The Physical Side of Screen Addiction

“Many at Restart described it as a vicious cycle of depression and screen-enabled dopamine feedback loops.”

– Charlie Warzl in “Inside How A 12-Step Recovery Program For Social Media Addiction Works” Buzzfeed News

It’s amazing how much we late moderns love molecular narratives that incorporate neurotransmitters, and equally amazing how the devices in front of our noses remain invisible to us. Even in the film by Dr. Delaney Ruston, the devices and their physical effects are assumed to be secondary to teen angst. This is understandable; most of us have had tough teenage years and we use devices as vehicles for social misery and fret about the high school suicides while admiring the 4G-5G tower on top of the school. Clueless? Yes. Unprecedented? No. The mind is an amazing editor. Hence the problem of epidemic, invisible non-ionizing radiation poisoning.

When the first 400 Microsofties retired, many thirty years old and burned out for several years, they chalked up their wastedness to overwork. This seemed plausible. Those who had worked on CRTs and endured the anxiety of embracing ionizing radiation known to cause cancer, were unconcerned about the age of escalating non-ionizing radiation exposure.

During my time, doctors—always resistant to change—accepted the roles of employees, and then of technology accessories. The new applicants to med school became the generation of doctors who excelled in school and continued to look for approval from external authorities. The possibility that doctors would take economic risks to protect the public health became remote. Hence a thinker like me, neurotoxic and unemployed, becoming the Cassandra who tries to alert people to the hazards they have disregarded.

Fortunately, while in alcohol addiction the liver dies first, non-ionizing radiation triggers warning signs: mood disorders, pervasive fatigue and brain fog, insomnia, and eventually, with irreversible loss of tolerance, neurotoxicity and psychosis. If you are paying attention to these symptoms, and cut your screen time, you get a second chance. You also may get headaches, which reflect the fact that your poor addled nervous system takes a hit when you are exposed, and another when the exposure cuts out. Play it safe and take pervasive, vague nervous system signs and symptoms as a cue to put on hiking shoes, leave behind electrical and electronic devices, and take a walk in a healthy forest.