What 'digital addiction' looks like in students—and how to fight it

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- With the 2024 fall semester underway, school districts across the country are testing out smartphone-free classrooms to combat digital addiction and keep students on task.

Digital addiction is exactly what it sounds like: a dependency on technology to stimulate the brain and raise dopamine levels. While some content -- especially on social media -- is designed to be addictive, functional neurologist Dr. Brandon Crawford said the addiction is not just fueled by the content consumed.

"Just the high frequency light coming off of the screen actually drives our addiction centers, so that alone can start to create problems," Crawford said.

Like addictions to alcohol or other substances, with repeated exposure, it becomes harder to get the same pleasurable response. Crawford said it is harder for the younger population to get away from digital addiction because their brains are not wired to produce dopamine without using technology as a stimulus.

"They're literally not learning how to be bored, how to be creative," Crawford said. "So when they get bored, they reach for a high-frequency stimulus, they reach for a phone, they reach for their video game."

With technology so ingrained in society, and increasingly more present in the classroom, Crawford proposes a simple rule for finding a balance: a one-to-one ratio of time looking at screens, to time spent outdoors.

"If you're on the screen for a minute, you need to be outside for a minute. If you're on the screen for an hour, you need to be outside for an hour," Crawford said. "That is the best solution that I've been able to find so far."

He also advises turning off those screens once the sun sets, because the human body is not designed to take in that much light after sunset.

However, he warns against combining too many dopamine-producing activities at once.

"I would love to go for a run after drinking caffeine while listening to my favorite music," Crawford said. "The more and more you stack these different types of stimuli, the greater the crash is going to be."