Are we overpathologizing everyday life? A tenable blueprint for behavioral addiction research

By Joël Billieux, Adriano Schimmenti, Yasser Khazaal, Pierre Maurage, Alexandre Heeren. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 2015

842 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Background Behavioral addiction research has been particularly flourishing over the last two decades. However, recent publications have suggested that nearly all daily life activities might lead to a genuine addiction. Methods and aim In this article, we discuss how the use of atheoretical and confirmatory research approaches may result in the identification of an unlimited list of “new” behavioral addictions. Results Both methodological and theoretical shortcomings of these studies were discussed. Conclusions We suggested that studies overpathologizing daily life activities are likely to prompt a dismissive appraisal of behavioral addiction research. Consequently, we proposed several roadmaps for future research in the field, centrally highlighting the need for longer tenable behavioral addiction research that shifts from a mere criteria-based approach toward an approach focusing on the psychological processes involved.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Clinical Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8fc69745ebfc1787f7cf7b45478a831cab6840d8

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Citations in the corpus

Fear of Missing Out, online social networking and mobile phone addiction: A latent profile approach (2017, background): “There is also an ongoing debate concerning the addictive potential of social media and online social networking (Billieux et al., 2015; Muench, Hayes, Kuerbis, & Shao, 2015; Ryan, Chester, Reece, & Xenos, 2014), because of the emergence among users of certain phenomena that are present in other…”
Global prevalence of gaming disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis (2020, background): “Some authors have argued that applying DSM-5 criteria to activities, including gaming and other everyday activities, may result in over-pathologization (Billieux et al., 2015).”
Does the construct of Internet addiction reflect a single entity or a spectrum of disorders (2017, background): “For example, Internet addiction has been conceptualised as a primary disorder (mostly driven by an “obsessive passion”) or a secondary disorder (as a way of coping with emotional distress) (Billieux et al. 2015b, Burnay et al. 2015, Gentile et al. 2011).”
The Social Media Disorder Scale (2016, neutral): “…processes (motivational, affective, cognitive, interpersonal, and social) sustaining the dysfunctional involvement in social media use (Billieux, Schimmenti, Khazaal, Maurage, & Heeren, 2015; Dudley, Kuyken, & Padesky, 2011), and will thereby contribute substantially to understanding…”
How can we conceptualize behavioral addiction without pathologizing common behaviors? (2017, neutral): “For the second step we reinforce our message that developing assessment instruments, and implicitly a definition, for behavioural addiction by substituting one behaviour for another is inadequate [2,19,21].”
Addictive Features of Social Media/Messenger Platforms and Freemium Games against the Background of Psychological and Economic Theories (2019, result): “Explicitly, it is mentioned that researchers should not over-pathologize everyday life activities [27] and aim at a unification of terms used in the literature in line with the officially suggested nomenclature.”
Social Networking Sites and Addiction: Ten Lessons Learned (2017, neutral): “Whilst referring to an ‘addiction’ terminology in this paper, it needs to be noted that there is much controversy within the research field concerning both the possible overpathologising of everyday life [47,48] as well as the most appropriate term for the phenomenon.”