Digital addiction: focusing on the cure, not the disease.

Digital addiction has been on my radar for a while. I've been passionate about technology since my childhood, so it always breaks my heart to look around and realize how we are using our magnificent technologies. Is there a solution?

We can share awareness about it. People like Tristan Harris have done a remarkable job ringing the alarm with documentaries like "The Social Dilemma." And to some extent, it's worked. People are now generally more aware that the excessive use of digital media is detrimental. Yet, it doesn't seem like we're any less addicted. We're maybe just less ashamed of admitting it.

We can use technology itself. Using focus apps, and screen time limits. But in practice, the vast majority of people do not use them, or set them up only to bypass them everyday.

So what are we to do? What is the way forward?

I have come to understand that most behavioral problems are not addressed with awareness alone, but with the introduction of a new agent. Let's use a metaphor: to remove a stain, it's best to use a solvent. The behavioral problem is the stain, and the solvent is the agent introduced. A solvent is "a liquid in which a solute is dissolved to form a solution." Water is a solvent. That's why it's easier to remove a stain if you put water on it, than if you just scrap it with a dry sponge.

That's just another way of saying: focusing on the problem leads nowhere. We need to focus on the cure (the solvent). And to find the cure, we need to understand (not blame!) the REAL problem. We need to find the right solvent for the right stain.

Is the problem digital addiction? Or is it rather simply that people are lonely? That they feel disconnected from the universe and each other? That the screen feels like a warmer option than the cold and confronting silence of solitude?

The solvents we need in this case are the healthier methods of fulfilling these longings. Some of these include:

• going in nature to increase feelings of belonging to our environment,

• cultivating in-person relationships to increase feelings of belonging with others,

• meditative practices to increase feelings of belonging within one's self.

Some of these solvents are personal: they involve you doing your thing (going in nature, meditating). Others are cultural: they involve us culturally making our world a place where we all feel more belonging. But even those solvents that are cultural, still involve you personally because you weave the culture with all of us. You can always make the first step and organize social events at your place or for some outdoors adventure. You can always benefit your community by being a great friend, a vulnerable, genuine person available for uncomfortable intimate conversations.

These types of shifts I believe are ultimately the solvents we need to alleviate our problems of digital addiction. We need to make our lives so warm that digital devices feel dull in comparison. And we also need to know how to find warmth in the right place when we get cold, which inevitably happens and is an integral part of being human.

We can keep on playing the victim and blaming tech companies for designing addictive interfaces, or we can realize that these are blessings in disguise: they are highlighting the lack of social, personal and environmental intimacy in our lives. I choose to take that information, and see what I can do with it in my own life and with the people within it.

It is likely that in the coming decades digital addiction will be superseded by total digital immersion through brain implants, connected lenses or something as innocent as AI-powered earbuds. We can talk about the negative impacts all we want. But the only thing that I think will make a difference is focusing on the solvents, on the cures, on how great real connection to self, others and nature/cosmos is. It's a classic example of "don't be against something, be for something."

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