People are (and should be) questioning the use of the word addiction. One of the components of addiction is: is it causing a harmful, unwanted effect on one's life? OP laid out his:
> I've been struggling with my mental health during the summertime, a time I traditionally have fewer problems. I wasn't recharging like I should. I was waking up tired, napping during the day, and generally not feeling at all prepared when the day started.
Yet, some people do activities excessively, even compulsively, but they're not addicted because it's not causing them any harm. My elderly parents have the TV on 16 hours a day, basically from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed. It's CNN and cooking shows and blah blah blah just to have a head on a screen talking in the background. It irritates me, but they're not addicts. Same with my daughter and YouTube. Streamers talking about nothing for hours, but her grades are great, her social life is fine, she's healthy and growing properly, so I can't really object. Some people just like to have blah blah blah as background noise all day, and I've come to just accept that it's not for me.
> People are (and should be) questioning the use of the word addiction. One of the components of addiction is: is it causing a harmful, unwanted effect on one's life?
Meriam Webster's second definition doesn't mention causing harm:
> a strong inclination to do, use, or indulge in something repeatedly
So, according to the way people typically use the word "addiction" and the literal dictionary definition of the word, it doesn't need to cause harm to be considered an addiction. I can readily admit that I'm addicted to coding. I feel a compulsion to code for ridiculous amounts of time, and that has caused a lot of good in my life. But, like with everything in life, there needs to be balance.
People typically also say things like watching youtube gives them dopamine hits and they will get rid of their addiction with a dopamine fast. The problem with using the word addiction is that there are two possible outcomes. Either the word becomes weak and stops having the seriousness it should, similar to how OCD now can mean liking organation or people associate the action with all of the negative connotations of addiction. The second happens more often, as observed in this thread, and people start shaming you, and casting and projecting their moral judgement on you based on an inconsequential fact.
Fundamentally it prepetuates the older generation mentality that screen use is the causes depression, dismissing the underlying struggle people face. If someone comes out and says they are depressed, someone will respond, "oh, you're watching too much youtube, you'll stop being depressed once you stop." It happens with every shift in the most popular mainstream technology.
That second definition is likely derived from colloquial usage. The closest parallel diagnosis from DSM is probably Internet Gaming Addiction, which does require harm or unwanted effects.
The colloquial definitions get silly. The second definition for "literally" is "not literally".
If you are using a word by its most common definition then sure. Addiction has more casual definitions in the dictionary.
Language evolves and the word addiction has evolved. It's used casually all the time like this blog post although there's no formal diagnosis.
Your examples bring up a good point. Many parents have the TV on all day in the background because they were raised with it. Many kids today will likely have streamers on all day as they grow up because they were raised with it.
It doesn't matter if they are good citizens or doing well in life, you can argue the perspective that it could be "harmful" if using the most common definition that many common mediums (radio, TV, internet, live streaming, etc) removes the sense of reality from people and promotes them to engage in consumerism/capitalism. That can be pretty harmful over the course of one's life although it's non-obvious.
I personally like the definition of addiction from David Foster Wallace. I couldn't manage to find the exact quote, but it's something like:
Addiction is when something purports to solve the very problems it creates.
Certainly not a standard definition, and might not be true in every case, but an interesting way to think about it. In the case of Youtube, watching videos might seem to solve the problem of loneliness and disconnect with the world, while actually exacerbating those problems.
DFW and his work definitely helped shape a modern definition of addiction. Much of the work I linked were inspirations to his work and ideology. I think most famously, DFW did not have a TV because he knew about his addictive personality and wouldn’t look away.
> I've been struggling with my mental health during the summertime, a time I traditionally have fewer problems. I wasn't recharging like I should. I was waking up tired, napping during the day, and generally not feeling at all prepared when the day started.
Yet, some people do activities excessively, even compulsively, but they're not addicted because it's not causing them any harm. My elderly parents have the TV on 16 hours a day, basically from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed. It's CNN and cooking shows and blah blah blah just to have a head on a screen talking in the background. It irritates me, but they're not addicts. Same with my daughter and YouTube. Streamers talking about nothing for hours, but her grades are great, her social life is fine, she's healthy and growing properly, so I can't really object. Some people just like to have blah blah blah as background noise all day, and I've come to just accept that it's not for me.