About our expert: Dr. Nicholas Kardaras is an Ivy League-educated psychologist who has treated more than 1,000 teens and young people for technology addiction over the past 15 years.
Most of us reach for our phones for different things we need throughout the day as part of modern life. Some of us reach for our phones or tablets the second we wake up and maybe even feel a flicker of panic when the battery dips into the red. Perhaps we scroll a little longer than we intended to do. For a long time, we dismissed all this as just part of a daily habit, and it seemed no more serious than watching too much TV. However, sees it differently.
As a psychologist who has spent 15 years treating technology addiction, Dr. Kardaras argued that what happens in the brain of a compulsive phone user looks strikingly similar to what happens in the brain of someone hooked on a substance. He also shared how the platforms in our pockets were engineered that way on purpose. Here is what he wants you to understand about the device you are probably reading this on.
Is phone addiction a real addiction, or are we using the word loosely?
Dr. Kardaras classifies technology addiction as a genuine addiction, one that belongs to the family of behavioral or “process” addictions alongside gambling, sex, and compulsive shopping. In his experience, those behavioral addictions can be harder to break than substance dependencies, not easier.
He explained that the clinical bar for calling something an addiction comes down to two questions: is the behavior or substance harming a person’s life, and does the person keep doing it anyway? That harm shows up across relationships, physical health, mental health, employment, and schooling. When a person keeps engaging despite the damage, the definition is met. By that standard, he considers screen addiction real.
There is neuroscience underneath his conviction. Behavioral and substance addictions activate the same reward circuitry, and imaging research has documented overlapping structural changes. A widely cited study covered by found that several small regions in the brains of online addicts had shrunk by as much as 10 to 20 percent, including parts of the prefrontal cortex tied to decision-making and impulse control. Later reviews of the neuroimaging literature, including one published in have reported reduced gray matter volume in the frontal regions of people with internet and gaming disorders.
How is phone addiction similar to addiction to alcohol or drugs?
Dr. Kardaras said that behavioral and substance addictions both act on the mesolimbic dopamine reward loop, the brain’s core motivation and pleasure pathway, and he described them as tickling the dopamine receptors in the same way. The structural echoes are what he finds most striking. In chronic substance users, the dense gray matter of the frontal cortex, the seat of executive function and impulse control, tends to shrink.
Dr. Kardaras noted that the same kind of shrinkage shows up in chronic screen users, which is why he calls the neurophysiological effects essentially identical. A review of imaging research published in the supports the broad point, linking internet addiction to structural changes in the frontal cortex and to dysfunction in the brain’s dopamine systems.
What actually happens in your brain when you compulsively check your phone?
Here is where the famous dopamine story gets more precise. Every rewarding ping activates that mesolimbic loop, and the brain wants to repeat anything that lights it up. Over time it takes more and more of the same behavior to get the same hit, which is the essence of tolerance, and Kardaras said that tolerance builds with screen time just as it does with substances.
The design detail that makes phones especially sticky is the reward schedule. Drawing on the language of behavior modification, Kardaras compared most screen time to a slot machine, an “intermittent reward schedule” in which you never know when the payoff is coming. You do not know which video will be the one that truly lights you up, he explained, so you keep pulling the lever, hoping to line up the three cherries. That uncertainty is precisely what drives compulsive scrolling.
Are apps deliberately designed to be addictive?
Designers have publicly admitted engineering social platforms to be habit-forming, using variable rewards to keep users coming back.
(sitthiphong / Shutterstock.com)
On the question of blame, Dr. Kardaras said app designers use the most sophisticated behavioral modification techniques and variable rewards to make their platforms addictive by design. He also pointed out that the designers themselves have admitted it. In documentaries like , former insiders from major tech companies have described engineering products to be habit-forming and have voiced regret about the consequences. In Kardaras’s framing, these are not accidentally addicting platforms.
What are the everyday signs your phone use has crossed into addiction?
Two signals stand out to him: dysregulation and compulsion. The dysregulation effect, as he described it, means that when you are away from your device you become emotionally reactive and anxious. A dying battery or a forgotten phone can trigger a wave of panic or distress. The compulsion shows up when you reach for the phone during dinner or mid-conversation, almost without deciding to use it.
He said the tipping point is when “your phone becomes less a tool and more of a crutch.” When the device stops serving you and starts steering you, the relationship has changed.
The “harmless” phone habits that are actually red flags
Some of the behaviors we have normalized are the ones Kardaras flags first, starting with hours of mindless, continuous doomscrolling. He also raised a newer concern about leaning on AI chatbots for thinking. He cited indicating that even brief use of AI platforms can measurably weaken problem-solving and critical thinking. In an MIT Media Lab study, participants who wrote essays with ChatGPT showed the lowest brain engagement of any group and struggled to recall what they had just written. You might think you are using a chatbot to help you decide, Kardaras cautioned, when you are actually letting your own decision-making muscle atrophy. A separate found a strong link between heavy reliance on AI tools and lower critical-thinking scores, an effect the researchers attributed to cognitive offloading.
His deepest worry, though, is for the youngest users. Kardaras believes that heavy screen exposure in infants and children stunts both cognitive development and creativity. Rather than building the neural pathways of imagination through make-believe, he explained, kids who get their visuals handed to them from a screen are outsourcing creativity itself. In his clinical experience, that part of the brain then never fully develops, which is why he described many of his tech-addicted clients as “profoundly unimaginative and uncurious.”
Phantom vibrations and morning phone grabs: what they reveal
Those small tics, the phantom buzz in your pocket, the reflexive reach the moment you wake, and the unease when your phone is out of sight all point to habituation, according to Dr. Kardaras. He noted that the anxiety of being without your phone even has a name: nomophobia. A of studies covering nearly 50,000 people found that roughly half showed moderate symptoms and about a fifth showed severe symptoms, so the phenomenon is far from rare.
Dr. Kardaras framed the device as “the new smoking.” People reach for it when they feel anxious, and they feel anxious when they do not have it, which locks in a self-perpetuating loop.
How screen addiction hits kids and teens differently
Because their brains are still developing, kids and teens are especially vulnerable, and parents are advised to watch for dependency, sleep problems, and emotional dysregulation.
(fizkes / Shutterstock.com)
Dr. Kardaras explained that children are simply more vulnerable because their brains are still developing while adult brains are comparatively hardwired. That developmental openness is a gift and a risk. For parents, he recommended watching for three things in particular: signs of dependency, sleep disorders, and emotional dysregulation.
What heavy screen use does to sleep, focus, and mental health
Evening blue light suppresses melatonin and disrupts circadian rhythms, one reason experts link heavy screen use to poor sleep.
(PeopleImages / Shutterstock.com)
Dr. Kardaras said that screens significantly impair sleep, attention, relationships, and mental health over the long term. The sleep damage is partly physical. Evening screen use floods the eyes with blue light, which reports suppresses melatonin and shifts circadian rhythms more powerfully than other wavelengths, which delays and degrades sleep.
The attention and mental health picture troubles him just as much. He connected the digital era to eroding focus and to what he sees as a broader youth mental health crisis, pointing to record levels of anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicidal thinking among young people. He is not alone in drawing that connection. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s found that the share of teen girls reporting persistent sadness or hopelessness climbed sharply over the past decade, a trend that psychologist has argued is substantially driven by social media. The research community remains divided on how much of the crisis screens explain, but the correlation has put the debate at the center of public health conversations.
Why screen time limits and app timers usually fail
If you have ever set an app timer and blown past it within a week, Dr. Kardaras has an analogy for you. He said that trying to fix screen addiction with timers is like trying to treat an alcoholic by locking up the liquor cabinet. In his words, “You don’t treat alcoholism by locking up the liquor cabinet,” and doing the digital equivalent means “looking at the problem through the wrong end of the telescope.”
The real lever, he argued, is a person’s underlying wellbeing. Someone who is anxious or depressed is far more susceptible to the pull of the screen, so the durable fix is a fuller life: time in nature, healthy relationships, real hobbies, the whole range of non-digital ways of being human. He said that, if you strengthen those, the phone loses much of its seductive power. Restriction alone, in his view, is “a bandaid at best.”
What actually works: the first steps to reclaim your attention
Experts recommend a weekly tech-free day spent outdoors, a simple reset that can help retrain the brain to find reward off-screen.
(wavebreakmedia / Shutterstock.com)
Dr. Kardaras’s opening prescription is bold: a digital detox, cold turkey. For anyone who finds that too daunting, he recommended a one-day-a-week digital fast. In that single unplugged day, a genuinely restorative reset can happen, one that “resets your brain chemistry” and “resets your central nervous system,” he said.
He gave these instructions: Walk on grass, smell the roses, talk to a friend, and find the things that get your dopamine flowing without a screen. The point is rediscovery, retraining your brain to find reward in the physical world.
The one thing to remember about your relationship with technology
If you take away nothing else, Dr. Kardaras wants you to stop underestimating two things: the impact this iteration of technology is having on you, and the sheer number of brilliant people in Silicon Valley who have spent their careers making these platforms addictive and monetizing your attention. He hopes that realization sparks a little anger, because in his experience, that anger is exactly the kind of fuel that helps people push back against “the warm embrace of their digital devices.”
Becca BlondThanks for reading. For more on health and wellness, I invite you to on Yahoo.
More about our expert: is a nationally recognized expert in addiction treatment and mental health, an Ivy League-educated psychologist, an internationally recognized speaker, and a leading authority on technology addiction in the United States. He is also the CEO of .A former Clinical Professor at Stony Brook Medicine, he has taught neuropsychology at the doctoral level and collaborated with Harvard Medical School’s Dr. Howard Shaffer to develop addiction treatment protocols. He is the author of two books on technology addiction, Glow Kids (2016) and Digital Madness (2022), and has worked with more than 1,000 teens and young people over the past 15 years.
Please note: This article is for general informational and educational purposes only and reflects the professional views and clinical experience of Dr. Nicholas Kardaras. It is not a substitute for personalized advice, diagnosis, or treatment from a qualified healthcare provider. If you or someone you love is struggling with technology use, mental health, or any related concern, please reach out to a licensed professional. Be kind to yourself as you build a healthier relationship with your devices, and know that support is out there.