Hug the inner junkie - Column by Margarete Stokowski

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Leisure activities have shifted to the digital

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Do you take drugs?

Perhaps more than you think, because you are currently reading an online medium and “media are the drug of the future”.

So it was a few weeks ago on Tagesschau.de.

It was about the drug affinity study of the Federal Center for Health Education.

The first part of this study deals with the subjects of »Smoking, Alcohol Consumption and the Use of Illegal Drugs«, the second part with the subjects of »Computer Games and the Internet« for young people between the ages of 12 and 25. A third part deals with the subject of »Serial novels« or »Fantasy literature«. does not exist, because reading is healthy.

Cell phone addiction, on the other hand, is dangerous, and Corona is making things even worse, because since the pandemic everyone has just hung in front of screens and experts have warned.

Margarete Stokowski, arrow to the right

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Rosanna Graf

Born in 1986, was born in Poland and grew up in Berlin.

She studied philosophy and social sciences and has been working as a freelance writer since 2009.

Her feminist bestseller "Bottom Rum Free" was published in 2016 by Rowohlt Verlag.

In 2018, »The Last Days of Patriarchy« followed, a collection of columns from SPIEGEL and »taz«.

Experts are very happy to warn on the subject, sometimes rightly, sometimes a bit oracularly.

A professor warns, wrote the “General-Anzeiger” recently: “Children's screen time increases sharply because of distance learning”.

Yes, that's ... logical, if you take it seriously.

Even before Corona there were more than enough instructions on "digital fasting" and warnings about smartphone / computer addicts, and the longer the lockdown length, the fewer warnings.

A few days ago there was an interview on Deutschlandfunk with addiction researcher Rainer Thomasius about media use among children and adolescents.

If you heard the interview while hanging up the laundry because you are addicted to radio, and "you" means "I" in this case, then you could pick up all sorts of nasty keywords: "digital addiction" ... "rate of increase of 75 percent" ... "That is enormous" ... "Loss of control" ... "Concentration problems" ... "Loss of drive and listlessness" ... "Increased anxiety" ... "Very different forms of therapy" ... "up to day clinic or even inpatient treatment of those affected «.

If you read the wording of the interview again later, you could see that actually everything is not so wild: According to the WHO criteria for addictive behavior, an addiction is only present if the respective behavior has lasted for over a year and is now It's been a pandemic for almost a year, and you simply don't know yet whether the increased screen time with the little ones will stay that way beyond Corona or not.

"Candy Crush" isn't crystal meth

On the one hand, of course, there are phenomena about which one can legitimately be concerned: If the poor technical equipment of the education system leads to children squatting in front of constantly crashing servers, if they get too little exercise or too many problems with their eyes, then it is that obviously bad.

On the other hand, however, the issue of "cell phone and computer addiction in the pandemic" is being dealt with somewhat one-sidedly: How much screen time is okay?

Do I have to feel guilty if I park my child in front of "Peppa Pig" for an hour in the home office?

To put it another way: what would this pandemic be without smartphones and computers?

We'd all be doomed to endless puzzles, and always the same puzzles, because we couldn't just order a few new ones on the Internet and how healthy would that be?

"Addiction" is a big word, but it makes a difference whether you are addicted to candy crush or crystal meth.

Is it healthier for a child to read all 42 books in the Warrior Cats series than to chat with their friends?

When there is so much talk of smartphone addiction and skyrocketing screen times, it can make sense to point out the subtle differences between cell phones and heroin.

Not everything that is traded as a drug or addiction is a direct cause for panic.

Both children and young people and adults use smartphones, tablets and computers for very different things: reading, playing, looking up a word, shopping, watching films, listening to music, exchanging ideas with others.

Most of it is very harmless and is currently shifted to the digital due to the pandemic.

more on the subject

• Young people and social media: Corona is addictingA column by Christian Stöcker

• Icon: Spiegel Plus Economist on capitalism, addiction and the pandemic: "Loneliness is as harmful as 15 cigarettes a day" An interview by Konstantin von Hammerstein and Christiane Hoffmann

• Corona everyday life: How much screen time is okay for children now? A podcast by Sebastian Spallek

It makes a difference whether someone on the screen feeds their Pokémon pink berries or ambushes other players with a machine gun.

There are studies that suggest certain games like Animal Crossing and Plants vs. Zombies have a positive effect on mood.

Grateful for smartphones

When books were the new thing, there were warnings against addiction to reading, especially among women, by the way.

Women who read novels were quickly seen as reading mad, disinhibited and lazy alike, removed from the real world.

It is always the medium that was invented last plus the population group considered particularly unstable for which warnings are issued: In the past women, today children and young people;

before books, then television, then video games, then internet.

(Interestingly, this only applies to visual media: radio, music and podcast addiction is rarely mentioned, perhaps because you can still do puzzles at the same time.)

Funnily enough, "mindfulness" is often recommended as a technique to get away from the constant use of the cell phone, and a central aspect of many mindfulness exercises is the topic of gratitude.

You should then either collect in your head or on paper what you are grateful for in life in order to concentrate on the good and beautiful things.

How about simply being grateful that we have smartphones and computers in this pandemic so that we can keep in touch with the outside world?

And when you notice that the device shows screen time of nine hours a day at the end of the week: Just hug your inner junkie instead of scolding him.

There was a time before and there will be a time after.

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