My name is David, and I’m a screen addict. “Sure, aren’t we all?” you might ask. Being glued to our phones has become a fact of life for modern American culture. But when I say I’m addicted, I’m not using hyperbole. I’ve recently had to confront the fact that my screen use had all the features of clinical addiction: my use was compulsive, I experienced cravings, I could not control my use with willpower, and my quality of life was suffering in numerous ways.

While overuse of screens is a problem for just about everyone these days, I am particularly susceptible to this problem, because I have ADHD. The ADHD brain is under-stimulated by nature, and craves stimulation in any form. Just like certain genetics can predispose someone to alcohol addiction or binge-eating, ADHD predisposes one to just about any addiction, in the brain’s relentless quest to fill up its chronically depleted dopamine tank.

Sometimes it feels to me like having ADHD is like being a drug addict, and my drug is anything that’s stimulating. Screens aren’t just stimulating; they’re hyper-stimulating, flooding our brains with flashing bright lights far beyond anything we’ve evolved to be acclimated to. The light from modern screens is akin to the unnatural hyper-stimulating sweetness of refined sugar, including the addictive potential.

There are many times I’ve snapped out of a YouTube binge session, looked away from the screen, and felt like I was pulling an IV needle out of my arm. I don’t know if it’s just my hyper-sensitive ADHD brain, but I’m convinced that the screens themselves, independent of the content, are somehow hypnotic to the brain. I feel drawn to them like a moth to a flame. When discussing addiction, we often talk about being “in the grip” of something, and that’s exactly what it feels like: there is a loss of autonomy, and a feeling of an external force digging its claws in. When I look into a screen, I have this feeling of being stunned, like something has reached out and grabbed my eyeballs, keeping them glued to the screen, pulling me in deeper and deeper. (Test this for yourself: if you’re reading this right now, you’re looking at a screen. Take a moment and look away at a blank wall. Notice how your eyes feel, and how your mind feels.)

Aside from screens themselves, the internet adds even more addictive potential. For better and for worse, I am endlessly curious about almost everything, and have an innate love of learning. When I was a kid, before my family even owned a computer, I would browse encyclopedias for fun. I would get lost in bookstores or libraries for hours. I would get distracted while trying to clean my room because when I’d pick up books from the floor, I would get sucked into reading them. While my curiosity has served me well in life, the combination with my need for stimulation has made the internet a perfect storm. While I may get distracted by books in my room, books eventually end, and I only have so many around me at any given time. The internet, in contrast, never ends. There is absolutely no bottom to that well, and I also never hit any sort of internal “bottom” where I’m no longer curious to see what else is out there. 

Not only does the internet provide literally endless information on anything I’m curious about, it also tantalizes me by waving this in my face. I finish one article on Wikipedia, and I’ve already opened ten other tabs because of those seductive blue hyperlinks. I click on one YouTube video, and before I’ve even finished it, I’ve opened multiple other tabs from the “suggested videos” list. (And if I do manage to finish an entire video before my attention flits over to another, a barrage of “watch next” suggestions pops up on my screen the moment the video is finished.) Once I get to the bottom of a Reddit post, there are suggestions for 20 more interesting-looking related posts. Given my gluttonous, insatiable appetite for information, if an evil genius had designed the perfect drug for me, it would look just like a smartphone.

So, I repeat: my name is David, and I am a screen addict. What led me to this point, to this moment of reckoning with the severity of my problem? There wasn’t one particular “rock bottom” moment, but rather an accumulation of realizations. While I was working on myself more and more, trying to improve my various ADHD symptoms and behaviors, I noticed that the damn screens were knocking me off track at every turn.

I would try to habituate myself to a consistent (and earlier) bedtime, but I’d stay up too late, scrolling through “really interesting” stuff on Reddit before bed. Then I would wake up too late, with a screen hangover. I’d try to establish a good morning routine, but I would get distracted by getting into text conversations during breakfast or scrolling social media. I’d make myself a perfect daily schedule, but fail to do what I was supposed to be doing, because the temptation to get on my phone would be too overpowering. I would try to work on a writing project, but the internet browser was always just one click away. I would follow through on my plan to go to the gym, but spend twice as much time as I meant to, because my curiosity would get triggered by the podcast I’d be listening to, and I’d google something “really quick” between sets… and so on.

I eventually got to a point where I had actually become very good at implementing basically every ADHD self-management strategy I had developed — in theory, at least. I was exercising every day; I was meditating in the mornings; I was making a daily schedule and structuring my time; I was planning my weeks, months, and even years; I was trying to go to bed at a reasonable hour. But I would get to the end of my day and have to face failure yet again, realizing that my execution of my daily plans had fallen way short of my intentions. Behind the failures was a single saboteur: the screen.

After recognizing the depth of my problem, I tried to make myself use my phone less, but this just led to a constant power struggle, and the inevitable wave of demoralizing shame when I would lose the fight. I felt like an alcoholic trying to cut back on drinking while having a flask in my pocket all day. Indeed, screen addiction is probably more like alcohol addiction than addiction to any other drug, because screens are so embedded in our society and our daily lives, just like how alcohol is so prevalent in social life, often served at meals, or even an expected part of doing business in some professions.

Trying to control my screen use through willpower alone made it even clearer to me how deep this addiction goes. Every time I would have to use my phone or computer for something — email, texting, writing, work projects, etc. — the temptation would be too strong to resist. In this sense, maybe a better analogy would be trying to cut back on binge eating. It’s not like a food addict can just stop eating. Someone trying to beat food addiction is forced to have a little taste of their addiction multiple times a day. Similarly, in this modern world, screen use is more or less necessary for so many facets of professional and personal life. 

Feeling overpowered and out of control, I became determined to free myself from my addiction and to reclaim my autonomy. My first instinct was to take the nuclear option and just ditch my smartphone. (I’m still tempted, sometimes.) But, short of taking this step, I have tackled my addiction through a two-pronged approach: strategy and habit. After all, an addiction is a habit of sorts, built up over time by habitually repeating and reinforcing certain actions. So, I decided to battle my addiction by habitually repeating different actions, not with the expectation of immediate change, but gradual transformation. While I’m still very much a work in progress, I feel that I’m now at least well on my way to escaping my bonds.

To read about the strategies I’ve used to combat my screen addiction, please continue to part 2 of this series.