Here’s an example of what I mean. I’m 100% certain that I have a screen/smartphone/tech addiction. My relationship with these things ticks ALL of the boxes in terms of how I cannot control my use of these things (to the point that I have to lock up my phone with a timed padlock at night so I cannot use it in the morning), my excessive use impacts my quality of life in a number of ways (including taking away time from doing legitimately important things, as much as I’m ashamed to say it), and I’m not myself when I’m “in withdrawal” from these technologies when I don’t have access to them for whatever reason. Sadly there isn’t much I can do, as not only do we need to use technology for many basic things in life, I also heavily rely on technology to do my work (and I don’t have the option of switching occupations right now). Let’s just say I deal with it in the medium term, knowing that whenever I have the opportunity to do so I am going to undergo a very intensive digital detox, and if funds and time permit I would jump at the opportunity to voluntarily go to tech rehab (yes, that’s a thing). Basically, I’m genuinely addicted and I know it.

Anyway. Any time I tell people “I have a smartphone/technology addiction”, people usually just laugh at me. Like “Oh, don’t we all”… in the sense that it isn’t exactly uncommon for people to use their phones more than they should. The same way that a large percentage of gamblers in a casino would surely just jokingly say “I’m a degenerate gambler haha”. But for those who are TRULY degenerate gamblers, I think that it’s more difficult to recognize when the terms “degenerate gambler” and “regular but controlled gambler” are effectively conflated under the “degenerate” label.

There will never be a perfect consensus about what terms to use and when/how. But as somebody who suffers from a form of addiction, I personally think twice about using these types of terms too loosely. Lots of us have habits that aren’t exactly under control… and that’s fine. But a smaller subset have habits they can’t control which affect their quality of life, and I think that’s a very different thing which hadn’t ought to be described using the same term in my opinion.