Tech Addiction Doesn't Only Hurt the Young

Tolstoy famously began Anna Karenina with, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” But that’s not Greg Schutte’s experience. Schutte has been a professional counselor for nearly three decades in Dayton, Ohio, and has served hundreds of clients from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Today, nearly all the married couples he works with are suffering from the same problem: addiction to electronics.

In a recent interview with the Institute for Family Studies (IFS), Schutte “low-balled” the numbers for us. Of his clients, he estimated that, “75 to 80 percent  have something like a tech or social-media addiction.”

The compulsive use of electronics introduces a variety of marital troubles. Some couples, Schutte says, struggle with a porn addiction, despite severe spousal disapproval. Some, using direct messaging, have gone from surreptitious contact into extramarital affairs. Many of his clients suffer from suspicion (“who are you talking to?”), feeling ignored by a spouse unable to look away from the screen, or from lack of conversation, the engine on which relationships run.

According to Schutte, the overarching problem is that, through these devices, spouses create “other lives” that they pop in and out of, where one’s significant other is unwelcome. This breeds suspicion and absenteeism in marriage. “It’s so destructive to build these secret lives on our phones,” Schutte says. “People are finding more ways to do this with more phones and accounts, and it becomes impossible to help [these couples] rebuild trust.”

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