Carpe diem instead of losing your social mind: Beyond digital addiction and why we all suffer from digital overuse

Abstract

AbstractIt is not too late, but about time to realize how damaging IT overuse can be. The present paper discusses why it is of tremendous importance to study the effect of the Internet, smartphone, and other new digital technologies on individuals’ productivity and well-being. Besides its recognized addictive nature, it also becomes clear that such technology inevitably alters our natural social lives, which has, in our opinion, the potential to harm entire societies. In developed countries, we are more or less all using digital devices for communication purposes; we surf the Internet and we download apps on a daily basis. We present two lines of argument as to why the study of technological (over)use and its consequences is of tremendous importance. First, we outline under which circumstances use of smartphones and Internet can make us unproductive. Second, we anchor the (over)use of technologies in an affective neuroscience framework. Both these approaches to describing and understanding the consequence...