Imagine if a person wrote a serious article on computer hardware but kept calling the RAM the hard drive and talking about the problem of bit decay without power in hard drives. That's how these articles sound when they keep misusing the word addiction in inapropriate contexts to emphasize their point. It really makes one wonder what else they're getting wrong. At best it's like the people who are "so OCD" because they do some completely normal thing. When a medical term is used inappropriately the framing can lead to even more dangerous outcomes than the social issue being addressed because medicalization of behavior leads to use of force.
In general, many addictions are self-diagnosed. Some guidelines include:
* is the behavior unwanted?
* is it frequent?
* is it uncontrollable?
* is it progressive?
* do you choose it to the detriment of more important things?
If you can answer yes to enough of those questions about anything it can be counted as an addiction. I don’t think the author was out of line.
As a recovering addict, I would worry more about dismissing other peoples’ struggles just because they don’t fit your idea of a “real problem.”
Is substance addiction a different animal than behavioral addiction? In some ways, yes. But substance addiction is not the only kind of addiction there is. No, I think normalizing the use of the word removes some of its stigma.
It's interesting too - some of the GLP-1 drugs to treat obesity control people's food "addictions" but they also are demonstrating effectiveness on opioid and alcohol addictions as well as gambling addictions. It turns out there are a lot of common reward pathways for substance abuse and behavioral compulsions.
The best definition I have heard for addiction is: the pursuit of an activity or substance in spite of increasing negative consequences. Under that definition, social media addiction qualifies.
