Complaints & connections · borters.ch
It is not the time on screen that decides but what it displaces.
Also known as: gaming disorder · internet addiction · screen addiction · social-media overuse
Open in the tool — with search and all the links →This compilation is for information and replaces neither medical diagnosis nor treatment. If you have symptoms, see a doctor.
When games, social media or screens take up so much space that sleep, relationships, school or work suffer and stopping fails despite the wish to. Gaming disorder is listed as a diagnosis in its own right in ICD-11; for general “internet” or “social-media addiction” the boundaries are less clear. An important distinction: a lot of screen time alone is not addiction — what matters is loss of control and harm in daily life. Young people are often affected, but by no means only them. Recovery works best without blame.
Clear rules (e.g. no screen in the bedroom, fixed offline times) restore structure.
Activity, meeting people and hobbies fill the gap the screen leaves.
When daily life seriously suffers, addiction counselling or psychotherapy help — with young people, act early.
With children and teens, guidance works better than bans and reproaches.
There is no drug for it. What is treated is what often stands beside it: depression, anxiety, ADHD — and when the ADHD is treated, screen time falls by itself in some people, because the pull towards the immediate stimulus eases. What works in studies is behavioural therapy over eight to twelve weeks and rules that change the opportunity: fixed times, device out of the bedroom. Withdrawal brings restlessness and irritability in the first one to two weeks.
In the international classification only gaming disorder is so far listed as an entity of its own, and it requires a pattern over at least twelve months with loss of control and priority over other things. Usage time alone is not enough. Depending on the survey, about one to three in a hundred adolescents are affected. A screen in the last hour before sleep shifts the time of falling asleep measurably — that is the best documented single effect.
Longer and more often than planned, stopping fails despite resolve.
Sleep, friends, activity, school or work fall into the background.
Irritability, emptiness or restlessness when the device is unavailable.
A lack causes exhaustion, problems concentrating, low mood and forgetfulness — and it is one of the few causes that can be found and put right with a single blood draw.
Low values are common with low mood. Whether correcting it lifts the mood is not settled; that it makes sense in winter at our latitudes is.
An empty store causes tiredness, lack of drive and problems concentrating long before any anaemia becomes visible. In women of childbearing age the most common single reason.
A building block of the cell coverings in the brain. The studies on mood are inconsistent; as part of a good diet it belongs there anyway.
Needed for making the messengers in the brain. It runs short with alcohol and under certain medicines — and it is always judged together with B12.
The circle at issue here runs through sleep: bright screen light late in the evening shifts the inner clock backwards, falling asleep takes longer, in the morning sleep is missing — and in the evening the screen is again the easiest occupation. Melatonin in a small amount can shift that clock back; it does not replace putting the screen away an hour earlier.
In the studies on this the single most effective measure is as plain as it is unpopular: the device outside the bedroom at night. That beats every rule about screen time, because it protects the night instead of administering the day.
Clearly worthwhile and well supported when deficient — vegan, older adults, certain drugs. No energy boost without a deficiency.
Clearly worthwhile and well studied when deficient; fewer data for the wider uses. Fat-soluble — check blood levels at high doses.
Clearly effective with proven deficiency, useless without. Take only with a documented deficiency — excess is harmful.
Effects on inflammation and triglycerides established; cardiovascular prevention is mixed. Watch quality and freshness.
In pregnancy clearly established against neural-tube defects, otherwise mainly with deficiency. Can mask a B12 deficiency — watch both.
Screen light in the evening pushes the body clock back — measurably by up to an hour and a half. Sleep gets shorter, daytime tiredness grows, and screen time grows further. That is the circle where something can most readily be changed.
The unpredictable reward rhythm — sometimes something comes, sometimes not — holds fastest. It is the same as with a slot machine, and it is built into almost every app. That is not a question of character.
Eating while looking at a screen leads to eating more in studies and noticing fullness later. That is where the two topics meet.
The screen in the evening shifts sleep, and too little sleep lowers self-regulation the next day. This is the easiest place to break the circle.
Movement does not only replace screen time, it acts on the same reward pathways. In studies with adolescents screen time fell when a physical alternative was available.