Addiction can be better understood as a compensatory response that emerges when the boundaries structuring everyday life begin to erode. Image generated by AI

In modern society, autonomy, self-discipline, and self-realization have increasingly become universal social expectations. People are expected to plan their lives, regulate their emotions, and continually improve themselves. Yet alongside these expectations have emerged not truly self-disciplined and self-sufficient individuals, but a proliferation of exhaustion, anxiety, helplessness, and various forms of dependence. From alcohol and drugs to shopping, smartphones, and short-form videos, the inability to stop is no longer merely an individual predicament; it is increasingly becoming a pervasive feature of everyday life.

The most common explanations for these phenomena still tend to focus on the individual: weak willpower, poor self-control, or a lack of self-discipline. Existing research has pointed to profound connections between addiction and poverty, unemployment, and social exclusion, yet the inability to stop is hardly uncommon even among those with ample resources. Addiction, therefore, cannot be understood solely as an individual failure; it must also be examined in relation to the conditions of life in contemporary society. What kind of social environment has turned the inability to stop into an everyday phenomenon across social strata?

Discussions of addiction are often quick to identify a culprit: nicotine in cigarettes, ethanol in alcohol, or an individual’s lack of willpower. Yet people and things never encounter one another in a vacuum. Rather than asking only what such encounters produce, it is equally important to ask what people rely on them to cope with—and how life would be organized in their absence.

Whether someone can stop depends not only on the desire to do so, but also on whether other possibilities remain once they have stopped. Addiction, in this sense, is not simply a psychological state within the individual. It is also a relationship of dependence formed and sustained through the interplay of people, objects, technologies, and particular circumstances. This becomes especially apparent once technology is woven into the fabric of everyday life: The inability to stop can no longer be reduced to a question of willpower alone.

The entanglement of people and technology is particularly pronounced today. QR codes are ubiquitous, messaging apps have become basic infrastructure for communication, and the boundary between being online and offline is increasingly difficult to draw. In many cases, asking why someone cannot stop going online is much like asking why a fish cannot leave the water. The issue lies not simply in the fish’s will, but in the fact that water constitutes the conditions of its existence. Platforms, in this context, are no longer merely external media; they have become part of the infrastructure through which everyday life unfolds.

The same perspective can be applied to forms of dependence that appear more “traditional,” such as alcohol. Alcohol is certainly a substance capable of producing dependence, but its material properties alone cannot explain why giving it up can be so difficult. In many settings, alcohol is not merely an accessory but a medium through which social relationships are conducted: It can open the way in social engagements, provide an outlet for stress, and give expression to emotions that are otherwise difficult to articulate. The difficulty of quitting, therefore, lies not only in breaking free from alcohol itself, but also in reorganizing the patterns of life that have formed around it.

Seen in this light, the distinction between “internet addiction” and “traditional addiction” may be less clear-cut than it first appears. Neither is simply a relationship between an isolated individual and a particular object. Both are structures of dependence that take shape within particular networks; what differs is the composition of those networks. This does not mean, of course, that individual agency is unimportant. Some people are indeed able to establish boundaries for themselves. But if the social support and living conditions required to sustain those boundaries are overlooked, and the question is reduced once again to why an individual cannot exercise greater self-control, an issue that properly belongs in the public sphere is once more recast as a personal failure.

Addiction deserves attention not simply because more and more people appear unable to control themselves. It points to a deeper contradiction: Contemporary society continually demands that individuals manage themselves while simultaneously creating environments from which withdrawal is increasingly difficult. Self-control, as a result, is no longer merely a matter of character or willpower. It increasingly depends on whether individuals possess the practical conditions necessary to set meaningful limits on their own lives.

This is where the difficulty becomes most acute. People are not unaware of the importance of moderation, nor are they inherently resistant to boundaries. More often, the problem is that boundaries themselves have become increasingly difficult to establish. A sense of proportion has come to be treated as something individuals are expected to cultivate entirely on their own, leaving them to rely on personal willpower to resist mechanisms that continuously generate dependence. The responsibility for setting limits is thus pushed back onto the individual.

This may be the most intractable aspect of contemporary addiction. It is not simply a matter of desire running unchecked, nor merely a failure of willpower. Rather, it reveals a broader dynamic: The more individuals are expected to maintain the order of their lives entirely on their own, the more likely they are, amid exhaustion, to turn toward something capable of providing immediate support. Addiction, therefore, is not always an accidental lapse. In many cases, it is better understood as a compensatory response that emerges when the boundaries structuring everyday life begin to erode.

Su Hao is from the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Nanjing University.