Much of what is self-diagnosed as phone "addiction" is really some form of post-partum/separation anxiety-avoidance. When you learn a behavior and reinforce it

Much of what is self-diagnosed as phone "addiction" is really some form of post-partum/separation anxiety-avoidance. When you learn a behavior and reinforce it long enough, any disruption to that has a nasty tendency to "break" people. Take solitary confinement, or soldiers-- trained to lose their sense of self during boot camp and adopt a career specialty, a team identity and a surrogate "family" over the course of years and then get everything taken away due to RIFs. it's not just PTSD that contributes to veteran suicides. With phones, we have entire generations who learn to swipe before they even know how to wipe. Kids and teenagers are on-call 24/7, ready to respond to meaningless notifications and updates anytime anybody on Earth does anything. Even in cases where they're being bullied to the point of suicide, they'll check in regularly for another dose of abuse until the bitter end. Go to a restaurant and count how many "couples" are on their respective phones instead of interacting with each other. Our behavior is being shaped in ways our primitive understanding of psychology has yet to adapt to. Nobody is in a hurry to put down their phones because they're so connected the rest of the time, the isolation that follows is its own form of withdrawal. Doesn't make it an addiction, but when compulsivity drives your behavior, you're not that far removed from it either.