Digital Addicts or Digital Hostages? Youth in the Digital Social Trap

Abstract

Although the leading classifications of diseases do not recognize digital addictions as a distinct diagnostic category, the addiction framework dominates both public and scholarly discourse surrounding the impact of digital technologies on children and adolescents. In this article, we present the findings of a series of empirical studies conducted on a representative sample of children and adolescents (N = 6,163) and adults (N = 2,000), as well as focus group interviews with young people (N = 11), parents (N = 6), and teachers (N = 5). The aim of the research was to examine awareness of the risks associated with excessive use of these technologies among children and their parents, as well as their willingness to accept regulatory measures designed to mitigate such risks. The findings suggest that a more apt metaphor for describing the ongoing digitalisation of youth is that of the hostage, rooted in the concept of the social trap. Whereas the addiction metaphor frames excessive attachment to devices in terms of individual susceptibility and its attendant individual consequences, the hostage metaphor foregrounds the distinctly social context of the phenomenon under study. The former leads to individualised solutions, including medicalisation of the problem, while the latter reframes it as a social trap from which escape is possible only through coordinated collective action.