Communication Technologies & Compulsive Behaviour: A Personal Analysis
Aug 31, 2026
When I first received a cellphone at the age of 14, in the year 2009, the only reason to have it nearby was if you thought someone was going to text you, and the only reason to flip it open when it hadn’t been nearby for some time was to see if someone had texted you. Since I was a teenager, most of the texts I sent and received were of little importance, although occasionally — if they were from a girl I liked, for example — they were of great personal significance.
At the time, texting was new, and it was incredibly distracting. High schoolers were texting each other all the time, huddled up in a corner of the room, ignoring their family, the movie they were watching, and the world around them, in order to send each other texts. While it seems quaint looking back, its hard to argue that texting was neither compulsive nor addictive. What differentiates it from social media is that it was, of course, communicative. You only texted when you had someone to text who would text you back. You couldn’t go read the texts of strangers, or receive text updates telling you to go to Youtube and watch a video.
Of course, at this time, the internet also existed. The internet was one thing, and texting on your phone was another thing. These are difficult times to talk about, because while they resemble our current time, things were also vastly different. Youtube, Instagram, and Facebook existed, and if you were to look at them, it might be difficult to distinguish how exactly they differed from the Youtube, Instagram, and Facebook of today. However, the experience of using these platforms was quite different. No one was making any money, including the platforms themselves; Facebook and Youtube had tiny ads in the sidebar, and Instagram had no ads at all. The ‘For You’ algorithmic feed did not yet exist either. This means that most of what you saw on these platforms were from friends, or entertainers you had specifically chosen. Thus, there was no ‘infinite scrolling.’
I am not pointing out these differences in order to say that things were way better back then. Just because Facebook status updates (“statuses”) were composed by your friends doesn’t mean they weren’t toxic, uninformed, and stupid. And just because the compulsion loops hadn’t been quite as finely tuned as they are today, that doesn’t mean that our relationship with these platforms was not compulsive. When you opened Facebook and saw that red notification number, it made you feel something. The larger the number was, the more you felt. So, you wanted to accumulate friends, post statuses and photographs they would like & reply to, and reply to other people’s statuses and photographs in ways they would also like and reply to. The same went for Instagram. We were still, back then, addicted to the internet.
The reason I note all this is to note that the compulsive behaviour came first, and then the exploitation of this compulsion. It took mobile/Facebook games quite some time to discover the combination of real-money transactions, “gacha” gambling mechanics, and emotional manipulation that makes them what they are today (and some time after that before these systems found their way into console and PC games.) It really wasn’t until TikTok that the “social” aspect of social media essentially disappeared into some hyper-combination of TV, magazines, and the ever-fleeting remnants of “old” social media.
Before Facebook (let’s say, pre-2006), most of my internet usage was spent on message boards. (This is also true about me after Facebook, but in this I am an extreme outlier.) On message boards, if someone replied to you, you didn’t receive a notification in the corner of the screen. In order to see if someone replied to your post, you had to open the thread, click through to the page where your post was, and then read all the discussion that came after. The difference I am highlighting here is the difference between something being sent to you, and you going in search of something.
Notifications, as far as I experienced them, started with Facebook. It became clear very quickly how much they altered my relationship to the internet. That being said, we must ask ourselves whether I was not already addicted to the internet in some way. I spent a great deal of my childhood on the computer reading posts on message boards, scrolling through the archives of webcomics, watching game reviews on Gamespot, & etc. The internet was not “compulsive” back then in the way that it is now, but it’s hard to argue that my relationship to it was not governed by compulsions. I rarely visited any of these sites with a desire for any particular type of information — I just wanted to see something. It’s the same reason I turned on the TV during the day and watched Judge Judy. It didn’t matter what was going on as long as something was going on.
We didn’t have Roblox when I was a kid, but we had Runescape, addictinggames.com (at some point one of my older brothers or maybe even my dad (or perhaps possibly a teacher) noted that it really should have been called “addictive games dot com,” grammatically speaking, and I can’t help but mention this), miniclip.com and newgrounds.com. We didn’t have Youtube Shorts but we still had videos on Youtube. (Regarding Youtube, while the amount of videos on the platform is much higher now than it was then, even back then ir was far more than any reasonable person could ever watch, and therefore essentially infinite.) We were still addicted to the internet. At least, those of us who were on the internet.
I don’t even own a pair of rose-coloured glasses, let alone wear them. At the same time, I also don’t subscribe to the theory that the internet was always evil and predatory. Getting into arguments with strangers is compulsive and probably bad for your well-being, but so is getting into arguments with people you know. Conspiracy theories existed before the internet, bad TV documentaries existed before bad Youtube documentaries, and political misinformation was spread through word-of-mouth in almost the exact same way as today (perhaps even more effectively!) The speed has certainly changed, but only in direct relation to the general pace of our lives. Before train time-tables, you didn’t need to know what minute it was, and so people didn’t live in minutes. Information used to travel at the speed of horses, and then at the speed of horses + telegraph wires (because, of course, you didn’t have a telegraph machine inside of your own home) + the time it took to produce a newspaper, and then… well, you get the idea. Characters in old novels used to sit around waiting for a letter from their lover — this leads me to believe that, at times, people in real life did the same thing — and is that categorically different from sitting by your phone waiting for a text, the reply to an e-mail, or even a notification? People used to get home from work, turn on the TV, and just sit there until they fell asleep. Is this categorically different from doing the same thing but with your smartphone? Experientally, I mean? Are not our diverse, historically contingent ways of life not just as anxiety-inducing and/or boring as each other?
I’ve read a lot of old books, biographies, & etc, and I can say that people were capable of being just as stressed and anxious, just as concerned with fame, status, wealth, etc in early modern times as they are today. The further we go back, the harder it is to see — and of course, we must note that these old books and biographies are concerned with a class of people that are more analogous to the modern-day middle-class individual than the peasantry and ultra-poor of the day.
When people compare historical periods with the present they make a couple common mistakes: the first is to focus on whether our present day is worse or better — usually in the form of hearkening back to a non-existent or misunderstood past. The second mistake, which I am far closer to committing in this very essay, is flattening history and pretending that things have always been essentially the same. The reason these mistakes are made — I say, by way of both excuse and explanation — is that our information about historical experience is limited to second-hand accounts and befuddled memories, thus making it difficult to pinpoint exactly what was the same and what was different. In this essay, I have appealed to my personal experiences of almost two decades ago, but as I’ve been writing, I have occasionally gone back and forth as to what the nature of these experiences really was — are they analogous to my current experiences or not? Were they fundamentally different at the time, or do they just feel fundamentally different now due to the fact that they are distant memories, rather than current experiences?
At this point, I should return to the reason I started writing this essay in the first place (note that I am “returning” to a place where you never were, since I started this essay midway through a thought.) The reason I think about any of these things is that I, like many, am trying to determine the best way to live my life. It seems clear to me that avoiding compulsive behaviour, and trying to live with a certain amount of intention, is generally a good thing. Also, avoiding exposure to opinions and ideas that have little relevance to my daily life, to such a degree that they flood out my ability to think independently, is also a good thing. Both of these “things to avoid” naturally lead me to think about the internet. But when I think about the internet, I wonder about historical analogues to various parts of the internet — 18th century coffee houses, the 19th century telegraph, 20th century magazines & TV, 21st century texting, etc. Aside from communication technologies, the internet contains analogies to entertainment technologies, an overlapping but unique form in itself — novels, movies, etc.
By thinking about all these historical technologies and conventions, we can determine what desires, motivations, and compulsions lead us to use the internet, and how these desires and motivations (ideally stripped of their compulsive tendencies) can be directed elsewhere. Without an understanding of this, any attempts to divorce one’s self from the behaviours we associate with excessive internet and phone usage seem likely to fail. That being said, it’s also possible that these desires and motivations are themselves suspect; you can certainly find plenty of religious or intellectual arguments against them by individuals dating back centuries or even millennia.
I’ve noticed a plethora of Youtube videos recently trying to provide advice on how to quit the internet, stop using screens, or avoid the negative effects of social media. There are enough of these that they have become something of their own cottage industry. It is no use to point out the irony of this phenomenon — and in fact, it is entirely beside the point. I am willing to generously suppose that the people creating these videos actually do have a desire to help people control their compulsions, even if the platform on which they are posting these videos obviously does not. What is clear from these videos is that this problem is certainly front and centre in many people’s minds, and yet when we look around, it’s hard to see much in the way of results. (Perhaps this is because I am looking around online… although it’s also true that whenever I go outside, the majority of people I see are staring at their phone during any amount of downtime.)
It’s possible that, like most communication technologies throughout history, the only way to fundamentally avoid them and the problems they create is to be, to some extent, reclusive and/or weird. The amount of Henry David Thoreaus or Kama no Chomeis that have existed, compared to the amount of everybody else that has existed, is incredibly low. In the late twentieth century, not owning a TV was really weird. In my high school, I remember two students whose family did not own a television, and they were brother and sister. That’s across a student population of close to 1500. And so it’s difficult to expect the vast majority of the population to break the mold and live life entirely differently — even if many of us would like to. There are always far more people dreaming of doing something than people who will actually do it.
To a certain extent, you probably have to be pre-disposed to it in some way. For example, I feel like my love for old books already divorces me from present-day reality enough to limit my internet/phone usage, making the step toward eradicating it (almost) completely feel less significant. That being said, my desire to get rid of the internet comes from wanting to finally be alone, whereas others might do it in order to facilitate deeper connections with the people around them. There’s not one particular way or reason to limit or eradicate our compulsive behaviours related to the internet and even screens in general (such as compulsive video games or streaming apps.) And there are probably many ways to use all these things, and yet have such a fulfilling life outside of them that it doesn’t particularly matter.
Another factor to consider is the existence of compulsive behaviours prior to the deliberate exploitation of them. Technology creates new forms of compulsion, and perhaps exacerbates existing compulsions, but we can not pretend that compulsive behaviour is new, or we end up in a state of irredeemable hearkening with no ability to actually reach the heart of the issue. This being the case, it’s possible and even likely that old ways of avoiding compulsive behaviour probably still work, and also that our means of reducing our bondage to phones and computers might not have to directly deal with phones and computers themselves, but with the aspects of our minds and life that lead us to use them. As an obvious example, asking ourselves why, whenever we have to kill five minutes, we choose to scroll on our phone, rather than just sit and look at the things around us — that is to say, why boredom is so utterly terrifying that we often refuse to even acknowledge its existence. I don’t look at my computer or my phone because they have something particularly engaging to show me, and it’s certainly not because of a lack of alternatives that I actually like more (such as old books.) It’s primarily out of a sense of avoidance, and perhaps its worthwhile to look at what, in fact, I am trying so hard to avoid.
In my case, the most likely reason I will reach for my phone is when I’m waiting for something to happen. I am feeling anxious about what’s going to happen — or rather, about not knowing exactly what’s going to happen — and I want to make that emotion go away. I reach for my phone as a distraction despite knowing from years of experience that it does not actually help at all. The phone doesn’t distract me, because I am unable to focus on what I am looking at, so now I am just an anxious person who is somewhat half-heartedly looking at a phone. The alternative to this, which I apparently fear so much, is being an anxious person not half-heartedly looking at a phone, which by all considerations is not particularly different.
The phone does not help deal with the emotion, and in fact prevents me from discovering alternative methods to deal with the emotion. But the question then becomes: why can’t I allow myself to simply feel this emotion? Is this not what emotions are for? I am clearly feeling this emotion for some sort of reason — no matter how irrational it is — and reaching for a medicine that doesn’t even work hardly seems to be an appropriate response.
Another instance in which I am likely to reach for my phone or browse the internet on my computer is when there is something else I am supposed to be doing, or even want to be doing. If I have nothing at all to do, I am more likely to find a more enjoyable use of my time, but I use these time-wasters in order to actively avoid doing something else. In this case, I could just as easily be wasting my time in some other way, such as playing Solitaire, or drinking beers, or even walking outside. The compulsive behaviour does not originate from the phone or computer itself but from some sort of deliberate shirking of responsibility, the origin of which I’m not sure I can quite place. If I had no computer or phone, would these things get done in a more timely fashion? If I’m not consciously aware of the behaviour, I am just likely to latch on to some other procastinatory compulsion, such as playing shoot-em-up games or working on one of my many inane spreadsheets.
Avoiding screens will not in itself make your life hunky-dory. When you throw away your coping mechanism for ignoring negative emotions, you are left with the negative emotions themselves. You are left with the aspects of human life that led you to develop compulsive habits in the first place. These are the same aspects that prompted both 19th century ladies and 21st century office workers to play Solitaire. Playing Solitaire is less psychologically damaging than most things one does with a smartphone, but we have to wonder whether its truly allowing you to live that life you’ve always imagined, or if it’s just putting it off in a different way. I suppose the answer depends on whether we think living the life you’ve always imagined is even possible.
I am not against phone-denying at all. In fact, I am myself a phone-denier. I am wary of phone-denying in the name of hearkening to an idealistic idea of the past.1 I phone-deny for the sake of preventing myself from wiling away my time mindlessly and aimlessly, living my life without hardly living it at all. I wiled my time away mindlessly and aimlessly before smartphones existed (but I was only a kid after all, and there’s not much else for a kid to do) and I would still be capable of doing so if they all disappeared from the planet tomorrow. People have been wasting their lives away since time immemorial, and those who don’t are considered strange and abnormal. They killed Socrates! (That isn’t exactly relevant, but I’m still upset about it.)
Phones and screens have their own nefarious qualities and their own particular ways of causing psychic damage. But believing that they are unique in the ways they exploit compulsive behaviour, or that they create unique compulsive behaviours rather than hijacking ones that already exist, only gives them more power in your mind. A historical perspective might help me understand the true answers that lie behind the scenes, and allow me, as Emil Sinclair put it, to truly “live the life that is spontaneously welling up within me.” At the very least, I can give it a shot.
1. Especially when that past is the 1990s, which I will remind you was the decade in which this author was born, and was a decade in which people still had relationship problems, interpersonal issues, depression, economic instability, political misinformation and malfeasance, etc. Yes, they didn’t have smartphones, but they had a lot of other stuff. Drugs, for example. (Infinite Jest was published in 1995, and it was not prescient — he was describing what it already felt like to live in 1995.)↩