Addiction: the need to engage in a behavior or use a substance despite negative life consequences, often increasing the duration and intensity of use over time and experiencing withdrawal when trying to quit.
ADHD: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a mental health issue characterized by problems with attention and impulsivity.
Adrenaline: a hormone in the body that we secrete when we feel stress, also called the fight-or-flight hormone.
Affective Forecasting Error: a tendency in the brain to incorrectly assume that something that gave us pleasure before will give us pleasure again.
Amygdala: a part of the brain related directly to how we experience emotions.
Anxiety: excessive worry and fear, which you are unable to control, and which causes you distress.
ASD: autism spectrum disorders, with symptoms that include trouble with communication and social interaction as well as a narrow range of interests and/or behaviors including repetitive moments.
Attention Restoration Theory: an idea first posited in the 1980s by Rachel and Stephen Kaplan that spending downtime in nature has a restorative effect that helps humans to heal.
Augmented Reality: when you view the real world through a screen, such as a cell phone, and see something on the screen that isn’t there in real life.
Body Dysmorphic Disorder: mental health condition in which the person obsesses over their flaws, grooms and exercises excessively, avoids mirrors, constantly works to change their appearance, and has negative self-esteem.
Bottom-up Attention: when something attracts us and demands that we notice it, so we don’t control where our focus goes.
Catfishing: the act of pretending to be someone else online in order to lure one or more people into a relationship with your fake persona.
Causation: proof that one thing happens as a direct result of another; in contrast to correlation.
CBT: cognitive behavioral therapy, a form of therapy that uses goal-oriented problem-solving to help people change their patterns of both thought and behavior.
Cellular Neuroplasticity: a change in the number of brain cells that are talking to each other.
CIAS: Chen Internet Addiction Scale, a tool used to measure Internet addiction in Chinese adolescents.
Circadian Rhythm: physical and mental patterns that we follow each day, related to our experience of the changing sunlight, and directly related to our sleep cycle.
Classical Conditioning: how we learn to respond to one thing when two items are paired together even after the second item is removed from the equation.
Comorbidity: when one person has two or more diagnoses for different mental health disorders, one of which is usually an addiction; also called dual diagnosis or co-occurring disorders.
Compulsive Behavior: repeatedly engaging in a specific action whether or not you get any satisfaction from doing so.
Contemplative Computing: mindfulness approach to limiting Internet use in order to maximize the benefits and minimize the addictive harms.
Correlation: indications that two phenomena are linked but not necessarily that one happens as a result of the other; in contrast to causation.
Cortisol: a stress hormone in the body.
Cyberbullying: persistent bullying of one or more people that takes place through apps, text, and social media.
Cyberchondria: a form of hypochondria directly related to the tendency to search online for information about potential medical conditions, becoming increasingly certain that you’re deathly ill because of what the Internet has to say.
Dating App Addiction: using apps such as Tinder or Hinge with increasing frequency even though the rewards that you get from it are diminishing and/or there are negative consequences in other areas of your life.
Depersonalization: the feeling that you are not a real person.
Depression: feelings of low mood and lack of interest in things that you previously enjoyed as well as other physical and mental health symptoms.
Derealization: an inability to know what is real.
Desensitization: diminished emotional response to something after being exposed to it multiple times.
Digital Diet: reducing or eliminating use of some or all Internet devices and activities to help break an Internet addiction; also called a digital fast.
Disconnectivity Anxiety: feelings of fear, stress, anger, and frustration caused by the unexpected inability to connect to your phone or the Internet.
Dopamine: a neurotransmitter in the brain often called the “feel good chemical.”
DSM: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a guide used by psychologists and other health-care professionals in the United States to officially diagnose all mental disorders.
Email Apnea: a tendency to hold your breath or breathe more shallowly when opening email, checking social media comments, and so forth.
Euphoric Recall: a tendency to remember positive feelings associated with a behavior or event while forgetting the negative feelings.
Exposure and Response Prevention: a form of CBT for treatment of phobias and some other disorders in which the person is exposed to the source of their fear and learns to modulate their response.
FOMO: Fear of missing out, the feeling that other people are online doing something interesting and that if you fail to get online as well, then you’re going to be excluded from the fun.
Frontal Lobe: part of the brain that helps us with “higher-level” functioning such as problem-solving, planning, and regulating our emotions.
GABA: gamma-aminobutyric acid, neurotransmitter related to stress reduction.
Game Transfer Phenomenon: short-term psychosis that causes a gaming player to have trouble separating the game from reality.
Gaming Addiction: playing video/Internet games with increasing frequency even though the rewards that you get from it are diminishing and/or there are negative consequences in other areas of your life.
General Internet Addiction: problematic Internet use including withdrawal, tolerance, and continued use despite negative consequences—with no particular content focus but instead to the compulsive use of being online.
Gray Matter: the bulk of what we see when we look at a human brain—the wrinkled, pinkish-gray tissue consisting of cell bodies, dendrites, and nerve synapses.
Grounding: therapeutic techniques to help people to come into the present moment by focusing on their senses.
Harm Reduction: an approach to treating addiction in which the goal isn’t abstinence but rather reducing the damages of use.
Hippocampus: part of the brain related to learning and forming memories.
HPA Axis: hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, a combination of interacting parts of the brain that relate to our stress responses.
Hyperarousal: an increase in physical and psychological response to stimuli, which might include being abnormally alert to danger and having a racing heart.
Hypochondria: extreme anxiety about one’s health, often imagining that you have an illness that isn’t there.
ICD: International Classification of Diseases, a system maintained by the World Health Organization (WHO) to classify all different types of health issues, including those related to mental health.
Imposter Syndrome: the belief that you are a fraud and other people are eventually going to find out the truth about you.
Intermittent Rewards: when we sometimes receive pleasure, but sometimes don’t, from the same activity or trigger; also called variable-ratio reward schedule.
Mesocortical Pathway: dopamine pathway in the brain linked with cognitive and emotional abilities as well as memory, attention, and our ability to learn.
Mesolimbic Pathway: dopamine pathway in the brain linked with seeking pleasure and reward.
Mindfulness: the practice of focusing on being entirely present in the moment.
MMORPG: Massive multiplayer online role-playing games, in which thousands or sometimes millions of people around the world participate in the game at the same time, playing in a virtual scenario.
Myelin: an insulating layer that wraps around the white matter in the brain, protecting the axons and solidifying their function.
Net Compulsions: variety of activities that addicts engage in repeatedly and obsessively including online gambling, auction bidding, and stock trading.
Neuroplasticity: the brain’s ability to change and grow over time; also called brain plasticity or neuroelasticity.
Neurotransmitters: the communicators, or messengers, in the brain that transmit information from one area to another.
Nigrostriatal Pathway: dopamine pathway in the brain linked with movement and sensory stimulation.
Norepinephrine: neurotransmitter related to the fight-or-flight instinct.
Nucleus Accumbens: a cluster of nerve cells often called the “brain’s pleasure center.”
Online Pornography Addiction: accessing pornographic websites and/or apps with increasing frequency even though the rewards that you get from it are diminishing and/or there are negative consequences in other areas of your life.
Phantom Vibration Syndrome: imagining that you feel the vibration of a phone alert when the phone isn’t even on you.
Prefrontal Cortex: the front part of the frontal lobe in the brain, responsible for higher-order functions like attention, planning, prioritizing, impulse control behavior, emotional control, and adjusting to complicated and varying situations.
Psychosis: a mental disorder in which you lose contact with what is real.
PTSD: posttraumatic stress disorder, a mental health condition that can occur after many different types of trauma and includes symptoms such as intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, and panic.
Sedentary Lifestyle: spending most or all of your time either sitting or lying down rather than engaging in physical activity.
Selfie Addiction: taking, editing, and posting photos of yourself with increasing frequency even though the rewards that you get from it are diminishing and/or there are negative consequences in other areas of your life.
Serotonin: neurotransmitter related to mood stabilization.
Social Media Addiction: using sites such as Facebook and Instagram with increasing frequency even though the rewards that you get from it are diminishing and/or there are negative consequences in other areas of your life.
Social Phobia: anxiety related to social settings, which can include being in groups and speaking in public.
Specific Internet Addiction: problematic Internet use including withdrawal, tolerance, and continued use despite negative consequences—with focus on one or more very specific types of content such as gaming, gambling, social media, or pornography.
Switchtasking: moving our focus from one thing to the other and back again, which is what we’re usually doing when we think that we are multitasking.
Synaptic Neuroplasticity: A change in the strength of the connection across the junction from one brain cell to the next.
Text Neck: chronic pain associated with damage to the spine done because of poor posture when spending excessive amounts of time on a cell phone.
Texting Addiction: using text apps and direct-to-one-person chat tools with increasing frequency even though the rewards that you get from it are diminishing and/or there are negative consequences in other areas of your life.
Texting Thumb: repetitive stress injury that typically results in pain at the base of thumb due to excessive smartphone use.
Tolerance: adapting to an addiction so that you need more of the behavior or substance in order to achieve the same feelings.
Top-Down Attention: When we set goals and direct where our attention will go in order to meet those goals.
Trolling: purposely posting inflammatory comments online in order to get a group riled up and engaging negatively.
Ventral-Tegmental Area: part of the brain rich in dopamine and related to our desire for rewards.
Virtual Reality: when you look at a screen (usually through glasses or headsets) and immerse yourself entirely into the world there, sometimes with additional sensory input from haptics to make it feel even more like you’re in that world.
Voyeurism: taking pleasure in watching someone else, particularly when they’re doing something private, dangerous, or scandalous.
White Matter: bundles of axons that connect gray matter areas in the brain.
Withdrawal: physical and mental symptoms that appear when trying to quit an addiction.