[taneq]

Exactly. The screen is just a window into another world where information is far more accessible and available. And calling it "addictive" isn't really appropriate (in general, obviously there are a lot of nasty Skinner-box apps which do deserve that name) when it's a high-quality resource and paying it more attention makes sense.

[civilitty]

I agree that calling it addictive isn't appropriate, but only because the vast majority of our clinical and social experience with addiction is entirely based around physical dependency. Just look at the amount of research into opioids, nicotine, amphetamines, benzos, and alcohol compared to the dozens of less addictive/harmful psychedelics and research chemicals.

Information and the psychological dependency it creates, whether it be a message from someone we are attracted to or the stimulating audiovisual response from a slot machine, used to be tied to slow physical mediums like snail mail and restricted by location. In that context, the smartphone has created a whole new era of crazy that we are completely unprepared to deal with. Coupled with the rapid pace of development that didn't leave anyone enough time to adopt to the internet before it became ubiquitous, they have provided a perfect delivery mechanism for psychological dependency optimized on a massive scale, long before we've had time to adapt.

[taneq]

Consider music. Music is a form of information, it's pleasurable to listen to, and many people spend significant portions of their day listening to it and would be strongly unwilling to give it up. You could call this 'psychological dependency' or you could just accept that music is a good addition to most peoples' lives and that their spending time and money on experiencing it is an entirely reasonable decision.

[civilitty]

You're demonstrating my point. Portable cassette/CD/MP3 players have existed for what, four decades? The vast majority of humans only experienced music through bards and family/friends up until the last century. This is all a vastly unexplored topic and that's exactly why calling it an addiction is inaccurate. Our understanding of pleasure and neurological dependency is still in its infancy yet our ability to manipulate it at a commercial level through sound, visuals, and base human instinct has grown exponentially - despite the fact that the latter has happened largely through free market trial and error.

The phrase "you could just accept that [music/video games/heroin] is a good addition to most peoples' lives and that their spending time and money on experiencing it is an entirely reasonable decision" is right out of the hardcore addicts' self-defense-from-intervention playbook (been there). Likewise, it's equally ridiculous to use music, a passive art form that has existed for thousands of years, to argue in good faith about the kind of technology that we have today. Especially when that technology has spawned several unique industries ranging from social media to gaming that are dependent on "whales" spending thousands of dollars a month and other behaviors distinguishable from clinical addiction only by the lack of violent withdrawals.