Digital heroin: how screens turn children into psychotic addicts

Susan [all names are changed] bought her iPad, her six-year-old son, when he was in first grade. “I thought, why would he not learn such things?” She told me during a therapy session. At school, John uses digital devices in all of the lower and lower grades — and the teacher of modern technology admired the learning advantages of the devices — so Susan wanted to do what was best for her blonde son who loved to read and play baseball.

She began to allow John to play learning games on the iPad. At one point, he discovered Minecraft, which, according to a technology teacher, was "something like an electronic Lego." Remembering how great it was to play with plastic parts in her childhood, Susan let her son play Minecraft every day.


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At first she was pleased. John looked involved in creative games and explored the cubic world of the game. She noticed that the game was not similar to the Lego that she remembered - she did not have to kill animals and find rare minerals to survive and go to the next level. But John liked to play, and there was even a Minecraft club at their school, so what could be wrong?

But Susan could not help but notice a change in John’s behavior. He increasingly focused on the game, lost interest in baseball and reading, refused to do housework. Sometimes, waking up in the morning, he told me that he saw cubes in a dream.

Although it bothered her, she thought that her son had a wild imagination. As his behavior continued to deteriorate, she tried to take the game from John, but he reacted to this with fits of rage. His seizures were so serious that she gave up and persuaded herself that all this was happening "for educational purposes."

But one day she realized that something bad had happened.

“I went into his room to check in on him. He had to sleep - and I was terribly frightened ... ".

She found him sitting on a bed, with wide red eyes looking nowhere, and his iPad was lying next to him. He seemed to fall into a trance. Out of panic, Susan tried to shake the baby to get him out of this state. She was confused and could not understand how her once healthy and happy boy was so addicted to the game that she put herself in a catatonic stupor.

There is a reason that parents with technical education are among the most suspicious of technology. Steve Jobs was strongly opposed to his use of technology by children. The directors and engineers of Silicon Valley donate children to Waldorf’s non-technology schools. Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page studied at a non-technical Montessori school, like Amazon creator Jeff Bezos and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

Many parents feel that ubiquitous glowing screens have a negative effect on children. We see seizures in response to deprivation of access to devices, a loss of concentration at a time when children are not subjected to constant stimulation by the devices. What is worse, children fall into boredom, apathy, lose interest in everything, if they are not “connected”.

In fact, everything is even worse.

It is already known that iPads, smartphones and Xboxes are a form of digital drug. Recent studies of brain scans show that they affect the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex — the controlling dopamine system responsible for rewards, attention, and short-term memory — just like cocaine. Such technologies excite brain activity so much that the body increases the level of dopamine - the neurotransmitter responsible for reward, which participates in the formation of addiction - as much as during sex.

It is because of this addiction effect that Dr. Peter Weibrau, director of the Department of Neurology at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), calls screens "electronic cocaine," and Chinese researchers call them "digital heroin." Dr. Andrew Doan, the head of the Pentagon’s and US Navy’s drug dependence research department — who studied computer games addiction — calls games and gadgets “digital pharmacy” (pharmakeia, Greek Φαρμακεα - medicine or drug).



The brain of your child playing Minecraft looks just like a brain under drugs. It is not surprising that it is so difficult for us to tear the children off the screens and the children are so annoyed when their game with gadgets is interrupted. Hundreds of clinical studies show that gadgets increase depression, temper and aggression and can lead to psychotic consequences, in which the player loses touch with reality.

In my clinical work with more than a thousand adolescents over the past 15 years, I found that the old axiom of "a gram of protection costs a kilogram of treatment" is especially right if it depends on gadgets. When a child crosses the line of addiction, it can be very difficult to cure. I was faced with the fact that the treatment of heroin and methamphetamine addicts is easier than in the case of players lost in the matrix, or children dependent on social networks.

According to the 2013 report from the American Academy of Pediatrics, children aged 8 to 10 years old spend 8 hours a day with digital media, and teenagers take 11 hours a day in front of the screen. Every third child used smartphones or tablets before he started talking. The Internet Addiction Directory of Dr. Kimberly Young [Kimberly Young] claims that 18% of students using the Internet in the United States suffer from this dependence.

When a person crosses the line of addiction - be it drugs, digital technology or something else - he needs to undergo detoxification before he can be helped by any kind of treatment. In the case of technology, this means - no computers, smartphones, tablets. Extreme events include the elimination of televisions. Detoxification is prescribed for four to six weeks; usually this time is enough for an excited nervous system to come to its senses. But in our society, filled with technology and with ubiquitous screens, this task is very difficult. A person can live without drugs and alcohol; and in the case of tech dependence, digital temptations will be everywhere.

How to keep children from crossing this line? It is not simple.

The bottom line is to prevent 4-, 5-, or 8-year-olds from sitting on gadgets. Lego instead of Minecraft; books instead of iPad; nature and sport instead of tv. If necessary, ask the school to keep children away from tablets or a Chromebook until the age of 10 (someone recommends 12 years old).

Talk to your children honestly about why you limit time with gadgets. Dine with children without electronic devices at the table - just as Steve Jobs had low-tech dinners with his children. Do not succumb to the syndrome of a distracted parent - children repeat everything after their parents.

When I talk with my 9-year-old twin boys, I honestly explain why I don't want them to have tablets or play video games. I explain that some children are so addicted to playing with their devices that it is difficult for them to stop or control the time spent on them. I help them understand that if they get too carried away with screens and minecraft, as some of their friends, other parts of their lives may suffer. They will not want to play baseball, read books, be interested in science and nature, move away from their friends in the real world. Surprisingly, one cannot convince them for a long time, they themselves observe the changes that their friends undergo, who are too enthusiastic about gadgets.



Psychologists involved in the development of children understand that the healthy development of a child includes social interaction, creative games and interaction with the real world. Unfortunately, the creating effect of presence and the attractive world slows down and retards growth and development.

We also know that children are more likely to run away from reality if they feel lonely, alienated, they are bored and they have no purpose. Therefore, the solution will be to help children gain real life experiences and relationships with real people. A child engaged in creativity and close to his family is less likely to want to escape into the fictional digital world. But even if the child has the best support and love, he can fall into the "matrix", carried away by the attractive screens and experience their effect on themselves. Every tenth person has a predisposition to addictions.

As a result, my client Susan took away the tablet from John, but his recovery was a difficult struggle with a bunch of obstacles and problems.

Four years later, after supporting and strengthening, John became much better. He learned to use the computer in a healthier way and brought back a sense of balance in his life: he plays in the baseball team and he has several close friends at school. But his mother still remains vigilant and positively / proactively about his use of gadgets, because, as in the case of other addictions, relapse may sneak up at the moment of weakness. To make sure he is recovering, he doesn’t have a computer in the bedroom and dinner also goes without gadgets.

Dr. Nicholas Cardaras is the executive director of The Dunes East Hampton, one of the most prestigious rehabilitation centers, and a former clinical professor at the Stony Brook Medical Center. Recently his book was published: “Children of the world: how dependence on screens captures our children and how to break the trance”.