You don’t want to believe that your children have become addicts. It’s just a screen they can’t look away from, that’s all. And there’s no saying that having a screen addiction will contribute to a life of crippling addiction. But being in front of a screen all day has never shown to provide actual benefits; it’s important to look away every now and again. And learning good habits at a young age will only inspire positive choices in the future.

Nowadays, it seems like youth are beginning their familiarity with social media at a younger and younger age. Toddlers can use tablets for learning; vibrant, engaging games are easily accessed on a smartphone when they were more accessible via desktop computer one decade earlier.

The thing is, using social media actually messes a bit with your neurotransmitters. When you get a ‘like,’ stumble across an interesting article, read a comment from a friend, receive a message notification, and so on, this spikes dopamine levels in the brain. Not to mention, it’s not difficult to scroll on and on, page after page, without paying attention to the world around you. And the more you do it, the more you want to return—in order to feel connected, tapped into what’s happening in the world.

This is like substance use disorder—the insatiable feeling that you’ll never be able to get enough, that it wasn’t as good the first time you saw that amazing news or received that notification for a fun event. You want to do it more and more. It seems now that an infatuation with being ‘connected’ is common for many young people. About a quarter of teens surveyed stated that they were on some type of social media at all times without stopping—that they were constantly connected. So it’s no small phenomena, thanks to smartphones. Social media can really make you want more, more, more.