What is Technology Addiction?

I have written extensively about technology use and our growing addiction to it here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here. I have provided this page about it as well. The overwhelming truth regarding our addiction to it is that technology use is precisely what powers civilization and is also why civilization is unsustainable.

The actual description of technology addiction is misleading for what it leaves out of the description, quote: 

"Technology addiction involves excessive use of technology that leads to problems and distress. When a person is addicted to technology, these activities are done to avoid or alleviate feelings of anxiety or irritability, rather than for fun and recreation."

Excessive use of technology that leads to problems and distress...I'd say that the predicament of ecological overshoot more than qualifies. Of course, the definition exists for individuals and assumes that societal use of technology means that it is OK. But is it really?

Think about it - where do you get your water from? Do you go to a body of water and scoop it up yourself, filter it, treat it chemically or with UV radiation to rid it of pathogens, and then store it for future use? Even if you do all that, where did you get the items and materials to accomplish such a task? Where do you get your food from? How do you store that food? How do you cook that food? Where do you go to the bathroom? What happens to that waste? Do you compost it or is it taken to a waste sewage treatment plant? How do you treat the compost for it to be safe - do you filter out microplastics, PFAS, antibiotics, and other known toxicities?

How do you communicate with others? Do you speak in person to them most frequently or do you use phones, social media, video messages, text messages, or messenger services (Skype, Zoom, Facebook, Bluesky, X/Twitter, Teams, etc.)?

How do you transport yourself from point A to point B? Do you walk or use a car, bike, motorcycle, bus, taxi, etc.?

Do you use electricity, natural gas, gasoline, petroleum products, diesel, etc.? Unless you live with the Yanomami cultures, you most likely do, and probably all of those. So, being addicted to technology use means being addicted to energy and material use. 

The bottom line is that if you are reading this, you are addicted to technology use. You use it every day for basic needs, work, travel, entertainment, communication, and it pervades your very existence all day long. In today's world, living without technology use is difficult if not impossible. As unsustainable as it is, most everyone living within civilization would find life extremely difficult without technology. Just ask anyone you know if they would be willing to live without electricity. 

As a result of this difficulty, a life being a hunter/gatherer or living a nomadic existence would be unsurvivable for most everyone today simply due to a lack of safe water and food, let alone knowing how to do it. There's also no way for 8 billion people to do it, meaning that once technology no longer has sufficient energy to power it, billions WILL die. Yet, if humans survive into the future, this is the reality. As climate change continues to accelerate, many species that today support our existence will become extinct (this is what happens in a mass extinction). Did you know that carbon sinks are becoming sources, meaning that even with reduced anthropogenic emissions, overall atmospheric concentrations of GHGs (GreenHouse Gases) will continue to rise? Just like those other species, we will eventually succumb to that same reality due to a lack of habitat. 

We can expect severe consequences to begin taking their toll as a result of this addiction. These effects will be cumulative and as I pointed out (here and here and here and here) in my last four articles, there is no escape from this predicament. While many things will occur, there are many things that will not happen. Voluntary technology use reduction at scale in an effort to reduce overshoot is highly unlikely. So one can expect that it will be reduced involuntarily by one of the symptom predicaments of overshoot, energy and resource decline. One important aspect of energy and resource decline is the topic of surplus energy, the energy that is available to society to do work left over from the total amount of energy including the amount required for the extraction, refining, and transportation processes.

I could go into far more here regarding technology addiction, including many of the symptom predicaments we have caused by our behavior of using it. However, that is the purpose of the rest of my blog, so I'll close out this page for now.