“When I wrote “Children of the Screen” in 2016, it was at the time a pioneering work on technology dependence. The thought that digital devices not only form habits – what I called “digital heroin”, seemed highly controversial to everyone. I was attacked in the media: »Really? Digital drugs?”, asked CNN, NPR, FOX and GAMA. But “Children of the Screen” hit a delicate point, and my article “Digital heroin« published in the fresh York Post, had over 7 million views, gaining the position of the most read article in this paper in 2016".
The author of these words is Nicholas Cardaras – a clinical psychologist, 1 of the leading digital addiction specialists in the United States. The quote comes from his book “Digital Madness. How social media drive the intellectual wellness crisis and how to regain balance” issued in 2022.
Cardaras has been fighting for years to admit the dependence on screens as a full-fledged illness unit. Smartphones and dependence on antisocial advertising platforms (e.g. TikTok, Instagram, YouTub) are not presently considered formal clinical disorders in the American "Diagnostic and statistical manual of psychiatric disorders” (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of intellectual Disorders, 5th Edition – DSM) and in International Classification of Diseases (International Classification of Diseases – ICD), which is managed by the planet wellness Organization (WHO).
Cardaras compares behavioral dependence on digital screens to chemical dependence on classical drugs. To clarify:
Behavioral addiction is simply a habit in which a individual "absorbed" circumstantial behavior, e.g. utilizing a phone, TikTok or YouTuba. In turn, chemical dependence is associated with the usage of chemicals specified as heroin, alcohol or cigarettes.
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In both cases, there is an “injection” (traditional or digital syringe) of dopamine into the brain. The outcast gives you pleasance and begins to be more crucial than anything else in your life – even if you see it destroying you. An adult has a chance to see, a kid doesn't...
In the book “Children of the Screen. How the addiction to the screen takes control of our children – and how to get them out of the trance” Cardaras warns: “The latest investigation with neuroimaging techniques beyond uncertainty shows that excessive vulnerability to screens can neurologically destruct a developing brain of a young individual in the same way as cocaine addiction. That's what a child's brain, influenced by this technology, looks like a brain influenced by drugs."
It is worth noting here that the Game Disorder was incorporated into the ICD by the WHO in 2019 and has been in effect as an authoritative illness unit since January 2022. In DSM there is only net Gaming Disorder in the section for further research.
Why the difference? "30 years of experience in business publishing taught me the most crucial rule of a journalistic inquiry: check who earned it," writes Rana Foroohar, a Financial Times journalist, in the book "Don't Do Wrong. How large Tech betrayed her ideals and all of us." In 2024, the video game marketplace in the United States generated over $13 billion in U.S. revenue.
Dependence on smartphones and their contents are inactive not a illness according to experts liable for ICD and DSM classifications. Why? Let's follow the money again.
Let's see what happens in the United States. The smartphone marketplace generates around $70 billion in gross per year (sale of devices themselves). The marketplace for telecommunications services reaches around US$450–500 billion in gross per year, of which about 200 billion are mobile services themselves. large Techs (Google/Alphabet, Apple, Facebook/Meta, Amazon, Microsoft) together make about $2 trillion in yearly revenue. If you don't know what's going on, it's...
Adult addict, Fig. Paweł KuczyńskiDopamine slaves
Anna Lembke, Stanford University psychiatrist, addict specialist, as Cardaras believes that screens should be included on the list of addictive diseases. He's been talking about it since 2017.
"Smartphone acts like an IV that delivers twenty-four hours a day to a generation permanently connected to the net digital dopamine (*). Even if individual has not yet found their favourite drug in this digital mix, they will shortly encounter something on the nearest website. Scientists usage dopamine as a kind of universal metre to find the addictive possible of any experience. The more dopamine appears in the reward strategy in our brain, the more addictive it is for us to experience this reaction," he writes in the book ‘Dopamine slaves’.
“For 15 years I have been saying that smartphones must be removed from schools”, Lembke dajeje in an interview with Onet.pl. Let me remind you that the Institute of civilian Affairs says the same thing while conducting “Save the Children” campaign since 2020. I remember the emotions and opposition of the ban I put on the course “The Camper's Stork” in 2013. Participants submitted their calls to the deposit bag on the first day and received it after 7 days of classes. There's little excitement today.
Anna Lembke's book reminded me of an essay “A lecture on the improvement of needs (in a citizen sitting in a hot water bath)” Marek Glogoczowski. The text was published in 1980 in the collection “Ethos of Mindlessness. Selection of technological and satirical essays from Paris Culture, “Anex”, Creativity, Politics, and other, harmful to “good thinking” citizens...’. The author outlined the mechanics of human addiction, which is mass today.
Głogoczowski describes a warm bath of civilization, in which man slow boils, constantly adding more comfort and technology. Lembke describes precisely the same mechanism, only at the neurobiological level – the tub is simply a dopamine path, and the added water is increasingly stronger and more frequent stimulation of pleasance from the screens. The conclusion is similar: in the age of abundance we are dealing with today, the top threat is not lack, but excess of pleasance that creates an addictive loop around our neck. A digital loop that tightens more and more each day.
Childhood in Siege
“... children and childhood request the kind of public protection and support only society can supply them. Around 1980, however, we started to decision distant from this idea. Childhood was considered primarily a private matter, which was the work of parents, families and the market, alternatively than the authorities. Public regulations to defend children began to be regarded as unlawful interference in parental freedom by parents and corporate freedom in pursuit of income. fresh paradigm and practice became deregulation. The effect is that present (and it happened in accelerated mode) kid marketing professionals can freely manipulate the emotions, credulity and inexperience of children and push them with unhealthy ideas and products," he wrote. Joel Bakan in the book “Children in Siege. An easy mark for large business" in 2011.
The Institute of civilian Affairs calls on the government to introduce a digital taxation on, among others, the Digital Cork Fund. Money from corporations that make money on digital drugs should finance actions to defend children from digital addictions.
The Digital Cork Fund is modelled on the Cork Fund. The Cork Fund (also called the Capslowy Fund) is simply a local budget-separated funds, obtained from entrepreneurs selling alcohol. The government requires local governments to spend it in its entirety to address problems arising from alcohol and drug addictions, mitigate their consequences and prevent both phenomena. According to the Ministry of improvement data, in 2020 the Cork Fund in Poland amounted to around PLN 880 million.
The starting point for work on the digital taxation may be parliamentary draft law on taxation on certain digital services and Digital Technologies Fund (Seymal Printing No 1376). The task was developed on the basis of the survey “Digital taxation from giants. Expert in the implementation of the Digital taxation (DST) in Poland" of the Instrat Foundation. As experts estimate, the digital taxation in the DST model (the turnover taxation from large companies) will let to rise around PLN billion per year.
The digital taxation should be paid by a large business that benefits most from kid and youth dependence on screens.
I mean: technological corporations specified as TikTok, Meta (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram), Google (YouTube); smartphone manufacturers specified as Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi; telecommunications companies specified as Play, Orange, Plus, T-Mobile.
The money from the Digital Cork Fund should be full allocated to programmes to counter digital addictions, social campaigns to advance digital hygiene and technology education.
A widely understood technology business must yet take active work for the goods and services from which it derives immense profits by placing them on the market. And through persistent and aggressive marketing campaigns, they force them to buy and use.
Why do I compose so much about bringing large business to account? Because, as Joel Bakan rightly points out, “the provision of good and healthy childhood to children depends not only on individual choices and decisions of parents. Social conditions in which these decisions are made are besides important. And these conditions, as I am proving, are present more shaped than always by the selfish maneuvers of corporations and the reluctance of governments to regulate areas where children are peculiarly vulnerable."
Digital hygiene?
Report from the National Anti-Drug Bureau prepared on behalf of the Ministry of wellness shows the scale of the problem phenomenon of the usage of mobile telephone by children and young people in Poland. I urge reading it.
Already in 2005 the first technological investigation appeared proving something's wrong. It's been known for 5 years that smartphones destruct the brain like heroin.
How much longer is our Polish “elity” – politicians, doctors, scientists and journalists – request to change their “narration” and start to tell that children under the age of 16 should not get smartphones20, 30, possibly 40 years? And at this time, let the next generations give each another digital syringes. Let them do 7 hours a day.
What can we do? prof. Wojciech Kulesza answered this question, within the panel ‘Platforms (anti)social. Fix or close?”I listened to during the Xth legislature of Economics of Open Eyes Economy Summit in Krakow. A social scientist from SWPS University has divided into actual and fake activities. "Media plan, any community creation, digital hygiene, digital literaryists are seeming actions. The problem is the product, not the usage of it," Kulesza emphasized. He noticed that alcohol dealers, tobacco dealers, gambling, would do anything to make their products available. They will agree to introduce hygiene in the usage of cigarettes or alcohol. It's like saying today: let's teach children to smoke well – only 5 a day, not 10 or twenty. likewise with alcohol: if you want to drink, drink only in moderation. The expert included an increase in money for investigation on digital platforms, investigating of technological corporations products and reporting their impact on users. As is the case with medicines or food. "We must return to the VHS and Facebook era. Where there's no number of lairs, I don't have the number of social comparisons, I don't have the winning content. Only any kind of forum”, appealed Wojciech Kulesza.
Korczak: A Letter to Parents
A fresh year is coming up. We have 3 gifts for you related to digital heroin:
(1) 10-minute“Reset – Life Recovered” report – I encourage you to see it in the household group;
(2) Lesson script “Be safe online and off the grid: how do you admit risky behaviour and make smart decisions?”. We encourage you to conduct not only the school – besides you, Parent, can do it. It's 45 minutes we can make large usage of together with our family;
(3) On 27-28 September at the 7th Technopolitical Forum we discussed: "Smartphone pandemic. How do we deprive ourselves and children of empathy?". I encourage you to watch the conversation.
Finally, a surprise: “Letter to Parents”, the author of which is Janusz Korczak. A letter that is inactive valid despite the passing of time. I'll compose more, much more current today, in the era of digital madness.
“Don’t spoil me by giving me everything I ask. I'm just putting you to the test. Don't be afraid to act decisively towards me. It gives me a sense of security.
- Don't let me perpetuate my bad habits. I trust you will aid me deal with them.
- Don't make me feel smaller than I am. It makes me stupid to prove I'm big.
- Don't punish me in front of others. You convince me the most erstwhile you talk to me calmly and discreetly.
- Don't defend me from the consequences of what I did. I besides request painful experiences.
- Don't worry besides much erstwhile I say "I hatred you." It's not you I hate, but the restrictions you put before me.
- Don't worry besides much about my condition. However, think if I am trying to attract the attention I request with them.
- Don't mess with me. I'll defend myself by pretending to be deaf.
- Don't give me rash promises, due to the fact that I feel very disappointed erstwhile you don't keep them later.
- Don't overestimate me. It makes me uncomfortable, and sometimes it forces me to lie so as not to disappoint you.
- Do not change your rules depending on the arrangements. I feel lost and I lose religion in you.
- Don't leave me erstwhile I ask you questions. I'll find information elsewhere, but I'd like you to be my planet guide.
- Don't tell me my fear and my fears are stupid. They're very real to me.
- Don't propose you're perfect and infallible. I'm having besides much shock erstwhile I see you're not like this.
- Never think that justifying yourself to me is below your dignity. It gives me genuine warmth.
- Don't halt me from experimenting and making mistakes. I can't grow without it.
- Don't forget how fast I grow up. It must be hard for you to keep pace, but delight try!
Your child’.
(*) It is worth noting that the first conviction in the quoted passage of the book "Dopamine slaves" in English reads "The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a vired generation". That is, the author of the Polish translation replaced the word “spray” with “drip”.
