FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

The First Case of 'Google Glass Addiction' Is Really an Addiction to Work

The first documented case of 'Glass addiction' isn’t about the internet or wearables: It's about work.

San Diego doctors recently identified the first case of "internet addiction" involving Google Glass in a 31 year-old Navy serviceman who checked himself into rehab for alcohol abuse. His symptoms included involuntary temple tapping and seeing his dreams through Glass' tiny gray box. He used Glass 18 hours a day for work, only taking it off to sleep and bathe. Why? Because it made him very, very good at his job.

Advertisement

According to a paper published yesterday in Addictive Behaviours, the patient used Glass to quickly take photos of convoy trucks and tag them with identifying numbers and equipment lists (his exact job title is not specified), boosting his workplace productivity. He became so dependent on his newfound abilities at work that an addiction began to form, according to the doctors. But, really, what was he addicted to? The internet? Google Glass itself? No—he was hooked on work, and Glass merely made it possible.

"People started patting him on the back. Like, good job! You were able to recall that information so quick! So he became the top of the game at his work," Andrew Doan, one of the papers' authors, told me. "It becomes a prosthetic that you can't live without, and that's when it becomes addictive. Because now it modifies our functional behaviour, so we have to do more and more of it to feel okay."

Google is pushing Glass into the workplace, and the company recently partnered with a host of software developers to develop productivity-boosting apps for business and the medical profession. Glass is a boon for employers, who are able to get more out of their workers in less time, and for employees who can rake in the accolades from their superiors—in the short term, at least.

Glass is a boon for employers, who are able to get more out of their workers in less time

Glass in the workplace might not be so different from the way Adderall is used in professional scenarios. Like Adderall, Glass can be used in ways that aren't necessarily harmful, like providing real-time closed captioning for the hearing impaired. In a high pressure environment that rewards ever-increasing efficiency, however, it can be abused to the point of harm.

Advertisement

"What technology does is deliver information at such a high, rapid pace, that if we're not careful, this could be a reward mechanism that can be abused," Doan said. "When you get new information, your brain sends dopamines and you get an adrenaline arousal, similar to when you watch movies or when you find new information. There's shorter and shorter obligatory rest periods between the events, hence people who sit on their computer or have a wearable device, and wear it day in and day out."

Doan noted that it's important not to blame the addicted person when it comes to the abuse of drugs or technology. Instead, we have to understand why addictive behaviour occurs: quick rewards with a short rest period, compounded by underlying psychological distress. With Glass in the workplace, these ingredients are certainly present.

The psychological effects of workplace pressure are well-documented and recognized by the World Health Organization, the American Psychological Association, and myriad other organizations. The pressure to perform tasks more quickly and with greater efficiency has always been a major stressor, one that is exacerbated by technologies like Google Glass.

The media theorist John Tomlinson characterized the connection between speed, work, technology, and psychology as emblematic of "fast capitalism." Digital technology gives us access to instantaneous flows of information and communication, speeding up the pace of life.

The result, Tomlinson writes in The Culture of Speed, is a psychological working-over resulting in a new kind of person suited to the age of speed, and an increasingly exhausted and harried one at that, dependent on the devices that accelerate work in the first place.

Unsettlingly, the subject of Doan and his colleagues' study did not desire to stop using Glass after his treatment. Instead, he expressed a strong desire to keep using it at work. And why would he do otherwise? The efficiency afforded to him by Glass is intimately tied to his livelihood, and perhaps even expected by his supervisors.

"I think the workplace needs to educate their employees," Doan said. "They should say, this is how the brain works: you get rewarded by doing well at work, but it has to be in moderation. But that's the antithesis to how the modern workplace operates. You will only reward me for more and more and more, not in moderation."

Without proper education on the moderate use of productivity-boosting technology like Google Glass, cases like those described by Doan could foreseeably become more common. Of course, stymying this trend runs counter to the short term priorities of businesses, which means that Google Glass could become the Adderall of the future—a potentially dangerous productivity hack you wear on your face.