 And then also this sense of withdrawal. So when I stop using the substance, when I stop engaging in the behavior,
spk_0 I feel the urge to go back to it. I feel these withdrawal. So it's the idea of if you leave your phone at home or you can't find it for a moment,
spk_0 you get that panic that sets in and that urge to sort of pick it up and look at it again.
spk_0 If you're lucky, that's not you. But if it is, Anastasia says you're not alone.
spk_0 What we see clinically is very much patterns and features of someone who might be addicted to a smartphone
spk_0 that are very similar to someone who might be addicted to something else that we can diagnose.
spk_0 So it's not yet a diagnosable condition. But the evidence emerging is certainly telling us that children, teens and adults can certainly become hooked
spk_0 and experience some sort of harm as a result of using their phone.
spk_0 Of course, there's another argument that the science doesn't stack up just yet.
spk_0 I think it's too early to tell right now.
spk_0 Dameshi is an associate professor at Michigan State University, specializing in behavioral addictions and social media use.
spk_0 There really aren't that many studies that have been done. First of all, it's hard to just measure social media use.
spk_0 Some of my studies I've found that people sometimes overestimate by as much as two to three times the amount of what they're actually using when I look at the evidence.
spk_0 And the amount that they've been using it on their iPhones.
spk_0 Then there's the question of what we're actually doing online, which is an important one to answer because a video chat with your mom is substantially different to doom scrolling on TikTok.
spk_0 But the research doesn't always make a distinction.
spk_0 I do think that there needs to be a much more nuanced take on it, understanding also as well what people are doing on the platforms
spk_0 because there is some research indicating that you can use social media one way and not have problem and actually get lots of benefits,
spk_0 but you can use social media another way, then you actually have more negative effects of social media.
spk_0 Da also says the jury is still out as to where the social media is actually causing all the harm it's often blamed for.
spk_0 It could be that the problematic social media use is driving the mood disorder symptoms,
spk_0 but it could also be the other way around that someone has higher anxiety, sometimes are higher depressive symptoms.
spk_0 And as a result, they then develop more problematic social media use.
spk_0 The research is almost in that state of really trying to define what it is to have a phone addiction
spk_0 and it's not necessarily the phone itself, but the app specifically.
spk_0 So is it a phone addiction? Is it a social media addiction? And what does that kind of look like?
spk_0 Especially when we're looking at such a huge majority of the population who report that they have some sort of negative relationship with their phone.
spk_0 So I think in the literature and the research, we're still in those days of trying to define and figure it out so that we can maybe come up with those more clinical and official diagnoses to be able to develop official treatments for it as well.
spk_0 Our understanding of addictions has definitely changed whereby we have a better understanding of the existence of behavioral addiction.
spk_0 So it used to be that drugs alcohol tobacco, we understood that you put a substance in your body, it affects how your body and your brain work,
spk_0 but it took a little bit more time for behavioral addictions to sort of be as recognized, but I'll also say it's taken time for behavioral addictions like gambling, pornography, etc.
spk_0 to also not have the same level of shame and stigma attached to them because with drugs and alcohol people can understand you put something in your body there for you get addicted to it, but with behaviors,
spk_0 the general population can sometimes view it as like, we'll just stop, just stop playing the pokies or just stop doing that thing and you'll be fine and it's not that simple.
spk_0 Many technologies have been vilified when they enter popular society like the television TV will rot your brain, right?
spk_0 Or light bulbs, right? Like light bulb is not natural to have light bulbs and to be able to stay up all night, usually there's a wave of this pushback on this technological advancement.
spk_0 Sometimes it's justified, other times it's not, and I do think we're in one of these stages right now where we have to do better and try to understand really what the technology is really doing.
spk_0 I'm someone that believes in meta-analyses and I like to see not just one study come out, but I want to see studies replicated multiple times with different populations and different ages and different methods.
spk_0 I would like to see a meta-analyses done on the body of work that for me would then conclusively demonstrate the effects.
spk_0 I think there's some compelling evidence right now, but I think if I were to discuss this with other researchers who might be talking about their fears about the technology, I think they would agree with me that some of the evidence hasn't reached the levels of the technology.
spk_0 Proof such as meta-analyses, and there are some that have been published, but much of the meta-analyses have been published with correlational and not causal studies, and that's why I am hesitant to make such bold claims.
spk_0 On all in the mind from ABC Radio National, this is BrainRot, a special series about your relationship with tech, and this week, shaking the habit when it comes to smartphones.
spk_0 It is a growing field of research, but the results are very much still taking shape.
spk_0 In the meantime, people around the world are going to keep calling it addiction anyway, either because that's how it feels, or maybe because the horse is already bolted, and that's just what we call it now.
spk_0 Someone says, oh, I'm so addicted to Instagram. They're not really addicted to it. They're just saying that they're spending a lot of time on it, and maybe they think they should be spending less time on it.
spk_0 Someone could say that the same way someone else says, oh, I'm addicted to chocolate, or I'm addicted to ice cream.
spk_0 And so I do think that there is a little bit of, yeah, this disconnect between what the research is actually showing and what the common everyday experience of people using these platforms is like.
spk_0 Either way, addiction is the label that's starting to stick, which means if you want to help limiting your tech use, it's probably going to come in the form of addiction treatment.
spk_0 Using existing frameworks from that field.
spk_0 I first got involved in this field of internet addiction back in the 90s when I moved up to the Seattle area and opened my private practice there.
spk_0 This is Hillary Cash. She's a psychologist who spent the past three decades treating what she describes as internet addiction.
spk_0 I opened that practice in 1994 and one of my earliest clients was a young man of 25 who was severely addicted to an online video game, a Dungeons and Dragons early game.
spk_0 So this young man had already lost a job at Microsoft because of his severe addiction.
spk_0 He was married, but he was in the process of losing his marriage and a second job.
spk_0 I at the time knew nothing about the internet except what I might have heard on public radio.
spk_0 I didn't own a computer. It really was all a mystery to me.
spk_0 To be fair, it was a mystery to most people in 1994, but Hillary was so interested in screen addiction after that first client that it led her to open an inpatient center 14 years later in 2008 in order to treat more acute cases.
spk_0 It's called restart and these days it's located on a rural property near a small town west of Seattle in Washington state.
spk_0 When our clients come, they are abstinent from screens and the internet for three months or longer.
spk_0 And we believe that that period of abstinence of total abstinence is extremely important.
spk_0 And they are during that time, they are learning skills, basic life skills, like how to cook, how to make a bed, how to do it their own laundry, many of them did not know those basic things.
spk_0 And all during that time where they're getting individual therapy, they're doing lots and lots and lots of group therapy and they have time to read, to reflect all of which is rather difficult for them.
spk_0 They are not used to doing anything except going online. We want them to be able to entertain themselves without the internet and connect with other people without the internet.
spk_0 And if it sounds a lot like drug rehab, you're not imagining things. It's a similar model.
spk_0 The brain is going through the process that is recognized as withdrawal and that means that they're more anxious, more irritable, more bored than they were before they came.
spk_0 They're not sleeping well. They are having vivid dreams, often high levels of anxiety.
spk_0 And so the brain is just slowly coming back to normal function.
spk_0 After that first intensive phase, the three month detox, Hillary's clients are instructed to join a 12 step program specifically designed for internet addiction and attend meetings twice a week.
spk_0 It's modeled on a more famous 12 step program, alcoholics anonymous. In fact, Kate and Jillian attend a version of the same program.
spk_0 It came about after a huge number of attempts to rein in my technology use by myself.
spk_0 So I tried everything from giving my laptop to somebody, trying to get a phone that was more laggy, installing lots of blocking software on different devices,
spk_0 reading every single book under the sun about digital minimalism. And none of that was sufficient.
spk_0 And I must have put the right search term eventually in found internet and technology, addicts, anonymous.
spk_0 And I did use just some of their resources off their website to start with because while my self-esteem was at an all time low, my social anxiety was at an all time high.
spk_0 So I did not really desire to meet a bunch of strangers on an internet site.
spk_0 But one day I just saw that there was a meeting happening like five minutes from when it was and it ended up being the best possible outcome.
spk_0 Internet and technology addicts anonymous or ITAA is pretty new. It's been around for less than a decade.
spk_0 But it works in pretty much the same way as other 12 step programs.
spk_0 Which is that there is somebody who's chairing the meeting that day. They have no more authority than anybody else, but they're just chairing the meeting.
spk_0 And then there might be some readings or a topic and people share their, essentially, their experience, strength and hope.
spk_0 So I was sitting in this meeting, listening to other people talk about internet and technology, the way I'd been sitting in AA meetings for years, listening to people talk about alcoholism and talking about alcoholism myself.
spk_0 And so over the past six months I've been a member there attending the online meetings.
spk_0 And it's just recovered my sense of self-confidence and also started to uncover my sense of purpose and service in this world and just feel so much healthier about myself.
spk_0 There aren't really reliable statistics on how well this kind of addiction focus treatment actually works for internet over use.
spk_0 Although Kate and Jillian clearly rate it pretty highly. Apart from anything, it's tough to measure because every person has a different definition for internet sobriety.
spk_0 That's less dubious than it sounds when you remember that total abstinence isn't really an option. And it's 2025, you're probably still going to need an email address.
spk_0 For the time being, Kate is managing to avoid celebrity gossip online.
spk_0 I haven't used any video streaming for instance for like over three months and other things since I joined the program.
spk_0 So it's just like slowly tipping away at what's healthy for me, but it's still a process of discovery.
spk_0 You suddenly might have all this empty space that you don't know what to do with.
spk_0 So like internet use was my hobby for 20 years. So I've had to find other things.
spk_0 Meanwhile, Jillian has been what's sometimes called internet sober for more than two years.
spk_0 I take nature walks, I certainly walk on the beach again.
spk_0 If anything, she's even happier outdoors than she was before.
spk_0 My love of nature has returned tenfold. I contemplate nature at a deeper level. I will, it sounds really ridiculous.
spk_0 I'll look at the lighting leaves, I'll look at the light on the water, I'll look at individual leaves.
spk_0 I study nature in a way that means I see it in much more detail and much more depth than I used to see it.
spk_0 It's exactly the kind of activity we're involved for if you ask Annelamb Keene.
spk_0 So the time that we live in now is sometimes referred to as the Anthropocene.
spk_0 Anthro for human and postene for era that we live in.
spk_0 And the reason that it's called the Anthropocene is because it's the first time in the history of humanity.
spk_0 That our actions have changed the ecosystem on such a scale that we're really living in our co-constructed niches as opposed to living in nature.
spk_0 But hey, apparently we're pretty resilient as a space-ease.
spk_0 I think the pendulum is already shifting, so I'm super hopeful. Humans are adaptable.
spk_0 We tend to adapt in an extreme pendulum swing.
spk_0 We never quite get it in the middle, but we don't stay at one extreme for very long.
spk_0 That is it for this episode of the BrainRot series, which we've showcased over the past few weeks and next week is the last episode in the series.
spk_0 Then I will be back with all new episodes of All in the Mind.
spk_0 BrainRot's producer is Fiona Pepper. The senior producer is James Bullin and sound engineer is Tim Simons.
spk_0 The series originally aired on our sister show, Science Friction.
spk_0 Next week, in episode five.
spk_0 You know, something clicked and I was like, oh my god, I am wasting my life.
spk_0 I'm just sitting in my bed wasting away. I'm 14 years old and the world is so big.
spk_0 And I've decided to just bend my hold down the phone. I need to do something about this.
spk_0 It's been really nice and it's also kind of funny that now I'm the one who's like at family dinner.
spk_0 And like, mom, get off of Facebook because it used to be James' in Get Off of Instagram.
spk_0 And if you want more on smartphones and staying focused, we have other great episodes on that topic.
spk_0 You can find those recommendations in the show notes.
spk_0 From ABC Radio National, I'm Sana Qadar. Thanks for listening.
spk_0 I'll catch you next time.
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