Digital addiction - are we slaves to screens?

The addiction is being likened to drug enslavement and new studies are needed to advise governments, parents and managers in the workplace on how best to protect people.

Paul Levy, University of Brighton Senior Lecturer in the Brighton Business School, said there were serious concerns that mobile phones alone lead to repetitive strain injuries, can harm the parent-child bond, and can make addicts prone to mood swings.

Recent studies, he said, highlighted an equally serious concern, that “internet addiction is resistant to treatment, entails significant risks, and has high relapse rates”.

Levy, author of the recently-published Digital Inferno , which aims to help people stay in control in the world of smartphones, tablets, laptops and social media, said: “From India to America, from China to England, concerns that our children are turning into couch potatoes grow.”

In an article published in The Conversation, the website for news, comment and analysis, written by academics and researchers, Levy said: “The problem with the topic of digital addiction is that there are no definitive scientific studies that have established it as a genuine condition.

“As far back as 2006 the American Journal of Psychiatry recommended digital addiction be more formally recognised, but studies are still largely piecemeal and no authoritative view exists.”

 Levy said research attempting to measure the impact of digital addiction was expanding: A study from the University of Missouri reported that measurable increases in stress can be recorded when people have their smart phones taken away.

There has even been a rise in clinics serving digital addicts, and increasing amount of personal testimony from self-described addicts, as well as more firmly established evidence for repetitive strain injuries arising from overuse of technology.

Until a tipping point is reached, he said, parents and teachers, managers and gamers will carry on checking into clinics and become a generation with prematurely arthritic fingers, backache, and a whole host of yet-to-be named psychological disorders.

Levy said: “It all points to an urgent need for far more comprehensive research – research that can really inform how the government approaches the problem with policy, as well as something to guide parents and managers in the workplace.”