Addiction to Technology – A Case Example

The following message was prepared for the mother of an adolescent boy who had become addicted to technology and was increasingly violent towards his parents. 

 The triangular interaction between you, Andrew and Thomas appears to be intensifying and becoming increasingly violent and dangerous. My view is that this three-cornered arrangement needs to be addressed immediately and the intensity taken out of it. That is exactly why I’ve suggested you look elsewhere in this extended family and have Thomas reside with someone else in the short term whilst we explore medium term solutions to the problem. This is a benign interim first move that does not fracture the relationship with him. My view is that the level of violence by Thomas toward Andrew is of deep concern especially when you consider that many of the tragic events in relation to violence that happen in families are intended in that moment yet take an entire lifetime to live with.  I would also like to see Thomas ASAP.  

I raised my concerns with you about Thomas becoming increasingly socially isolated and how that is not only unacceptable in terms of his ordinary development but also particularly dangerous during adolescence. School, work, extended family, sport and other activities all act to provide some relief to social isolation and the dangers it carries for an adolescent boy in Thomas‘s position. The tighter the triangular interaction gets, the less physical, psychological and relational room to move. You and he must find an interim solution to this problem further intensifying the risks associated with this tight arrangement. I spoke to you about the fact that I have significant fear for Thomas in the situation. A young person’s cognition is not fully developed and as such they are not able to think their way through such problems and issues in the way that the adults can. We need to remediate the oscillation immediately. I need you to stay close to him as that isolation is remediated and I need the violence interrupted the moment it begins. You need to use external authorities such as SAPOL and WMC to achieve such interruption. It is clear from what you tell me that Thomas is becoming increasingly out of step developmentally with his peers and it would be most unlikely that he is not acutely aware of this – if he is aware of this then he is within the ordinary or ‘normal’ range of emotions and behaviour and if he is totally unaware of this than our problem is even bigger.  I need to speak to him to be able to assess this. The fact that he is totally unproductive in terms of education and work is of significant concern as these are the conventional pathways into appropriate identity development and peer relationships and the appropriate expression of his developing sexuality. The absence of such age-appropriate identity development ordinarily means an intensification of his attachment relationships and an increasing dependence upon those relationships and a failure to achieve age-appropriate differentiation in and from those attachment relationships. The fact that he cries when he is violent to you and you hold him is of significance. 

 Many young people in this position use social media and the net as a De Facto social network and that carries with it some very specific dangers especially in relation to sexual development. Sexual development is something that needs to be practiced visually, physically and viscerally in the first instance and not in isolation electronically. When practiced electronically sexual identity development often becomes corrupted and warped. Electronic sexual development must always be practiced as a complement to real time visceral and physical development. Given the advance by two years in adolescent sexual development set against unchanged cognitive development, it would be unlikely that Thomas hasn’t gone down this track to some degree. The removal of social isolation puts his ordinary identity development into an appropriate social context that carries most of the appropriate physical, interactional, relational and visceral markers that manage and constrain such sexual identity development. Thomas is approaching 16 years of age so none of this should come as a surprise. He needs to be interacting in the world outside and using such day-to-day commonplace interaction as his measure and not spending his time interacting with himself inside his head and making that manifest in whatever electronic world he inhabits. The fact that he has a rudimentary and perhaps less than appropriate (your view) peer group he connects to in some way, shape or form moderates my position on this ever so slightly.