'Smart' phones: the new security blankets
 

from 'The Potential of Object-Relations Theory for Improving Engagement With Health Apps' in today's JAMA https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...rticle/2755742

The effect has been noted before.

I always thought smartphones were pretty childish!

It's not smartphones that are childish. It's the persons how use them.

I'm no fan of smartphones but thanks to folks right here on LQN the Librem 5 may change my views largely because the only reasons I'm not a fan are rapidly disappearing. My main concerns have been security and privacy but Librem 5, with a real Linux OpSys (not android), looks like that may already be solved. Now that there are really good docks available that allow connection to external drives, any monitor (including 4K resolution), keyboards, mice, and basically any peripheral device one can imagine, the only differences from a tower or laptop are essentially gone. Oh wait, some smartphones have 10-16MP cameras built in, FM radio, 8 core CPUs up to 3GHz, 8-16GB RAM, 32bit stereo audio capable of 82db sound with just the built in stereo speakers and can connect to external speakers and powered speakers, ... and more.

I don't love them yet, but they are far from childish. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some modern smartphones are more powerful and more extensible than PCs owned by many LQN members. Oh wait! Some are already more powerful in most ways than my own Main!... and they are mobile! DOH!

Scientists then: The monkey is soothed by embracing the fur dressed wire mesh of the faux monkey mother.
Scientists now: The monkey is dead because the intern forgot to feed it, playing "Super Take care of a Monkey 3D" on his smartphone, instead.

... and the project is out of funding for a new monkey because, the intern spent all the money on micro-transactions to buy 3D bananas to feed the 3D monkey.

I really hate touchscreens.

With that said, I'm sure there will be a viable free software smartphone with one before there is a viable free software flip-phone without one.

If I can plug in a mouse and keyboard, even better.

I don't "hate" smartphones per se (or any defining features), but I require something around the phone to be able to hold it in my hands. And to protect it from the elements (that might find their way into my pockets, too, esp. sand).
This sort of invalidates all those enthusiast remarks about being thinner and having narrower bezels...
Including the protective cover I need to have on my phone, its size is closer to a book than a slab of glass.

I truly do hate the hype around mobile technology, and the way young people (adults too) don't even realise that they're in its clutches. Nobody even questions that it's a "must have" and must be renewed every other year at the very least.

Add to that the observed psycho-socio-emotional impact - yep, the hate accumulates to a point that I could almost say "I hate smartphones".

Haha, ain't it the truth.
But it seems the PC is still king there.
Apparently someone spent 1.4 million on a virtual character, foolishly let a friend maintain it for a while, who then planned on selling it back to him for about 55k, but then put a much lower number on the marketplace, where it got snapped up for something like 500.

(I don't know which 'journalism outlets' are good these days so I picked this one at random and archieved it. The story is covered by several.)
https://archive.md/PjnZ1

What's the procedure to determine the I.Q. of a Smart Phone?

Don Norman described something he called 'The Teddy' in the early 1990s. I remember thinking later that he'd uncannily described the mobile phone. He said something along the lines that there might be a problem if people preferred to talk to their 'Teddy' rather than to each other...

Oddly enough, at work, if I plug the new Dell docking station (USB-C) into my Android phone, I can use the keyboard and mouse straight away. I only found out because I was just using the cable to charge the phone and noticed when I moved the mouse there was a little mouse pointer on the screen, then I started typing messages on the keyboard.

That's why I very much enjoyed the concept of the "Dixie Dead Zone" diners, for which they found places that were "dead zones" for all cell networks and set up diners at those locations.

I for one love my smartphone. I am not glued to it like my 20-something niece is but I find it incredibly useful. Apple Pay, Samsung pay and Google pay are worlds more secure than a straight credit card transaction at a terminal, navigation, instant communication to someone, etc.

Yes we got by without these things 50 years ago but why should I want to get along without them now. I don't want to go back to the candle when we ave LED lighting.

Yes, smartphones have caused, or are causing some social issues but not sure what can be done about that.

Agreed - nice idea. Many of the issues surrounding mobile phone use were first investigated by Finnish (and Japanese) sociologists. I remember one saying that in Finland they had rules at parties where all the mobile phones were lined up on the mantle-piece or equivalent and they weren't allowed to touch them... The dead zone is the technological equivalent I guess... :-)

While I don't think its the new security blanket, I think its more accurate to call it the new opiate, or the new Pavlov's bell.

I love this idea. Unfortunately, taking some people there would ruin one's meal as they'd spend the entire time bitching about the lack of "bars".

A wee bit of logical deduction here results in this conclusion ... If smartphones are security blankies or opiates, we've all been sitting around sucking our thumbs for some time now since smartphones are essentially just portable mini PCs with a wifi/cell toggle.

I think that's misleading. Internally a smartphone is a computer but the user interface is quite different and it is that interface which is so addictive.

Perhaps, or maybe it is the idea of being connected that is so addicting? Might be different for different folks - my niece (college age) is on her phone more than any other activity during the day. I am not, but still find myself picking it up and looking at it - checking mail, news, etc.

It is indeed an interesting phenomenon.

These things are designed to be addictive, just like fixed-odds betting terminals. After all, when you are online with your phone, you are probably using social media and giving them loads of useful information about your actions which they can sell to advertisers. When your phone is switched off, you're no use to them.

True - I am an enigma amongst the average cell phone user however: I loathe social media.

I agree with Hazel. They are designed to be addictive. I love ChuangTzu's comment! Pavlov and opiate... exactly!

That they are designed to be addictive is no secret. It is rather visible and it is sad to see the afflicted individuals. You can't attend any public space without dodging at least one phone zombie every few minutes.

In a little bigger picture, there are many repercussions which range from kids not entering school with either adequate musculature or fine motor skills enough to partipate properly all the way to a statistically significant increase drownings due to parents playing with their phones while their kids are in the water. The phones are, as mentioned, pavlovian and training people to respond to minimal stimuli. I think that also damages the cognitive abilities of the younger victims. I already see young people that can't even count running cash registers.

However, at scale, this addictiveness has follow on effects for our future generations' ability to take the reins when it is their time to do so. Eben Moglen addresses that a bit in a talk from much earlier this year:

re:publica 2019 - Eben Moglen: Why Freedom of Thought Requires Attention

Bringing it back to the forum's topics, you see this in many web sites. All too many are designed around "engagement" which is the polar opposite of "usability". The software should get out of the way and stay out of the way and the human must be in charge at all times. "Engagement" turns that on its head. We as a societ need to push back. Passivity will only bring about end things through trained ineptitude and the proliferation of dead wood.

Idiots are idiots. The smart phone is no more guilty6 of causing idiots than the television, the book or matches.
I also hate this idea that "people talked to each other before...". No. they did not. People who wanted to talk to one another talked to one another, no everybody wanted to talk. If anything new communications platforms aremaking it easier to feel connected to people how would otherwise seem a wolrd away, from grandparents seeing their grandchildred a few hours journey away grow up to husbands and wwivesr of those deployed abroad.
Of course, some imbeciles use mobile phones to take part in idiotic popularity contests but one only has to look back at, for example, movies about schools in the last century to see that imbeciles just did that face-to-face with a smaller audience back then.

Well said 273 - perhaps now that we are globally connected, the existence of idiots appears to be increasing when it is really just the normal amount of them; we just hear more from them because of global communications...personally, I think the number of idiots is increasing but that's just a theory and could tied to the population increase in the same ratio as it always was...

Idiots are a separate matter from the addiction factor. Screen damage is already affecting college level people. The younger you measure, the worse it is. Check with some of the remaining older (and younger) teachers about what kids are like entering the classes. Stunting is more or less permanent when the excessive exposure occurs in the early years. In certain countries, though, not all of that is due to "smart" phones, some is due to kids not being allowed outside.

The software in the phones adapts and is adapted to optimize "engagement", meaning keeping the attention and mindshare of the mark. These devices are unique from previous technologies and trends in that they are both highly invasive and always on. It appears that they are causing mind damage to a few generations. This is an offshoot of the concept that education is an investment, one which short cuts do not pay off, rather the opposite. If people are "engaged" with programs on the "smart" phones, they are not growing, learning, or in any way productive.

While the term "addiction" has taken on pejorative connotations it really just defines a compulsion to repetition even though if you look up a definition it is very specifically been reduced to chemical dependency of a destructive sort. The line gets drawn between negative and other sorts of repetitive behavior strictly on emotional terms. For exampler I am diabetic and if I don't take something to manage my blood sugar I will die. There is no emotional attachment other than a vague forboding but it is a form of addiction that substantially alters my life, my motivations and my behavior. I have always liked walking but as soon as I could drive I loved driving and cars so much that for a few years I would just drive, just to drive. That got increased and extended with my first motorcycle. It is possible to avoid that sort of direct addiction by moving to some cities where it is trivial to walk to a Metro terminal, but the addiction to travel is real.

I don't see addiction of a general nature as inherently bipolar good or bad. In a very meaningful way we are addicted to Air, Water, and Food, and it should be obvious those, especially food perhaps, can drive some people into negative even destructive behavior and some others will use that to their monetary advantage with no concern for those that fall prey. If this wasn't true there would be no term such as "Comfort Food".

Sugar is a powerful example responsible for ruined lives and caused millions of deaths but few here chime in to compare sugar to opiates or childish behavior. I submit that even abstract things can be addictive such as cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias. Those too can be both good and bad but ultimately it's not the things but how we choose to use them. Learning self-discipline is an integral and important part of growing up. If you "let your garden go" it will go wild and cease to be a garden of anything but weeds. We all must learn to tend the gardens we need most and communication is a big one, maybe even bigger than transportation.

I'm sorry but, no.
Some people may be affected by phones adversely but some people will always be affected by something adversely.
There's nothing "addictive" about a phone, it's a limited-scope computing and media consumption device. Social media may be, in same ways, addictive but that, again, goes back to the age-old school "he's the captain of the football team, wow!" idiocy we've had for years.
"Screen damage" is another thing entirely -- that's not just smart phones it's the need to stare into lights all day, every day for our entire working lives and that we also choose to do it when we're not working. There will be millions of otherwise healthy adults in the next few decades with poor eyesight, poor hearing and very bad postures (and the issues surrounding that) because of the way we spend out time nowadays.

Or, your theory might be right...

Whatever.

As for the phone, it has roughly three visible components.

• Hardware - not addictive
• Visible Operating System (not baseband) - not addictive
• Applications and services - highly addictive, for many

Again, new design trends are about keeping people interacting with the services rather than getting a task done efficiently. That is so that the behaviors they emit can be measured, analyzed, and used. That use is sometimes sales for advertising and sometimes it is sale for opinion manipulation.

It's far from uncommon to see some adults and most teens jonesing for their phones after a few minutes. At social and cultural functions, the latter pretend they are discretely interacting with it but fool no one except themeselves while they dork around with it.

By the same logic, smart TVs, smart fridges, smart toilets, or a sat nav, etc are "PCs"...

To qualify as a "PC", the device probably needs to be able to perform the functions of a "classic" PC running an OS such as Linux, 'BSD or Windows. I'm not sure that smartphones fit this category, in the same way that playstation, xbox, etc is not considered a PC.

The typical smartphone has an embedded OS (which as standard the consumer has no access to), it has applications which are installed from a "store" and it is generally used for phone calls, sms and web/cloud access/services. It does not have a physical keyboard or mouse for example, nor much in the way of physical ports - the OS generally cannot be changed to the user's preference. From my perspective it is an "appliance", as with a SOHO router, or e reader.

As an appliance, designed for a consumer, rather than a PC user, with mainly entertainment/social/communications focused applications which are completely geared towards generating revenue, whether through sales of the application and/or by ads, data mining. tracking, etc... it may be a computer in the technical sense but that's just about where it ends.

As to their addictiveness, that seems beyond debate at this stage. As to health effects, we won't know the full impact until the current younger generation grow up - but these devices depend largely on ignorance and technical illiteracy of the end consumer and their apparent disregard for their own privacy, safety and security. The consumer simply trades those for the "toys" they are presented with. I recently installed an application for someone on Android and it refused to install unless it had access to GPS data, microphone, camera and more... I could not find any reasoning for this.

The "toys", in particular the "social networks", etc are a separate issue. They can be accessed from other devices such as real personal computers, but it's debatable if their "reach" would extend to what it is today without the "vehicle" of the smartphone. The entire GPS tracked, thing with a camera and microphone in your pocket seems to lend itself to those and it's likely that they account for the vast majority of devices accessing.

For me at least smartphone consumers != PC users. Most importantly, for the most part, they don't want to be.

@Turbocapitalist. If you are under the impression that previous generations of children entered school with a high degree of manual dexterity, you are mistaken. The truth is some were dextrous and some were clumsy. I was always clumsy. I knew how to hold a pencil correctly but it didn't make my handwriting any better. And I couldn't catch a ball to save my life.

The difference is that I spent every waking hour reading, not gazing at a screen, so at least my mind was getting fed.

With that being said, I've run Debian (no chroot) on a tablet, and Raspberry Pi is basically a nettop when you use it as one. These do sort of cross over into territory that overlaps with smartphones.

Ubuntu tried to make the smartphone more PC-like and failed. They tried to make their community more PC and as a result, made it corporate and apolitical with regards to computing and relevant activism.

The smartphone is a form factor, and some people are still (hopelessly or otherwise) trying to make a PC out of it. The latest from Alex Oliva on this goal is called "0g" but it's just at the research stage. Expect it to progress more slowly than Replicant, which is just Android with a lot of (awful) stuff removed and still moves incredibly slowly.

I think that's the key point here (or at least one of them - probably one of the main ones though); most people use their smartphone for entertainment and even talking to each other, even when they are in the same room anyway! :rolleyes:

So therefore the personal interaction is "replaced" by a device, and not to mention all of the implications that it entails, like bullying, "social status" (think "likes"), etc - as has been said in this very forum, there is no escape anymore. Back in the day, you could go home and not have to worry about bullies for example, now everything is online 24/7, and nearly everyone has a smartphone. I remember sitting on a train, and I was the only person NOT holding a smartphone in the palm of my hand, presumably posting narcissistic nonsense on one of the "social media" sites. What's that tell ya?

I don't pretend to know the causality, implications, psychology, sociology, etc, behind it. But when a friend and I both worked at the same company developing software, we both expressed surprise about seeing things such as, two people, sitting at desks almost next to one another, exchanging a form of text messages via their desktop computers, rather than speaking with one another in person.

For those suggesting that "smartphones" are not addictive because they are just small computers, and thus nothing new... I offer the following to counter that and to reassert that something nefarious is definitely afoot.

'Irresistible' By Design: It's No Accident You Can't Stop Looking At The Screen
https://www.npr.org/sections/alltech...-at-the-screen

Digital Dementia and ADD: How Smartphones Rewire the Brain
https://www.neurohealthservices.com/...wire-the-brain

How Technology Is Designed to be Addictive
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articl...to-addict.html

Social media apps are 'deliberately' addictive to users
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44640959

It’s not you. Phones are designed to be addicting.
https://www.vox.com/2018/2/27/170537...n-google-apple

Former Facebook executive: social media is ripping society apart
https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...-society-apart

​5 Ways Your Cell Phone Is Changing Your Brain
https://www.thealternativedaily.com/...ng-your-brain/

Smartphones Are Rewiring Your Brain
How many times have you looked at your phone today?
https://www.inverse.com/article/3820...ing-your-brain

What is Computer Addiction?
https://www.addictions.com/computer/

Firstly smartphones do run operating systems and a few run Linux. I can't get a TV to run any software other than that which makes it an appliance to do a handful of similar jobs, nor a fridge, a toilet, etc. Those are currently "dumb" embedded devices meant to be largely left alone to do a specific job, especially compared to some smartphones which can quite literally do everything on command a PC can, a very diverse array of jobs chosen by the specific owner/user. Need I remind you that gaming consoles are also PCs or at least can be with only changes in software and that many organizations still run super computers consisting of clusters of them?

SOME are embedded but by no means all. Some can install any software suitable for the platform which is simply a matter of cross-compiling or writing anew. Some now have both ports and docks by which those phones do have physical keyboards, mice, external drives but none of that matters any more than using a tractor or a Model T to power a sawmill means it cannot be driven. There is nothing to prevent a smartphone from being a PC, doing everything a PC can do and substantially more than your PII, 512MB, 1MB Graphics PC used to do, and some do that right now so it isn't even just hypothetical. Its real and realized.

You imagine PCs aren't geared toward generating revenue?... or that there aren't millions of PC users who do only a handful of entertaining activities with them? This is just use case or design imperative. There are OEM towers and tablets and laptops that are just as geared to lock users in and limit their user preferred flexibility and even some users who "jailbreak" them, just like phones.

I disagree. Phones don't inherently do all those negative things like eliminate privacy, software does and such software can be removed or never written in. On a hardware level there simply is no difference other than scale.

As for "addictiveness" I think we need to be very careful throwing around that term like some broad brush. Everything that is habit forming is not also addictive. I completely agree that an app that doesn't need to access GPS to do it's job demands to but again that is software not hardware and nothing prevents a coder from writing one that doesn't.

I've heard all of this "brain rot" rhetoric growing up about "boob tube" TVs, the internet and even PCs in general. It's just technophobia to me. I imagine, since I didn't live through it, the same sort of horror and disgust occurred when automobiles began to be driven by teenagers. I don't think I've ever seen a photo of 50 kids on horseback "wasting precious hours" cruising around a burger joint or hosting keggers on the beach. I do wonder what arguments people made to not become a telephone user back in the startup days of LandLine.... I mean people could listen in... the operators, party line users, OMG! Yeah, they still can but they don't have to.

Of course the developers of said software want people to use it - what's the bloody point in writing software for others to download, if you don't expect anyone to use it ? The same as the smartphone manufacturers want people to buy them, why else would they make them ?

How's that any different to PC's/etc/etc ?

The problem is that (and as I said above already), the "device (in this case a "smartphone") has "replaced" personal interactions - and more to the point; it's now done through a "device" rather than your lips.

Unless you're going for an Intel ME comparison here, the difference is the proprietary GSM stack infested with CALEA requirements-- which as long as they are connected to a battery, you really can't do anything about.

I physically disabled/removed the GSM chip on a smart phone once. It took out the GPS, Mobile and related capabilities, leaving the rest of the computer usable and rebootable as a mini wifi tablet and bluetooth device-- until I took it out of airplane mode, and essentially bricked it. At that point, it was definitely a computer. But as long as that GSM chip is in there, it's a bug. (If privacy is the goal, probably a good idea to remove the wifi/BT/mic as well.)

There are phones made that have actual On/Off switches. True some are not completely off when they say they are but some are and that's true of many modern electronic devices. I wasn't actively going for it but the Intel ME things is quite worrisome. I bought an old Core 2 Duo laptop exactly to avoid that.

Not so easy with a phone. Physical switches to isolate radio, mic and camera are good.

Then again, with a bowtie-shaped antenna less than two metres wide on an ordinary tripod, even your wired keyboard can be "wireless" to someone 50 metres away.

PC's were designed as tools/machines to do faster computations then humans could, which grew to include other conveniences. Now, given that one can become addicted to computers/internet etc..., the PC was not designed specifically to be/do so. The inverse is true for smartphones, they were designed as a mechanism to deliver specifically designed addictive applications/software. Much in the way of vaping/e-cigarettes are designed to deliver an addictive substance via a tool/delivery mechanism.

Much different from what you described above. Those smartphones are using the same psychological/behavioral methodologies of casinos and drug lords and people are carrying the delivery device in their pocket.

Mmmmm, I think smartphones get so much addictive stuff is because of advertisement companies, modern knowledge addiction , and having the hardware to support an advert/microtransaction loop machine.
Tetris hooked people from the start, and that was on old clunker hardware, and eventually on handhelds like the game boy, etc. Nintendo really took off in Sweden way before the NES because of the Game and Watch, and people couldn't stop playing them.

Smartphones were sold to do smart things, or at least marketed that way. Computing power at your fingertips, knowledge, always with you, but since wireless internet is so easy to build into things now, and how easy it is to download 'apps' and how lucractive ads are, that was a match made in heaven.

It's ads and its sibling 'big data' that are the biggest reason why smartphones get the software they are getting.
Including all the spyware in the hardware.

It's just the fact that the phones can be taken with you everywhere. If people could interact with their desktop through some sort of magic tunnel then they'd be playing factorio and co everywhere too.
The addiction is there in both worlds, but the software is different. Phones hit that, I don't want to call it a sweet spot cause it's awful, but, they're hitting it where these 'lightweight' low effort apps are perfectly rationalized.

I mean, what do you expect on your phone? Quad GPU Melter 2020 Games where people assassinate politicians to cool their systems with their icy hearts to get 10 more FPS because liquid nitrogen doesn't cut it anymore but the avatar doesn't shine good enough when wet without that extra set of 99 octillion polygons and shaders? Etc.

(Sorry, now I'm jabbing at excessive graphics..)

But yeah, it's sad, but I think the culprit is ads, they incentivize this cancerous mindset, on the desktop too. Guhhhh.

Here's something quirky and fun for your edification

https://hackaday.com/2019/12/24/now-...can-run-linux/

I think you're conflating/confusing technological and cultural change with "addiction" - they are not one of the same thing by any means. And I think you've ironically made that point when you say that "one can become addicted to the internet, etc". And this is precisely the point; it's not the "device" or the software itself they are "addicted to". It's the activity they are "addicted to". For example, there's "gaming addiction", there's "social media addiction", etc, now in the former, it doesn't matter whether they're using a PC, console, smartphone, whatever, and while they may well have a "favorite" game they play the most often; that's STILL a "gaming addiction", as in: "they are addicted to playing computer games" regardless of the hardware platform used, or even the particular game they like/play the most.

So by your definition, then everyone who has a smartphone is more or less "addicted to smartphones" - which simply isn't true. As I have a smartphone myself, even with AFAIK the latest version of Android that came with a stack of apps pre-installed, I have maybe at most one or two of those apps (apart from Android's "dialer" and "messages" apps for making phone calls and sending/reading any text messages I send/get) that I even just semi-regularly use, and even then I much prefer to use my desktop for my "computing needs". So I rarely use almost all of the apps on that same smartphone - I even uninstalled at least a few of them because I never used them. I hate trying to read such a small screen complete with tiny text/characters, even in regards to text messages that existed before smartphones did.

As far as drugs are concerned; I lived with enough drug addicts, and in some of the worst places you could possibly even imagination to know a thing or two about that to say the very least. And if you have any understanding of what drug addiction actually is, then for starters you'll also note that alcohol is very much a "drug". For seconds, and more to the point; people who are "addicted" to drugs, are normally using their drug of choice as a masking agent so they don't have to try and deal with whatever underlying issues are causing them to abuse drugs (legal or otherwise) - rather than, and to avoid actually addressing with those same underlying issues. Again, it doesn't matter which particular drug it is you're talking about, legal or not, it's still "drug addiction". An "alcoholic" is still abusing "drugs", and therefore is a "drug addict", just because it's a legal drug in most countries it doesn't make any of that any less true. And yes, I've also lived with enough "alcoholics" to know that too BTW.

So are you saying that because it's legal and/or the government and/or society doesn't normally call "alcohol" a "drug", that it's somehow not a "drug" ? Well, beg to differ, really do...

Thankfully nobody lives within even 100 meters of my home but can you explain the mechanism of wireless access to a wired keyboard? I'm assuming you don't mean via "normal" WiFi features in laptops, modems and routers. There is no WiFi in or out of my Main PC. Even my printer, though networked and WiFi capable, is wired to my Main. Access to and from the wired network is prohibited to and from WiFi, other than my Main can access and toggle WiFi in all external modems and routers via the wired connection.

Not to belabor the point but people are still tossing about the word "addiction" much like other common and popular pejoratives like moron, tard, boomer, gay, and pedophile, just to name a few, with little regard for the exact definition of the words. They are employed in inexact ways exactly to be a blanket negativity or dismissal.

Addiction occurs where brains have actual sensors where similarly shaped molecules cause a similar reaction to the naturally occurring internal neurochemistry, and where those reactions are tied to pleasure centers that indicate a "Thumbs up! More of that! Survival!". While there are some similarities in external stimuli that trigger such internal responses, the body has safeguards and limitations that prevent in most cases, over stimulation. Introducing actual chemicals is like a backdoor, for which the body and brain has no defenses. There does exist something of a grey area in between addiction and habit-forming such as the so-called "runners high" or "meditation fasting" where extreme physical activities can cause abnormal amounts of the internal chemicals to be released. Those however don't hold a candle to the compulsion of, say, injecting stimulants or depressants.

The important similarity between mere habit-forming and addictive is the degree of effort to recognize a problem and stop destructive behavior designed to "feed the habit" but actually resulting in a net loss. If people continue to use addiction in the broad brush way common today then it applies to literally everything we prefer - our families, jobs, food, air, water, etc... and the word loses all denotation and becomes mere connotation "wink * wink *.. know what I mean, know what I mean?"

OP wisely chose "security blanket" since that is a formed habit as opposed to a destructive addiction, and one most often easily dropped. Addiction is in a whole other league, but sadly has just become yet another buzzword.