This week we are getting real. I’m going to use a pretty hairy word and ask you a few questions to work out whether you are suffering from a phone addiction.

Ugh. Gross, right? No one wants to be an addict. It’s such a loaded word. But the truth is that the majority of the population is addicted to something. Here’s a definition that I love, and that I’ve found really helpful:

Addiction is the repeated involvement with a substance or activity, despite the substantial harm it now causes, because that involvement was (and may continue to be) pleasurable and/or valuable.

For most of us, when we think of addiction, we just think of the “usual suspects” — like alcohol or substance abuse. Our minds probably don’t jump to our phones…

But they are indeed a source of addiction — and a growing one, at that.

In a recent study, researchers drew similarities between gambling disorders and smartphone addiction. They took the eight official medical criteria for a gambling disorder, and compared them to smartphone use. I want to share those characteristics with you now, so you can judge your own potential ‘addiction’...

1. Needs to use a mobile phone for increasing amounts of time to achieve the desired excitement.

2. Is restless or irritable when attempting to cut down or stop smartphone usage.

3. Has made repeated unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back, or stop smartphone usage.

4. Is often preoccupied with smartphone use.

5. Often uses a smartphone when feeling distressed.

6. Lies to conceal the extent or involvement with smartphone use.

7. Has jeopardized or lost a significant relationship, job or educational or career opportunity because of mobile phone usage.

Relies on others to provide money to relieve desperate situations caused by mobile phone usage.

(Source: Addicted? Matt Noffs and Kieran Palmer, 2018)

Let me be clear, addictions are not cut and dry, and I am by no means a professional…

But when I saw this list, I thought to myself that I covered a good many of them. It led me to investigate the brain a bit more, so I could understand the role of pleasure and how certain hormones are released when we interact with our phones.

If you want to find out more about ‘Mobile Phone Overuse’ there’s lots of good research to check out in this Wikipedia post.

And hey, if the word ‘addiction’ carries too much stigma for you, how about the word ‘dependence’? A lot of professionals use the two words interchangeably. And I’d say for sure that I’ve developed a dependence on technology that goes beyond a healthy use of it for everyday life.

Thing is, when we have an addiction, we need to commit every single day to overcoming it. Our brains desperately want us to do the thing that feels good and easy. It’s about survival for the reptilian part of our brains.

So this week, I want you to start thinking about creating alternative habits. Watch the video below as I share why this is an important thing to do as we reach the halfway point of the course, and you might be finding that following through on the steps has been harder than you intended (and if it’s been easy peasy, POWER TO YOU!).