>‘We’re not saying the people who say they feel addicted are addicted,’ said Georgia Turner, a graduate student leading the analysis
Is it common to question the validity of self-identified addictions to other substances or behaviors? Is it common for people who aren't gambling addicts to say things like "I feel like I'm addicted to gambling"?
I suppose that the lead on the study doesn't want to overstate their findings, and there's obviously a social stigma that exists around admitting to gambling addiction that doesn't seem to exist for social media addiction, but still; it strikes me as unusual to be so openly questioning people about whether or not their perceived addictions are real.
It is both fairly common to say you're addicted to something as a way of saying you're really into something as well as to indicate actual addiction, and you can't expect people asked a question like that without detailed additional guidance to be able to give a clinical assessment of whether they are in fact suffering from an addiction.
Unless you probe what the respondents mean by addiction, or provide them a clear definition before asking, there's very little reason to assume they will be using a definition of addiction that justifies assuming anything approaching a clinical definition, or even anything negative.
My opinion goes in other direction: I think even with that caveat, what she went on to say suggests she's making assumptions about what people meant - especially given the age of the respondents - that I don't there's basis for unless the survey provided a lot more context than just the question given in the article.
Seems reasonable to separate self-identification from a diagnosis. Flip the logic: if someone says they aren't addicted to something, does that make it true?
Well, yes if the suggestion is some sort of intervention. There are large groups of people that will say they are addicted to coffee, TV, video games, etc. Not a lot of them will meet the medical definition of addiction.
Probably the most obvious example of this is everyone who says "I have OCD!". No, you don't really have OCD.
Social media addiction is a meme (in the technical, mind virus sense), gambling addiction isn't.
I don't know if this is what the study authors were thinking, but I see it as a bit like not taking people's word for it that they're gluten intolerant. It is a real thing and people do know that they have it, but also it's a trendy thing and there are a lot of people trying to convince you that you have it when actually you're perfectly normal.
I don't think there'd be a problem taking their word for it if the questions asked were the right ones.
Asking people if they feel like they're addicted to social media without framing exactly what you mean by addicted (and for that matter what you include in social media) might both overcount and undercount.
Have everyone who answered answered on the basis that they see this "addiction" as a problem, or a negative, and something they genuinely find hard to stop (as opposed to not really wanting to do anything about)? On the opposite end, are the ones who disagree counting forums like Reddit, or HN? Discord servers? Are they talking mostly about one one-on-one contact with friends on, say, Snapchat, that they're "addicted to" because it's social contact they enjoy, or depression-boosting, compulsive voyeueristic doom scrolling that they're addicted to in a downright harmful way?
It's a start, and little more, to ask that first question that pretty much only tells us that there is something of sufficient magnitude to probe further. To start with, the respondents appear to not have said whether or not their "addiction" is something that causes negative effects on their life or not.