Amy, a 27-year-old software developer, has struggled with disordered eating since she was a teenager. “But after learning to code, I got much better,” she said in a research interview. “I often code for ten or more hours without stopping.” Her psychiatrist, however, worried that Amy has replaced one compulsive behaviour with another.

“Digital addiction” is often used to describe our relationship with smartphones, social media and other digital technologies. This way of thinking suggests that people get “hooked” on digital activity because their body becomes “addicted” to dopamine. It borrows from models of substance addiction: the focus is on the physical need to keep using a substance because the body has adapted to it, despite harmful consequences. The implied solution is straightforward: abstinence, which translates into practices like digital detox.

But Amy’s story, which forms part of our ongoing research, points to a more complicated reality of our relationship with digital technology. Coding consumed much of her time and attention, yet it also helped her earn an income and build a professional identity. Like many forms of digital engagement, it was not just a distraction but a way of navigating life.

As research shows, for many people digital technologies are not only a source of entertainment but key components of their education, work and social mobility. Unlike in the case of addictive substances, opting out of digital life is easier said than done when schools, banks and public services increasingly require it.

How people relate to digital technology isn’t just about them as individuals. It’s shaped by their personal vulnerabilities, but also by digital environments intentionally built to hook us, and by the wider social conditions people live in.

So comparing smartphones to substances like alcohol, tobacco or drugs can be misleading. It overlooks the fact that digital devices have become a kind of essential infrastructure for daily life. Given how we have built our lives around them, these technologies are now very difficult to live without.

How, then, do we develop a sustainable relationship with technologies such as smartphones that are both indispensable and potentially harmful?

The sugar model

Amy’s story with disordered eating may be useful here. Recovery from an eating disorder isn’t about eliminating food altogether, but about learning to live with it.

In the same way that we cannot remove food from our lives, it is also difficult to remove digital technologies from our everyday. So the challenge becomes developing ways of living with them.

Take, for example, sugar. In many countries, foods high in sugar are subject to a wide range of public health measures. Think national food safety standards, public health interventions, school nutrition policies, limits on advertising. So it’s not about focusing on one thing only. Rather, it’s the interaction between all of these interventions that shapes patterns of consumption and impacts wellbeing.

A similar approach is needed for digital technologies. At the level of state and industry governance, this includes regulation of platform and design – particularly when it is aimed at capturing and holding users’ attention.

Just as food labels describe ingredients, nutrition and additives, digital products could disclose what data they collect, what algorithms they run on and what psychological techniques keep their users engaged.

The UK’s decision to ban social media for under 16s while continuing to expand digital literacy and coding education reflects an important point: not all digital technologies are the same.

“Digital use” cannot be treated as a single category to be either embraced or banned. Like sugar, the question is not whether children should have it at all, but what kinds, in what quantities, and in what conditions.

Beyond counting calories and screen hours

Just as sharing a meal with family affects people differently from eating alone, playing games with friends is not the same as scrolling endlessly through social media. Both count as screen time, but they create very different social and emotional experiences.

Reflecting on our own digital habits remains important. But tracking screen time is like counting calories: it tells us how much, but not necessarily why. We have to ask ourselves what role digital technologies play in our lives.

Are they helping us work, connect, rest, escape, cope, feel less or more alone? Without this kind of reflection, self-tracking risks turning a complex social issue into a matter of individual self-control.

Understanding digital technologies through the lens of food rather than addiction shifts the emphasis in important ways. Both are domains where necessity, pleasure, risk and social obligation are intertwined, which is why abstinence may not be an adequate, long-term response.

Instead of treating excessive technology use as a matter of personal discipline, approaching them like some foods locates it within broader systems of design, industry governance, state policy and social practices. The challenge then is to integrate these different levels to make life with digital technologies sustainable.

Tanja Ahlin receives funding from the Dutch Research Council (NWO), Grant number VI.Veni.241S.150, https://doi.org/10.61686/EWUXQ23921

Xin Zhan receives funding from the University of Cambridge.

The first moment you look inside a newly discovered ancient tomb is at once exciting and terrifying. I was fortunate to experience this recently as director of an international research team carrying out fieldwork in the Theban necropolis, a Unesco world heritage site near the modern Egyptian city of Luxor.

Our project’s primary aim is to implement a conservation and risk management programme for the necropolis (burial ground) of Lower Sheikh ʿAbd el-Qurna. Due to its location at the foothills of the Theban mountain, monuments in this area are extremely vulnerable to flash flooding from intense bursts of rain.

To direct this floodwater away from the tombs, we are systematically removing debris and excavating the area, using archaeological techniques that ensure all historical information is preserved. This is how we came across this previously unknown, roughly 3,000-year-old tomb.

As we prepared to enter it, we had no idea if the ceiling had collapsed, if the tomb had been looted or destroyed, or if it was still well preserved.

Its layout is typical of Theban elite tombs dating to the New Kingdom period (ca. 1550-1069 BC). At this time, Thebes (now Luxor) was Egypt’s capital and main religious and political centre.

The tomb features an outer courtyard, rock-cut chapel and subterranean burial chambers. The well-preserved courtyard area includes a mudbrick platform with a niche for a stela (upright stone grave marker) and staircase with ramps on either side, giving access to the tomb.

Once inside the rock-cut chapel, we noticed its walls are decorated with vivid paintings of the main tomb owner adoring various deities in shrines, and also sitting with his wife in front of an offering table laden with bread, beer, fruits, meat and flowers. Based on the iconography and painting style, we determined that the tomb dates to the Ramesside period (ca. 1292-1069 BC), named after the many pharaohs called Ramesses in that era.

This was a particularly exciting moment. These wall paintings offer invaluable historical details about ancient Egyptian daily life and society. They also shed light on the tomb owner’s position in the Ramesside hierarchy, and on the other family members buried here – plus, potentially, later reusers of the tomb.

Identifying the tomb’s owner

The vast Theban necropolis, comprising an area of around 10km², was Egypt’s main royal and elite cemetery for half a millennium, from ca. 1550 BC onwards.

Situated opposite the city of Thebes on the west bank of the River Nile, it features many world-famous historical sites including the Valley of the Kings (a burial ground for pharaohs including Tutankhamun and Ramesses II) and Valley of the Queens, plus hundreds of private elite tombs, royal memorial temples and remains of royal palaces.

Our team has been carrying out fieldwork here since 2018, in close collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

Based on a first analysis of the painted decoration inside the tomb, we identified its main owner as a male official named Paser. However, the paintings are covered in a layer of dirt. Once they are cleaned by a conservation specialist, we expect to find out more about the identities and personal narratives of the people buried here.

One of the main research questions associated with our fieldwork focuses on the question of tomb placement and tomb reuse – for which the newly discovered tomb carries important scholarly significance. It will help us explain why in the Ramesside period, officials such as Paser chose to reuse, modify or build tombs adjacent to the monuments of the preceding 18th-dynasty elites.

Specific questions we will try to answer include: how did features of the ancient mortuary landscape (including proximity to processional routes, tombs of relatives, or monuments of special cultic importance) influence the placement of these tombs? And what influenced the decision to reuse them for burial, rather than building new ones?

A race against time

Unfortunately, our work is something of a race against time. As a result of climate change, the frequency and intensity of flash flooding is expected to increase significantly in the coming years here.

This poses a major threat to the tombs in this area. Flooding can lead to immediate, extensive damage such as moisture-activated growth of salt crystals, loss of painted decoration and, potentially, structural collapse. So, one of the most important aims of our project is to implement a preventive conservation and risk management programme that safeguards these monuments for future generations.

At the same time, these activities also allow us to explore this area archaeologically for the very first time, revealing the historical and cultural development of the Lower Sheikh ʿAbd el-Qurna necropolis. Up to now, this area has barely been studied in comparison with famous nearby sites such as the Valley of the Kings and the large temple complexes of Luxor and Karnak.

But our ongoing research shows that Lower Sheikh ʿAbd el-Qurna is rich in archaeological material. This includes exquisitely decorated tombs that offer a unique glimpse into the daily lives, funerary beliefs, artistry and monuments of Egypt’s ordinary people and officials over many centuries.

The project led by Carina van den Hoven is funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation, and it also receives funding from the Luxor Archaeological Heritage Foundation. A proof of concept study on the digital documentation and material analysis of the ancient wall paintings in Theban Tomb 45 was funded by the Netherlands Institute for the Near East and the Leiden University Centre for Digital Humanities. In 2017 Carina established the Luxor Archaeological Heritage Foundation, a non-profit organisation aimed at providing financial support for the Dutch archaeological expedition to the Theban Necropolis.