In our more honest moments, most of us would have to acknowledge that we are overly attached to our technological devices. It turns out that what we gain in convenience, efficiency, and autonomy, we lose in freedom and deeply meaningful relationships. We would like to believe that we are the masters of our tools, but, increasingly, technologies are being designed to reverse this relationship, to make us hopelessly attached to our devices.

In 2010, Steve Jobs revealed the new iPad to the public, boasting about its sleek design, intuitive interface, and myriad functions. If this device was so amazing, why did he insist on withholding it from his kids? In an interview later that same year, Jobs told a reporter that his kids had never used an iPad. In fact, Jobs insisted on limiting his children’s access to technologies more generally. Not just Jobs, but a slew of top entrepreneurs and innovators in the tech fields have adopted a similar tack in their own lives and that of their families. They tend to buy their kids books rather than iPads.

What are we to make of this? Those pioneers at the cutting edge of technology are some of the biggest technophobes out there. Meanwhile, Twitter carries us from one hashtag to the next, the Facebook newsfeed is never-ending, and Netflix gives the viewer only a few seconds respite before automatically starting the next episode of Season 8. The problem isn’t a lack of willpower, though critics chalk up binges and hashtag frenzies to this. People have willpower, but there are thousands of people behind the screens that are doing whatever they can to undermine that self-restraint.

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Several years ago, app designer Kevin Holesh became convinced that excessive time spent on his smart phone was time missed with family. He designed an app called Moments to track daily screen time. Thousands of others have since downloaded Moments. As he tracked the app’s usage, Holesh made several important discoveries.

One discovery was that the average amount of time spent on the smart phone each day (i.e., actively scrolling or typing or Snap Chatting or gaming) is three hours. People check their phones an average of 39 times a day. Just 12 percent use their phone for less than an hour, and almost a quarter spend between four to seven hours on their phones each day. Spread over the average lifetime, three hours of daily usage adds up to 11 years spent staring at a screen.

It’s also important to note that people’s estimates for time spent on their phone are usually way off. Often people’s usage is double what they thought it would be. This widespread excessive usage has led to a phenomenon that researchers are calling “nomophobia” (no-mobile-phobia) or the fear of not having connection to others via mobile devices.

Of course, it’s not just smart phones. Gaming has been a black hole for many, perhaps most noticeably in the World of Warcraft gaming universe. Fitbits and other exercise-related technology have led to unhealthy exercise obsessions in which people feel compelled to run even when there’s danger of breaks and tears. With email readily accessible, work has invaded the home. Finding porn no longer involves stealing a magazine from the corner store; all it takes is Wi-Fi, a search engine, and a few clicks. It’s not a stretch to interpret these patterns of behavior as addiction.

In the past, there were a few addictive substances out there from which most people tried to steer clear, like cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs—in other words, a handful of substances.

Modern technology has brought a slew of new opportunities for addiction, from online shopping to workaholism in the home, video games, and TV binges.

These aren’t tied to substances. They are patterns of behavior, but they are no different than substance abuse in terms of their effects. People can become addicted to certain behaviors. Technologies exploit the same neurological mechanisms as cigarettes and cocaine.

It’s worth noting that even within the two decades that the internet has become increasingly available, there has been a sharp rise in the addictiveness of the user’s experience. Tech designers run thousands of tests, making minor adjustments to facilitate the most addictive experiences possible. Facebook, Instagram, video games, and the myriad online experiences have gone from fun experiences to perfectly-crafted addictive experiences that keep us feeding on the feeds. Experiences are increasingly immersive and intuitive, with far fewer glitches and hang-ups. 

Even the clunky computers and video games of the 1990s were too glitchy to get us hooked in the same way. In a fashion unprecedented in human history, technology offers near-seamless, efficient convenience and a level of autonomy that’s hard to resist. Addicts are not just junkies shooting up in crack houses—each of us has addictive tendencies, and technology is becoming increasingly adept at exploiting these tendencies.

There was a time when scientists and psychologists chalked up addiction to predisposition. The increasingly clarion answer as to why some get addicted and others don’t is environment.

There were about 100,000 GIs in Vietnam who became addicted to heroin. At that time, heroin was—when judged by metrics of addictiveness, damage to body, and to relationships—the most harmful drug available. Only five percent of recovering heroin addicts avoid relapse. When the war ended, Nixon, who had just declared war on drugs, was deeply concerned about the return of the troops and how the United States could rehab thousands of war-torn, junkie veterans.

The government asked a research professor, Lee Robins from Washington University in St. Louis, to follow the influx of soldiers and track how they handled the return. The country was bracing itself for pandemonium, but what Robins discovered was that 95 percent of veterans stayed clean. What this demonstrated was that environment is the determining factor in addiction. The steamy Vietnamese jungles, the smell of fish, or napalm, or any other cues associated with shooting heroin were completely removed and replaced with normal routines that had no link to the drug, like grocery shopping, going to work, and caring for family.

Technology is now mainstream and goes with us everywhere, so there are cues that trigger routine behaviors just about everywhere. Thus, the environment in which we live is now extremely conducive to our addictions. They’ve become established as cultural conventions, but are still addictions whose defeat entails an uphill battle.

Roughly speaking, children tend to spend a third of the day asleep, another third of the day in school, and the final third engrossed by some screen, be that a laptop, tablet, smart phone, or television. Communication via technological devices now exceeds face-to-face interactions.

Around the year 2000, the amount of non-screen-related play among children dropped by about 20 percent. It’s no coincidence that screen-related play rose by roughly the same amount around that time.

One experiment involving a group of pre-teens from California demonstrated the toll that screen addictions has taken on us. All 51 kids were chosen from diverse economic and ethnic backgrounds. All had access to computers, and about 50 percent of them owned phones.  They spent an average of an hour on the phone, two hours watching TV and an hour playing video games. The kids went to a weeklong camp, where they spent time in nature, learned to use a compass and to identify plants and animals. They were instructed to leave all technology at home. Instead of using emoticons to convey happiness, sadness, or anger, they reflected those emotions on their actual faces. Over the course of the week, they improved in their ability to make eye contact with kids and adults and communicated far more effectively.

A central feature of the experiment was the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Behavior, or DANVA2. It’s a test that gauges a person’s ability to identify non-verbal emotions. The kids took the test before and after the week of camp. When they took it the second time, the scores were significantly higher. Emotional intelligence is a skill that can be lost, but also reacquired.

Clearly, there is a problem. But what’s the solution? A wholesale rejection of technology is impossible. A recovering alcoholic can choose to avoid the street where he used to bar hop, but people addicted to the internet can never completely escape it. For better or worse, it’s become indispensable. You need an email address to apply for just about any job or a loan.

Devices and internet are mainstream in a way that substances will never be, but what we can do is restrict technology to a small portion of daily life while building healthy habits and strong behavioral architecture everywhere else.

If someone challenged you to avoid thinking about chocolate cake for the next 30 seconds, could you do it? Probably not. As Freud pointed out, trying to suppress a thought only reinforces it. It’s not enough to suppress a thought; we need an alternative thought to distract us. This is true of our thoughts and our behaviors.

Building good habits takes time. Although they are fragile as they are being developed, we don’t have to start from scratch. The truth is that you already have plenty of fully operational habits in your life. For those habits that are hampering you more than helping, you can co-opt them by understanding what the cue is that leads you to engage in a particular routine and then defining what the reward is that you’re anticipating. If you figure out the cue and the reward, you can replace a harmful routine with a healthy one that provides a comparable reward.

Behavioral architecture is another important piece in preventing or countering addiction. Behavioral architecture refers to the environment we create for ourselves, and the actions that environment predisposes us to take. The structures we create can help us stay free from addictive technologies or can make it far harder to resist their allure. Is your phone in the same room as you right now? Is it within reaching distance? Is your phone accessible from your bed? If you’ve never asked these questions, or considered how technology’s proximity and accessibility impact usage, then chances are good that you will answer these questions in the affirmative. Behavioral architecture recognizes that willpower is not a limitless resource, and that temptation is real. 

 An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Consider turning your phone off for extended periods of time, or leaving it in a room other than the one you’re in, or leaving it at home when you have to run errands.

Language is one of the biggest helps in preserving habit formation while it’s in the fragile developmental phase.

Consumer behavior researchers conducted an experiment involving women trying to set healthy habits like better diets and more frequent exercise. The researchers instructed women to use self-talk to overcome the temptations to abandon their workouts. The first group of women was instructed to respond to psychological roadblocks with “I can’t miss my workouts.” The second group of women was instructed to counter to mental blocks with “I don’t miss my workouts.” Researchers found that there was only a 10 percent success rate among women who used the word “can’t” in their self-talk. By contrast, 80 percent of women who used the word “don’t” successfully maintained their new habits. That’s a 70 percent difference!

This is truly remarkable. One small change in vocabulary made a world of difference. Consider the implications of the two words. To say, “I can’t” is a declaration of incapacity. It’s disempowering because the “sayer” is relinquishing autonomy. Choice is no longer in their hands. Saying “I don’t” affirms the capacity to make decisions. The latter is not a person who has been denied access to Instagram, but is the kind of person who does not use Instagram.

The early signs of technology addiction foreshadow a burgeoning crisis. Through building healthy habits, paying attention to behavioral architecture, and adjusting the way we talk about our lifestyle, we can reassume mastery of our devices and rediscover the joys beyond the screens.

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