I personally think one problem with this article is their cult following of science. I guess there isn't conclusive scientific evidence that social media or video games are addictive or detrimental to you. But should I wait possible decades for more conclusive research? I rather not. I know I have been addicted to video games and it has negativity impacted my life.
The reason people are making these 'assumptions' about social media/video games being addictive is because they can see it in their own life and the life of others. The 'hard science' this guy is talking about just hasn't catched up.
Concentrate not on the games but what it replaces. Is it a lack of community? No other outlet to feel skilled and successful? The goal isn't merely to stop playing games, it is to find more healthy but similarly satisfactory replacements (but maybe in a longer timescale). What thoughts are you avoiding, are you in some kind of guilt cycle etc? A key part is to know: your life afterwards won't and should not be merely your current life minus games. That would be terrible and frightening probably. But no, the goal is to feel satisfied through other means. Another thing is to recognize that you are in a local optimum. Perhaps it is a (short-term) rational choice to play games in your situation. To escape the local optimum you'll have to temporarily go through a worse situation where even the only thing you derive real joy from is taken away. Furthermore, it could be that your way of life is a local optimum within a pretty large volume of alternatives. Meaning that it might well be that the current social culture around you isn't giving you much better options, depending on who you are, ie society might be incentivizing this behavior through the state of dating, decaying communities, attention economy, consumerism etc. Still, wouldnt it be better to find it out yourself? For my disagreeable personality, I find it useful to feel hostile to the creators of these attention black holes, these exploiters of young men, and feel viscerally repulsed by what they are doing in the name of profit to destroy a generation. This is no way to live, it's like being a domesticated zoo animal. We are destined to more than this.
Of course a therapist specialized in the area can give better concrete steps.
PC games are tough because I built my PC for everything - VR, mining, development, etc. It can run just about any game, and I have hundreds in my Steam library. The tough part is that I see it as a valuable asset for other things - makes it hard for me to want to sell it, but if I were to get rid of it I doubt I'd miss gaming much. I've found that unplugging it and putting all the components in a closet makes it not worth the effort to play a game. I only break it out for projects.
I used to play phone games a lot on while commuting in NYC. Since I moved away and don't have that commute time, I uninstalled them all. That quick satisfaction I'd get from dumb games like candy crush or whatever, is no longer alluring. The "wins" are unfulfilling, and the ads and annoying upselling are enough of a deterrence to keep me from installing any games.
My only advice is to remove your access to them, or make it not worth your time to access them. You'll quickly find other ways to fill your time.
Just about every gaming experience I've had is feels like an unfulfilling time sink, but until you feel this way, it will be a tough temptation to break.
I don't have any actual advice for you. Some people swear by cognitive behavioral therapy. I prefer to manage my various negative tendencies myself. Sometimes the pendulum swings too far and I pay a price, and that tends to bring me back to a state of equilibrium.
You first need to find what you would like to do outside of gaming, things like reading, exercising, learning an instrument or a language, and so on. Then force yourself to do those things regularly, just half an hour or a hour each day. Even better if you find somebody to hold you accountable and nag you when necessary. As a reward for being "good", allow yourself to be "bad" and play videogames.
I work my ass off during the week, exercise, read literature, study Chinese and meet friends. I achieve enough during the week not to feel bad if I spend most of the weekend playing. The weekend session can be a good motivator during the week, but you have to be disciplined.
I say this as someone who handled it poorly as a teenager and young adult--I eventually overcame the addiction by replacing it with a more social hobby (guitar), after a lot of self-isolation and lost sleep. Trashing my computer would have been a far quicker way, and my life would look completely different today if I'd done it.
Is 'addiction' to social media the same as an addiction to heroin? No of course not. But it is evident that some people have great trouble to not have it control their life to a certain degree. If addiction is defined as "a brain disorder characterized by compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli despite adverse consequences" I think you could argue that some people are addicted to social media. Just because you're not injecting something into your bloodstream doesn't mean it can't be an addiction, many lives are destroyed by gambling addiction for example.
Also from the blurb:
>discover who really has the power to break these supposed “addictions.” (Hint: It’s you.)
It's always you who has to break the addiction. I don't see how this makes it an "addiction" instead of just an addiction without the scare quotes.
I'm glad the comments here are quoting addiction to social media rather than technology. If the tech wasn't connected to real people providing input I don't think these people would care.
I'm probably an outlier (though maybe not so much on HN) that I'm more addicted to computers as an extension of myself and can easily go without touching my phone or social media for a day and much less so my PC/laptop.
Video games short-circuit our reward center with achievements, making the effort involved in feeling a sense of accomplishment much less than it should be.
Pornography and casual sex short-circuit the effort involved to consummate a fulfilling relationship with something much less than it should be.
Drugs short-circuit the process of personal growth, removing pain and introducing happy feelings that don't align with our current situation.
Food as a drug can combat feelings of loneliness, though the effects of the resulting obesity can drive us to isolation.
None of the feelings or sensations brought on by these things are inherently bad or wrong. They all share in common the fact that chasing after pleasure or sensation puts the cart before the horse, as if one could actually be fulfilled by these things instead of them being effects caused by the real things, those things we're short-circuiting. Addiction fine-tunes the brain so that real, wholesome things start to seem unfulfilling, even boring. It's a real shame because those real, wholesome things are often the only way out.
‘Addiction’ is a complicated and loaded term, which may or may not be helpful. Sometimes, it’s more question of examining one’s life and making the very difficult choices necessary to be happy in the long run.
It’s also an insightful point that, when ‘addicted’, normal or moderate behaviors can start to feel meaningless - as if they would lead to an intolerably dry life. Trusting this will not be the case is important when making a change.
our broad use of the word “addiction” can cause real harm.
I would say that the opposite is (at least) as harmful. Quantifying and medically defining addiction narrowly has led to a lot of harm. Smoking is extremely hard to kick, with some first handers claiming that its worse than heroin. People rarely prostitute themselves (or others) for tobacco though. Which defines or quantifies addiction?
Withdrawal symptoms of severe alcoholism are among the most dangerous, and deadly, much worse than cocaine. That doesn't quite capture what addiction is though. Withdrawal symptoms are short lived, and addicts of many substances are extremely likely to regress well after this part. Cannabis can be habit forming. There are no withdrawal symptoms, and motivated quitters seem to have good success rates... even returning to moderate use. OTOH, it is a very common experience that someone decides not to consume... but does, repeatedly, with impacts on other areas of life.
We know that context and comorbidity is very important.
I think there's no doubt that technology creates impulsive & compulsive behaviours, that people want to stop, but fail to.
It's all complex. There aren't real dividing lines between procrastination, self discipline issues addiction and such. People call it addiction because it walks and quacks like addiction. I'm more inclined to say that research definitions are incorrect that layman ones. If a researcher narrows the definition to observable neurochemistry or withdrawal symptoms, excluding other addictions with similar behavioural effects... who is wrong here?
That said, I haven't listened. Adding depth and nuance to our understanding of different addiction (or addiction like) experiences may be useful.
The "discover who really has the power to break these supposed “addictions.” (Hint: It’s you.)" rethoric is always pushed by lobbies for industries who do not want to be considered responsible for the harm their products cause.
For example, MacDonalds and other fast-food producers have been pushing that in order to fight rampant obesity, people should do more sport, rather than have limited access to deeply addictive, processed and sugary-filled foods.
So individuals are not responsible for their decisions? I personally would rather not live in a world where my choices are artificially limited by someone's idea of what is "good for me". I'm perfectly capable of deciding for myself, and willing to accept consequences of my mistakes.
Did they forget to put the "addictive" additive in mine?
Misusing the word addictive to mean "things that aren't beneficial, and can be detrimental in excess" is not helpful to anyone.
People who are depressed self-sabotage in a wide variety of ways. They sleep all day. Maybe overeat. Maybe sit flicking through TikTok all day. Some even clean endlessly. That doesn't mean any of those things are "addictive".
This whole discussion borders on parody. People with zero responsibility or self-control screaming that they have no self direction and need their world corralled and constrained for them. Beyond bizarre. And apparently these amazingly addictive ingredients only work on Americans, who seem to lack any self-reflection or inquisitiveness as to why that is.
I read a Robertson Davies trilogy for hours last night. Probably stayed up a little late. Blame it on Big Books and the Book Cartel for Addicting me like this.
That said, this is also true of heroin addiction. It is highly related to other, often social, malaises. This has been experimentally proven in rodents. Lonely, unhappy rodents are far more addiction prone. It has been observed in people too, notably the vietnam war example.
I don't even think there is a common treatment for alcoholism anymore that doesn't relate to "underlying" issues. AA, and related group therapies are all about creating a supportive community. Social isolation is a major factor in addiction.
That's kind of what I meant. These hard lines don't exist, and I think many that do exist for research purposes. Hard to study something that isn't discreetly defined. Physical withdrawal symptoms were once a primary researchers' definition of addiction, even though addicts rarely think of it that way.
So I think what he's saying about treating the gaming "addiction" without attention to the underlying trauma being coped with -- probably applies to actual/other addiction too, rather than being a distinction?
I'm sure they would if tobacco was as hard to get as heroin.
We often find ourselves in this position where we have to choose between a broad and a narrow defintion (for addiction in this case). Maybe there is no right way to decide but I'd say we've been too often going with the broad definition. We tell ourselves "there aren't real dividing lines" and this becomes an excuse to expand definitions. One problem with this is that broad definitions are often less useful. In the worst case, expanding a definition results in meaningless (consider words like fascism and terrorism).
If addiction is "impulsive & compulsive behaviours, that people want to stop, but fail to" then anything can be addiction. Is that useful? I don't think so, I think it trivializes the concept and if that definition sticks, we'll have to come up with a new word. That's fine, I guess, but do we gain anything in that process?
There's also no problem defining and measuring addiction using discrete definitions such as withdrawal symptom severity, rehabilitation success rates or neurochemical signature. The problem arises when researchers (or anyone) then believes that this is the definition of addiction, when in reality it is a definition contrived for the purpose os (valid and useful) research. In a different context, it might be useful to think of these as indicators of... Usefulness is contextual.
Discrete language is fine. It just isn't the way we communicate normally, and it's impossible to use only discrete language to describe things we don't understand fully.
Because it's easier to get tobacco. Just ask someone, or pick up left-over pieces from the streets and build a new cigarette out of it. It's what I see certain homeless people doing all the time.
If someone wilfully chooses to take a substance / perform an action that has subsequent negative effects (potentially including detoxing), then that seems a fair individual decision.
If someone takes a substance that destroys or decreases their future ability to choose not to take that substance in the future... that's a completely different level of danger.
... I'm not sure which categories social media and mobile gaming fall into.
My gut says if it's not the latter yet, then that's only because we / they haven't gotten there yet. Because the latter is obviously a more lucrative business to be in.
Once you start seeing people locking away their smartphone, because they don't trust themselves to abstain or moderate... that's very clearly an attempt to impose their own will on themselves. Call it whatever you want, but it's a lot like a scene from trainspotting.
I don't claim to speak for all addicts, but this is not how I would describe my experiences, at least not under my conception of "free will".
I "wanted" to stop doing drugs in the same way a lazy person "wants" to go to the gym more. whenever the moment came to actually do it, I had to admit that I didn't want it nearly as much as I said I did. sure, I wanted the "outcome" of quitting, but in the meantime, I really wanted to keep doing drugs. so I did.
every day I had a clear goal in mind: getting money and acquiring drugs. I was fairly strategic in pursuing this goal; I was even capable of abstaining for a while (eg, to pass a drug test) if it increased the security of my future supply.
I was in and out of treatment for a while (primarily to appease others), but I ultimately stopped doing drugs because I didn't want to anymore. this happened rather suddenly, over the course of just a few months. a few areas of my life improved simultaneously, partially through my own efforts, but partially just luck. I now lead a fairly normal life.
anyways, the reason I type all this out is because I really don't like it when people describe addition this way, especially if they aren't/weren't addicts themselves (not assuming anything about you in particular). depending on what you think "free will" is, it may be more or less accurate. but it is usually a prelude to an argument about how addicts aren't competent to make choices for themselves and how society should Do Something About It, usually involving curtailing the freedoms of people unfortunate enough to be identified as addicts. addicts don't need to be controlled or disciplined (unless they are hurting others, of course). they just need to reach that tipping point in quality of life where drugs don't seem so appealing. at least that is my belief, based on my own experience and observations of others going through it.
Harmful things can be analyzed; the risks can be quantified and weighed up against the benefits; the downside can be limited.
Recursively harmful things - which not only cause harm but precipitate further rounds of harm - are harder to analyze and have potentially infinite downside.
I suspect if we continue on the path of criminalizing tobacco use, this could change... That isn't a difference between the two drugs chemically, I think, but between their social contexts (specifically criminalization/expense).
Not really a fair comparison of addictive qualities. If heroin were legal, regulated, and priced accordingly, no-one would prostitute themselves (or others) for it.
Because you can walk to an ashtray and pick out cigarette butts, which is about as dirty as the prostitution.
pretty vapid. someone could have an unhealthy unrelationship w/ games w/o literally playing the same game for a decade lol. and in any case, saying "they shoudl be addicts for life" shows this guy isn't at all up to date on addiction science. most addictions resolve themselves after a period of time
But then i quit smoking cigarettes, which was very challenging, and involved really paying attention to my relationship with smoking and how it made me feel and why I did it. Through that process, I started to see a lot of similarities between my use of social media and my use of cigarettes.
The way I used them both as a procrastination, or distraction, device, or to avoid being alone with myself. The fear of what I'd find do if I weren't doing them, how I'd have to find something. The way I reached for both to calm me down, even though they didn't necessarily have that long-term effect. The generally compulsive feeling of them both, difficulty just "deciding" not to do them or even to take a break, and then following through.
> For a lot of people, you can realize that the gaming is actually a coping that is displayed to face with social anxiety or trauma or depression.
Oh yeah, and that so much described my smoking too! (Not an ultimately long-term successful coping mechanism, but an attempt). And definitely a part of addictive relationship with say alcohol for other people I know. I think that is actually common to (substance) addiction for many people, that it's in part related to coping with anxiety or trauma or depression -- rather than this being a distinction from addiction? I mean, surely this is born out by research, it seems such a commonplace of recovery narratives, right? His protestations of the ways technology use is different from addiction just make me think "gee, that sounds a lot like my experience and what I've heard of others experiences of (substance) addiction!" This is in fact the real center of what made me realize social media use did feel like an addiction, that both it and smoking were related to coping with things like this for me.
I am sure there are many ways they are different as well as similar, but I definitely now (and didn't use to) see why people reach for that term to describe "technology" and other non-substance "addictions".
I still haven't managed to quit social media...
My experience is that they're not just similar, they're the same. The tug of a vape pen and the tug of a phone are indistinguishable from another except for the object they point to. If I didn't have one on me, I'd reach for the other.
I wouldn't go so far to say exactly the same for me, the "withdrawal" feeling of not having smoked a cigarettes was stronger for me than anything with social media, providing another dimension. But yeah, I identify with what you are saying, the circumstances and feelings around reaching for one or the other were very similar for me too, and with both of them I'd decide "I'm going to not use them for X amount of time" and then renege on my agreement with myself when the feelings arose. I still haven't quit social media...
There is a dangerous threshold where the stimulation becomes so easy it threatens our everyday lives. My sister in law is a kindergarten teacher. She says kids ask her on a regular basis how to get their parents to talk to them instead of looking at their phones.
So there's room for improvement, but I hope that being intentional in carving out at least these handful of times every day is something.
Joel Billieux: For a lot of people, you can realize that the gaming is actually a coping that is displayed to face with social anxiety or trauma or depression.
Jason Feifer: Let's say someone comes into a clinic, their gaming usage meets a certain definition of addiction, it is having a negative consequence on their social, family, or occupational life. But a trained clinician like Joel, must be able to look underneath those symptoms and find potential other issues.
that doesn't mean something's not an addiction! substance misuse is almost always a coping method, and one that's masking other issues. I don't believe "gaming addiction" is a big problem or even necessarily real, but it's a little annoying to see these guys critiquing the scientific failures of a particular discourse then demonstrate how flawed their own understanding of addiction is
The thing this podcast didn’t seem to address is the fact that moder social media is A/B tested for maximum engagement. Similarly, modern videogames are way better designed and more compelling than those 20 years ago. This makes a huge difference to how hard it is to stop engaging with this stuff!
I may be in the minority, but as a 36-year-old I think the opposite is true. As a teenager I was very loyal to just a handful (3-5) video games, with one in particular (Subspace, later known as Continuum) taking up most of my playtime. In those days it was actually the community that made games sticky. I would feel as if I were letting real people down by not logging in.
Today's games just feel like another job. For me, this started with games like WoW but the feeling has matured since. There's just nothing satisfying to me about a grind. I still like the odd casual game and even the occasional complex game, as long as it doesn't feel too much like work.
Of course, that was also 20 years ago, so I've also changed a lot in that time.
This is especially true in most modern “service based” games. Fortnite is an obvious example where there are certain rewards and upgrades that can only be earned by playing every day, and playing at least X hours per season, etc.
I would probably put the quotes around Technology above, rather than Addicted. Could be it's the pathology expressing itself and whatever the technology is is only tangentially related to what's going on.
To my mind this can all be in a similar silo to gambling or love addiction. How different is a slot machine from many games?
Just my 2 cents and not a professional analysis.
But the tech we have now is coming through much faster - there is no way that we can play with it in our 'natural' way (over years) and overcome it. I think it is an overwhelming change.
With technology "addiction," there is a lot of first hand experience. People consider themselves addicted, and can't stop doing X without external help or abstinence devices.
If someone wants, tries and fails to abstain from anything, is that not an operative definition of addiction?
Words are what we choose them to mean. When I spend hours in front of screens, I don't feel like I have made the best use of my time and I feel like I have been somewhat manipulated in those actions. It does feel like nothing. To me its a negative feeling. 'Addiction' encompasses that mixed feeling, where on reflection I seem to have acted against my own interests.
I'm not even keen on trying to find another word for this - I actually want the negativity associated with a term like 'addiction'. I'm not a masochist, but I don't want to start justifying what seems like bad behaviour as if it was a good thing.
Growing up I spent a lot of time on AIM and then texting with one of those keyboard cellphones, but I only messaged with my immediate friend group - so it was limited for the most part to a specific after school window. My grandfather's day used to revolve around his favorite radio shows, but those had a set air time. When they were over, they were over.
Getting invested in books or video games is a bit different, but even those were limited in the sense you would have to pay for each particular book or game, or at least make regular trips to the library.
Now a days there is 0 cost or inconvenience to obtaining more content, with no real time restrictions. So it is all too easy to not realize how long you've just spent on social media or to stay up much too late scrolling on your phone. Filling time with your phone is the path of least resistance moreso than it is something to look forward to.
I think the fact the content has no clear stopping points also contributes to that feeling that you haven't actually done anything after hours on social media. Obviously it is not productive time, but it somehow manages to feel like nothing.
Smartphone addiction, for example, is a very real thing and causes similar effects to drug addiction.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03064...
I classify this as "not so much." I'm fairly familiar with "addiction," in its classic sense, and this doesn't really bother me.
There's no doubt that "gamification" (karma, scores, like/dislike, rate, etc.) is designed to increase users' reliance on a UX. It works. I'm as cynical as they come, and it works on me. It feels like addiction, and putting it aside is uncomfortable (otherwise known as "withdrawal"). Is it seizures, massive cramps, and shitting myself? No, but it is uncomfortable, all the same.
It reminds me of Marie Nyswander's classic "broken brain" theory. That's the one where the doctor, in their lab coat, looks at you all serious, and tells you how your "brain is broken," because of your irresponsible behavior (gotta have the moral judgement there, dontcha know), you have destroyed your brain's capacity for creating endorphins/serotonin/brainjuice/whatever, and you are going to have a lifetime of agony and pain, unless you let them prescribe "Addiction-B-Gon™," the $500/month "nutritional supplement."
Here's the trick. Get them to give it to you in writing, on their letterhead, with their signature at the bottom. Exactly what they told you, verbally; that it's a permanent condition (as opposed to the few months that research proves happens anyway).
The "broken brain theory" has been applied to all sorts of deviant behavior. I've seen it used to explain drug addiction, alcoholism, kleptomania, pedophilia, sexual promiscuity, gambling, video game addiction, shopping addiction, eating disorders, political affiliations, reading too many pulp novels, heavy metal/hip-hop/swing music preferences, etc.
It's like a pseudoscientific Swiss army knife. It's one of those things that pretty much personifies the H. L. Mencken quote: "There's always an easy solution to every human problem; Neat, plausible and wrong."
The problem here is that the non-clinical “addiction” is a valid definition. It appears in the dictionary (see #2 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/addiction). People actually understand what it means accurately as well, nobody is getting confused and hearing the clinical definition. I’d agree that researchers into social media problems should avoid it, but the misuse is not by and large confusing or misleading most people.
Instead of discussing the validity of the popular meaning, it’s framed and titled as “not addiction”, which just plays on the confusion of the term rather than clarifying or offering alternatives!
“Caffeine addiction” is routinely thrown around, and everyone knows what it means. People who know the clinical term say that there is “caffeine dependence”, not addiction. This episode didn’t offer any alternative words for what social media is doing, it just stayed stuck on “not addiction”. They could have suggested talking about dependence or habit forming or compulsions or a weakness for social media. The author could have guided the discussion towards establishing the right terminology for what social media does, but instead chooses to re-emphasize the idea that “addiction” is the wrong word over and over again.
> The hallmark of addiction is that it interferes with social or family or occupational life. But when you use social media or the internet, you are generally participating in your social or family or occupational life.
This is an unfortunately dismissive and pretty misleading framing IMO. We all know that the harmful sides of social media are exactly the parts that don’t involve family and occupation life, and that those parts of the internet are enormous. The article discussed Netflix, which doesn’t involve social interaction. YouTube is mostly not friends talking to friends. Qanon didn’t happen because people were talking with their family and co-workers.
