Ross A. Laird

Addictions are developmental disorders, essentially. Treatment and prevention of all addictions is most important during adolescence, due to the various developmental challenges and vulnerabilities of the adolescent period.

It is also during adolescence that most people choose the cultures with which they will affiliate. These affiliations will continue, for the most part, into adulthood and sometimes for the duration of people's lives.

Like the cultures of technology, substance use is also cultural. Both wine tasters and binge drinkers are sub-groups within the cultures of alcohol (scotch drinkers are yet another group). Recreational marijuana users and potheads are members of the same culture. Cigarette smokers share a culture. Users of stimulants and opiates and benzodiazepines are members of various cultures of devotion and consumption.

Counsellors and other social service providers who work in the field of addictions typically exert great effort to understand and empathize with the cultures of substance use. But the cultures of technology remain foreign, strange, and uninviting.

The cultures of counsellors and social service providers are essentially technophobic.

Screen Time

Children ages 8 to 18 spend more time (44.5 hours per week) in front of computer, television, and game screens than any other activity in their lives except sleeping (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2005).

Approximately 30.3% of children (ages 6 to 11) are overweight and 15.3% are obese. For teens (12 to 19) the rate is almost identical: 33.4% overweight, and 15.5% obese (American Obesity Association, 2006).

Children watching 2 to 4 hours of TV per day have 2.5 times the odds of hypertension compared with children watching 0 to 2 hours. The odds of hypertension for children watching 4 or more hours of TV are 3.3 times greater than for children watching 0 to 2 hours of TV.