For years, the dominant narrative has been clear: social media is turning us into addicts, almost on par with tobacco or gambling. Official reports, talk-show debates and headlines have repeated that idea until it became common sense. Now, Ian A. Anderson and Wendy Wood, researchers at the University of Southern California, have just published a study in Scientific Reports that dares to push back. When it comes to social platforms, what’s most common isn’t addiction but habit – and confusing the two carries a real, measurable cost.
Social media: addiction vs habit
The study, which included 1,204 participants, focuses on two main samples. One is a representative panel of 380 adult Instagram users in the United States. The other is a group of college students who use TikTok, whose data is included in the supplemental materials.
In both cases, the researchers combined clinical measures of addictive symptoms with direct questions about how users see themselves: Do they feel “addicted”? Or do they simply recognize a deeply ingrained, compulsive checking habit?
Device rage
Only 2% “at risk,” versus 18% who believe they’re addicted
The results are strikingly uneven. Using a standard clinical psychology scale (the Bergen Instagram Addiction Scale, adapted for the study), only 2% of Instagram users fall into the warning-zone category for potential addiction, showing symptoms such as withdrawal when they stop using the app, conflicts with work or school, and repeated failed attempts to cut back.
Yet when asked directly, 18% say they feel at least “somewhat” addicted, and 5% strongly agree with that label. In other words, more than half of those who consider themselves addicted don’t show the symptom profile used in diagnostic manuals to define addiction. The TikTok data is even more extreme: only 9% would be considered at risk, compared with 59% who label themselves as addicted on self-report scales.
At the same time, about half the participants describe their relationship with Instagram as an automatic habit – something they do almost without thinking, triggered by environmental cues (the phone on the table, a lull in the day, a notification) rather than an irresistible urge akin to addictive substances. That distinction between habit and addiction isn’t just semantics; it completely shapes how we interpret our digital behavior.
When calling it “addiction” takes away your control instead of helping you
The most unsettling part of Anderson and Wood’s work emerges when they analyze what happens psychologically to people who define themselves as addicts. Compared with those who frame their behavior as a habit, people who use the word “addiction” feel less control over their Instagram use, recall more failed attempts to reduce it and blame themselves more intensely for “not being able” to use the platform reasonably. It’s a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy: the more you internalize the idea that you’re an addict, the more impossible change seems.
TikTokDado Ruvic
The authors also identify an uncomfortable culprit: media narratives. Constant exposure to messages describing social platforms as “toxic” or “addictive” increases the likelihood that people interpret their own usage through that lens, even when clinical symptoms simply aren’t present. This aligns with a broader debate in psychology over myths surrounding social media’s impact on well-being, where various studies have pointed out that associations between heavy use, anxiety or depression tend to be weak and heavily dependent on the individual.
It’s not the first time Anderson has taken this openly skeptical stance. Back in 2021, he co-authored an opinion piece with Wood in The Washington Post under a blunt headline, “Digital addiction is a myth. What you have is a bad habit, and it’s fixable,” a line that now finds empirical backing in a much larger and more carefully analyzed dataset.
From their perspective, the challenge isn’t denying problems but reframing them. Rather than talking about addicts, it’s more useful to talk about deeply rooted habits, built up repeatedly in specific contexts and changeable – slowly but steadily – by adjusting routines, environments and expectations. It’s a less dramatic way to tell the story, yes, but one that gives users something essential in the age of endless notifications: the sense that, with patience and method, they have room to regain control and manage their relationship with these apps.
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