The Science of Compulsive Online Behavior | Mary Aiken | Big Think
Do you know that the average person checks their cell phone 200 times a day? And when actually they come home from work, cell phone checking increases. So why is that? People talk about internet addiction.
Let me explain the science behind it. Very bold ratio and intermittent reinforcement aspects of technology. What does that mean? It means that technology and the internet, particularly, is like a giant slot machine. Every so often you hit something great. You find a great link, a great website. Every so often you get a brilliant email praise from your boss. Or that text that you've been waiting for. And that is far more addictive than if every piece of communication was positive or if every piece was negative.
So technology can actually target our developmental Achilles heel. It can elicit negative behavior. People call it internet addiction. I’m not somebody who believes in internet addiction. Why? You cannot be addicted to air. You cannot be addicted to water. Technology is here to stay. You would not be able to live or get a job or survive without at some stage engaging with technology.
I’m a cyberpsychologist. I couldn’t do my job without access to the internet. So the thing is it's to learn to modify our behavior. Addiction applies an abstinence model. You cannot, in this day and age, abstain from technology.
So I prefer to think of it in terms of adoptive behavior. Technology is a blip in terms of an anthropological evolutionary spectrum, and it has happened so quick that we, as humans, are struggling to keep up with what it offers and how our behavior is evolving.
And the negative behaviors that we see at the moment, I like to think of them as being maladaptive behaviors or cyber maladaptive behaviors. And the good news about that is that you can do something. Just like learning to stop biting your nails when you’re nervous, you can learn to control your use of technology. Technology is here to serve us, not for us to become a slave to it.