I read the second article and noticed that they have no idea what they are talking about. See,
> It stimulates neurotransmitter receptors in the brain’s reward center with a huge surge of dopamine — an organic feel-good chemical, or neurotransmitter.
They're still repeating the same old wives tales about the dopaminergic systems being related to feeling good. This was known to be false even back in the 1970s. They encode for reward incentive salience, not actual feelings of pleasure. Given this the entire rest of the article can be disregarded.
But, that leaves the actual study cited. This seems to be a 1000 person study of self reports of behavior by college students through text. Self reports are not going to tell you anything but the biases of the people involved.
And at the very most, if we accept this study's conclusions at face value then all they're saying is that people have built up habits relating to phones. Dependence. This is the word you want to use. It is definitely not addiction.
> It stimulates neurotransmitter receptors in the brain’s reward center with a huge surge of dopamine — an organic feel-good chemical, or neurotransmitter.
They're still repeating the same old wives tales about the dopaminergic systems being related to feeling good. This was known to be false even back in the 1970s. They encode for reward incentive salience, not actual feelings of pleasure. Given this the entire rest of the article can be disregarded.
But, that leaves the actual study cited. This seems to be a 1000 person study of self reports of behavior by college students through text. Self reports are not going to tell you anything but the biases of the people involved.
And at the very most, if we accept this study's conclusions at face value then all they're saying is that people have built up habits relating to phones. Dependence. This is the word you want to use. It is definitely not addiction.