Many of us feel that we spend too much time glued to our phones each day.
But for some people, chasing the rush of the next notification can be far more dangerous.
Smartphone addiction might not be as familiar as some addictions, but experts now warn that it could be just as destructive and far more widespread.
And, at the psychological level, scientists say that getting hooked on doom-scrolling is no different to a dependence on heroin.
This week, Parliament will debate the ‘Safer Phones Bill’ – a piece of legislation which could force social media companies to make less addictive content for under-16s.
As the government considers a crackdown on social media, experts have revealed the key symptoms that show you could be becoming addicted to your phone.
From deteriorating mental health to withdrawal symptoms including shaking hands and stomach cramps, these are the five signs you could already be hooked.
As Parliament prepares to debate a bill which could force social media companies to make their apps less addictive, experts reveal the five signs you might already be addicted to your smartphone (stock image)
1 – How long you are on your phone
Unfortunately, experts say that there isn’t any magic number of hours per day above which your habit counts as an addiction.
However, that doesn’t mean your daily screen time isn’t an important factor.
One of the key criteria for addiction is what researchers call ‘tolerance’.
Just like a cocaine or cannabis addict needs an ever greater dose to feel the same high, the same thing happens with smartphone addiction.
Professor Mark Griffiths, a leading expert on internet addiction from Nottingham Trent University, told MailOnline: ‘What you’d expect is a gradual increase in the time you spend engaging in the activity.’
For instance, you might start by spending just half an hour scrolling through Instagram at lunch but soon find that the app is taking up hours of your day.
Additionally, ramping up the amount of time you spend on your device increases the risk of the behaviour shifting from problematic use into a full-blown addiction.
One sign of addiction is that the time you spend on your phone ramps up over time. Psychologists call this symptom ‘tolerance’. Research has shown that many people cannot go an hour without looking at their phone
One 2023 study found a ‘significant association’ between smartphone addiction and spending more than four hours a day on devices.
Dr Daria Kuss, a chartered psychologist and expert on addictive behaviour from Nottingham Trent University, told MailOnline: ‘Increased use can lead to habituation which may increase the risk of developing problems as a consequence of smartphone use.’
Another key criterion for addiction associated with timing is referred to as ‘relapse’.
This describes how people suffering from addiction can quit for a period of time but will drop straight back into their addictive habits if they use again.
For smartphone addiction, that might mean you successfully delete TikTok for a month but soon end up spending hours a day on the app if you download it again.
2 – How it affects your life
The biggest sign you are genuinely addicted to your smartphone is how the time you spend online affects the rest of your life.
Professor Griffiths says: ‘It’s not about the amount of hours, it’s about the amount of hours which negatively impacts on other things you should be doing.’
He gives the example of someone who’s just left university and is unemployed.
‘You could spend eight hours a day on your smartphone but you’ve got no children, no partner, no job so your smartphone use is not necessarily negative,’ says Professor Griffiths.
At the other end of the spectrum, someone might only spend a few hours on their phone but have a far more negative relationship if that stops them from doing something important.
Psychologists break this down into two different factors: salience and conflict.
Salience means that your smartphone, or what you do on your phone, becomes the most important thing in your life.
Conflict, meanwhile, means that what you do on your phone starts to disrupt other areas of your life.
‘Your time spent on the smartphone is so all engaging that it compromises your personal relationships, your education or occupation,’ says Professor Griffiths.
A key sign of addiction is that phone use becomes the most important thing in your life and that the things you do on your phone start to have detrimental effects on other areas of your life such as work, school, or personal relationships (stock image)
3 – Why you use your phone
In addition, another key sign of addiction is why people use their phones in the first place.
Part of what separates addicts from problematic users is that addicts use their habits as a way of altering their mood.
That might be obvious for drugs or alcohol which are mood-altering by design, but Professor Griffiths argues that this is also true for smartphone use.
He says: ‘You use your phone as a way of modifying your mood.
‘Either to get buzzed-up, high, aroused, and excited or to do the exact opposite – to tranquilise, to numb, to de-stress, to relax.’
One of the most common complaints launched against social media companies is that their apps have been designed to exploit these states of arousal.
Instead of directly stimulating our brains through drugs, some researchers suggest that social media indirectly addicts us through the brain chemical dopamine.
Researchers have found that ‘liking’ a post on social media activates the regions of the brain associated with reward (pictured) which can lead to a ‘high’. However, deliberately using your phone as a way of changing or controlling your mood is a sign of addiction
Dopamine is the brain’s ‘pleasure chemical’ and is an important part of how we build positive associations with rewarding behaviour.
According to research by Stanford University psychologist Professor Anna Lembke, the constant risk-reward cycle of social media apps can release large amounts of dopamine in a short amount of time.
That rush triggers a ‘high’ which can either be relaxing or excitatory, leading to addictive behaviours.
That means if you find yourself reaching for your phone to cope with stress or to feel something in the face of numbness, it could be a sign of an addiction.
4 – How it affects your mind
Research has shown that smartphone addiction also has a significant impact on people’s mental health.
A study from scientists at King’s College London published this year looked at the relationship between problematic smartphone use (PSU) and mental health in adolescents.
The researchers found that 16-18-year-olds who self-reported PSU were twice as likely to experience anxiety and almost three times as likely to experience depression.
However, it isn’t necessarily clear whether this shows that smartphone addiction causes mental illness or that poor mental health is a risk factor for addiction.
Yet experts also point out that smartphone addiction can affect your mental health in a very direct way.
Just like any other addiction, when smartphone addicts go without their phones, they will experience withdrawal symptoms and this is a key part of the difference between PSU and addiction.
‘If you are unable to engage in activities on your smartphone you’ll feel more moody, more irritable, more frustrated’, says Dr Griffiths.
So, if you start to feel your mood change when you’re not on the phone it is a strong indication that you may be starting to become addicted.
5 – How it affects your body
A genuine case of smartphone addiction bears many similarities with addictions to drugs or alcohol and this even extends to the effects it has on your body.
While using a smartphone is obviously nowhere near as harmful as taking a dangerous drug like heroin, the addiction can still trigger physical withdrawal symptoms.
Professor Griffiths says: ‘Even on a physiological level, you will have things like nausea, hand sweats, stomach cramps – things that you’d find with more traditional addictions.’
And while this might seem strange, there is now a growing body of evidence that so-called ‘behavioural addictions’ like gambling can trigger these physical effects.
Additionally, if you are addicted to your smartphone you might find that it begins to negatively affect your body even when you’re not in withdrawal.
Professor Griffiths’s research has found that teenagers with problematic internet use are more likely to experience recurrent back and head pain.
Likewise, a number of studies have demonstrated the connection between smartphone addiction and deteriorating sleep quality.
Teens who use their phone too much have been found to experience sleep interruptions.
In one study, scientists found that 64 per cent of adolescents with PSU were more likely to report symptoms of insomnia.
Missing out on sleep can, in turn, lead to a number of health issues including an increased risk of hypertension, diabetes, obesity, depression, heart attack, and stroke.
This means that deteriorating physical health can be a key sign that you are becoming addicted to your phone.
What is smartphone addiction?
Currently, smartphone addiction isn’t officially recognised by psychologists as a separate mental condition like depression or bipolar disorder.
However, the term has now become far more accepted as scientists warn of a worrying rise in cases.
Recent studies have suggested more than a quarter of the global population suffers from smartphone addiction while rates could be as high as 70 per cent in countries such as China and Saudi Arabia.
Likewise, a survey from the Pew Research Center found that 95 per cent of UK teens said that they were online ‘almost constantly’.
However, several prominent researchers suggest that this could be stretching the term ‘addiction’ a little too far.
Professor Mark Griffiths, a leading expert on internet addiction from Nottingham Trent University, told MailOnline: ‘There’s a difference between problematic smartphone use and addictive smartphone use.’
Even if you spend hours on your phone each day and feel that you just can’t put your phone down, that doesn’t necessarily mean you are addicted.
Researchers say that smartphone addiction is becoming more common around the world. Scientists have found that China, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia had the highest rates of smartphone use, they found, while Germany and France had the lowest
Previous studies have shown that problematic smartphone use has generally increased across the world. However, many people may have problematic use but not be fully addicted
Addiction, unlike problematic use, changes our behaviour at the neurological level and embeds deeply compulsive and dependent behaviours.
‘Most children would not ever fulfil my criteria of being addicted to a smartphone,’ says Professor Griffiths.
‘Even though a lot of them will experience problematic use which will quite clearly have detrimental effects on their life.’
Professor Griffiths adds: ‘If I’m assessing smartphone addiction I’m using the word addiction in exactly the same way I would apply it to heroin, alcohol, or any other drugs.’
Likewise, Dr Daria Kuss, a chartered psychologist and expert on addictive behaviour from Nottingham Trent University, told MailOnline: ‘Smartphone addiction is a psychological condition in which a user develops symptoms traditionally associated with substance dependence.’
