[HN Gopher] Digital Addiction: Focusing on the Cure, Not the Dis... ___________________________________________________________________ Digital Addiction: Focusing on the Cure, Not the Disease Author : louison11 Score : 20 points Date : 2023-04-24 19:49 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (louison.substack.com) (TXT) w3m dump (louison.substack.com) | amelius wrote: | Digital addiction is real. Some decades ago, when people didn't | have personal audio players and youtube it was normal for people | to sing in the street. Now just look what a pitiful society of | consumers we have become. We are giving up our identities for | more digital crack. | 908B64B197 wrote: | It's interesting that the only jurisdiction doing any thing about | this is China, and they mostly only target online games. | | Games where young frustrated [0] [1] Chinese teenagers could talk | relatively freely with others from different regions of China. Or | god forbid, learn English and have contacts with westerners. | Better to keep them grinding on shaving a few tenth of a second | on basic algebra problems for the Gaokao. That will better | prepare them for the factories. | | At the same time, of course, China pushes CCP-backed TikTok to | American Teens (gathering huge amount of intelligence and data in | the process). | | [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/too- | many-... | | [1] https://www.newsweek.com/2015/06/05/gender-imbalance- | china-o... | superkuh wrote: | The only instances where "digital addiction" is treated serious | are authoritarian countries like China. In non-politically | motivated indices it does not exist. Because it does not exist. | No more than printed newspapers ruined people in the 1800s, | electricity in the 1900s, radio in the 1920s or TV in the 1950s. | This is basically just repurposing of future shock scares by | scammers running "treatment" programs in the west and governments | using it for social control elsewhere. | jack-bodine wrote: | I have to disagree with you. I know people who genuinely spend | 10+ hours a day on the net, completely wasting their time. | These aren't people who are browsing HN for short breaks while | working. These are the people who live in their parents | basements or dorm rooms playing league of legends, watching | twitch or browsing reddit while ignoring classes, education | and/or serious work. | | Newspapers and radio didn't result in people spending 40+ hours | a week following the news. There probably are some people | addicted to TV, but it's such a minority that we don't consider | it an issue. | SomeDog76 wrote: | Just a personal anectode, but I definitly agree. I've very | likely had an average screentime of 8h on the phone per day | for the past the past 10 years of my life. With only few | timeframes inbetween where it has been less. Only this year | it has gotten somewhat better. And I don't think I am the | only perspn like that. | ksenzee wrote: | The term to look up here is "process addiction." You can be | addicted to a number of things that are perfectly healthy in | moderation, such as work, gambling, or shopping. Internet use | falls into the same category. | aaroninsf wrote: | Language of "addiction" or not, | | your assertion is false. There are pragmatic and meaningful | differences between different media and communications | technologies, and these differences have been remarked upon and | considered for decades. | | It is neither controversial nor remarkable nor indeed anything | but common knowledge that algorithmic social media > social | media > online media > televised media > radio > print for a | related constellation of properties--many of which related, by | design, to our relationship and attention to them. | | Our attention and reward systems in specific have been the | explicit and focused target of billions of dollars of R&D and | product testing, with the result that the dopamine pellet | conditioning paradigm of contemporary social media and related | online properties, are literally unlike anything we have | encountered as a species before, and no exaggeration to say, | that we are utterly defenseless in the face of. | | Understanding the mechanisms of attention and reward | manipulation, and of the consequent utility and increasing | application of such factors in service of using these systems | as mechanisms of social influence and behavioral conditioning, | is no defense. No more than understanding the mechanisms of the | appeal to us of fat, salt, and sugar, or for that matter | alcohol, nicotine, or opiates, is. | | There is no defense other than opting out, tuning out, blocking | out. And that is not defense against being surveilled. | | Should we call meticulously tuned conditioned behavior | addiction? Depends on the forum. Addiction medicine specialists | will no doubt have their own opinion. | | For the rest of us, yes, it's obviously and undeniably | addiction, in the lay sense, and this entirely by design. | kelseyfrog wrote: | Just curious, do you happen to have a rubric for determining | whether an addiction is legitimate or not? If so, what is it? | Aaronstotle wrote: | The average American has somewhere around 4 hours a day of | phone screen time, that's a serious issue for society at large. | Tech companies have done exceptionally well at gamifying social | media, which results in more screen time because it gives our | brain dopamine. | | Walk around without your phone, and you'll probably notice that | you find yourself checking your pocket to pull-out your phone, | at least I do. | com2kid wrote: | Every major mobile game company has psychologists on hand to | design mobile experiences that are more addictive than what | would be allowed in American casinos. | | Machine learning and adaptive gameplay ensures that players are | always on the verge of the next dopamine hit, and when the time | is right, a pay to win screen is shoved in their face. | | People spend hundreds of dollars on mobile experiences that | they _actively do not enjoy_ , it is behavioral manipulation of | the worst sort. | | We need more regulation. For starters, gacha game mechanics | should be banned. After that, adaptive algorithms should be | looked into. It is really easy for a ML algorithm to find | someone who is depressed and start feeding them more and more | depressing content, ensuring engagement. Same goes for | extremism of any type, or really any extreme ends of the human | psychological spectrum, except, and this may be a sad statement | on the nature of humanity, of positive emotions, the activation | which do not create long term engagement. | nix0n wrote: | > mobile experiences that are more addictive than what would | be allowed in American casinos | | Does the Nevada Gaming Commission have a specific standard | here, which could be copied by other government bodies? | amelius wrote: | I'm sure that experts can diagnose addiction, e.g. by looking | at changes in the brain using brain scans etc. | Retric wrote: | People do get successful treatment for this in the US. | | Like most additions it's a question of actual harm not the | public's acceptance. Thus millions of regular drinkers aren't | all alcoholics but there are also plenty of alcoholics. When | someone with a reasonable income is losing their house after | maxing their credit cards because they can't stop buying loot | boxes, it's a really obvious problem. | leafstrat wrote: | Your comment is so naive in underestimating these incredibly | powerful devices. | | You can't even begin to imagine what it's like because you're | some old guy but these kids who don't know any difference have | absolutely devastated their reward mechanisms. A newspaper is | easy to skim in a half hour, you might be bored enough to re- | read all the articles if you had nothing else to do. These | devices however are constantly spewing out limitless novel | information which creates FOMO dependency. Youth have had an | infinite supply of 4K resolution stimulation in front of their | faces ever since they could communicate. Persuaded by the | biggest communications platforms to ever exist, and their | algorithms to manipulate emotions and desires. | | These youth have been primed to be constantly engaged consumers | by decades of advertising, technology, psychological studying | and implementation. You are seen as "weird" if you don't have a | social media that is posted on frequently. People cannot focus | on reading a book anymore. People prefer to document an | experience rather than "living in it". | | > Mar 15, 2023 -- According to data from DataReportal, the | average American spends 6 hours and 59 minutes looking at a | screen every day. | blueyes wrote: | Digital addictions are similar to pathologies of food, and unlike | other things we usually think of as addictive, like hard drugs. | That is because, as with food, most of us cannot escape the | digital. Everyday, we are exposed to the thing that also incites | pathological behavior. It's impossible to go cold turkey. People | with food pathologies resort to things like time-bounding | exercises (if it's noon, I can eat). Like processed food, digital | experiences are backed by an industry whose profits are pegged to | how much of us they consume. People with digital addiction are | suffering from a kind of informational metabolic syndrome. | | The cure is harder than the author thinks. "Making our lives so | warm that the digital is dull in comparison" sounds great, but | our phones channel all the vices, titillations, and novelties of | the world. It's actually hard to make that dull. | | I'm not sure there is a cure, but a good approach would be a | digital purge -- take a month off if you possibly can. That will | serve as a dopamine reset, and make many things IRL _seem_ more | interesting. | | Buy a device that limits what you can do, like a lightphone. | | https://www.thelightphone.com | | Barring a light phone, various parental controls... | | Because if you let the digital channel duke it out with the | analog without rigging the game, the digital will keep sucking | you back in. | mnkv wrote: | > The solvents we need in this case are the healthier methods of | fulfilling these longings. | | Terrible take. Algorithmic feeds and ad-tech has continually | optimized how to get and maintain our attention. It is ridiculous | to think "going into nature" or any individual solution is the | answer. We blame pharmaceutical companies for making addictive | drugs, why don't we blame tech companies for making addictive | apps? | haswell wrote: | As someone who has started replacing online habits with outside | habits with some pretty life changing results, I can't agree | with you. | | This isn't to say that social media companies should be | excused, and I suspect only regulation will force them to | change. | | But it's also up to individuals to take an active role in | stopping and finding healthier outlets. For me, that had meant | deleting apps, mostly getting off of Reddit, and intentionally | building new habits that are not oriented around social media. | Getting out in nature is more important than I think most | realize. | | One need only look at the continued existence of | smokers/smoking to highlight that short of an outright ban | (which would cause other issues), the person is really at the | center of quitting. Even if these companies started getting all | of the appropriate blame today, that's not going to change that | people have possibly difficult changes to make. There is no | magic or shortcut that undoes the habit patterns without the | individual choosing to make changes and following through on | implementing them. | hayst4ck wrote: | I am extremely militantly atheist, but I remember growing up with | the church and experiencing community. There were weekly potlucks | and all the church kids would hang out frequently while the | parents drank. There were various clubs like choir you could just | show up and be accepted. | | Today we see things like christian parents abandoning their gay | children, wanting to "cure" trans people, or "christians" voting | for trump and it's clear that religion and therefore, for many, | community has been corrupted by politics. From the outside | religion seems more about hate than love. An irony considering | the teachings of Jesus. | | The internet exposes people to other people all around the earth | who grew up in different environments, it makes clear that | religion is a tradition, not a truth to be measured and | understood, it is clear that region is in decline. | | The tragedy is that what was once a centerpiece of community has | dwindled, and I think we are seeing the effects across society. | Lack of community promotes addiction. | | We used to be born into community and baptized into it, but now | we are left seeking it ourselves without guides like pastors. | Community has been replaced with therapy. What we were once born | into is now something we have to work for and pay for, and I | don't think that as a society we have figured out what the next | evolution of community looks like. | throwaway22032 wrote: | Are you just misremembering the treatment of gay/trans people | growing up? | | In my neck of the woods, being gay was not acceptable, we would | constantly use homophobic slurs, and being trans (not a cross | dresser, but actually changing gender/sex) was treated fairly | similarly to insanity. | | Nowadays, IME most people think that being gay is acceptable | and unless they live fairly rurally or something probably have | gay friends, and mostly people recognise the validity of being | transgender but still find it a bit of an "out there" lifestyle | choice. | | I don't buy the idea that the Christian community were more | supportive of these things before and things have regressed. I | think you just care about them more now for whatever reason. | dragonwriter wrote: | > I remember growing up with the church and experiencing | community. | | While everyone lokes to generalize their church experience as | "the church", the fact is that the experience of the church, | even at a given point in time, varies a lot by particular | church community (parish/congregation/etc.), even within thr | same larger organization. | | > Today we see things like christian parents abandoning their | gay children, wanting to "cure" trans people, or "christians" | voting for trump and it's clear that religion and therefore, | for many, community has been corrupted by politics | | None of this is new. I grew up in great, accepting Church | communities in the 1970s and 1980s, but even as a kid I knew | those weren't the only kind. | | And even then, religious organizations being deeply involved in | and affecte by basic political disputes (on every side) wasn't | new. We (and the institutions themselves) tend to celebrate it | for institutions that were on what is, in retrospect, seen as | the right side, but a view of history that only pays attention | to the history people like to talk about is misleading. | prottog wrote: | > From the outside religion seems more about hate than love. | | I'd wager the view is different from the inside. Communities of | any kind can be condemned one way or another from the outside. | The weekly potlucks and choirs still exist and I'll bet you way | fewer Christian parents (of whatever denomination) see a gay | child as a sin than whenever it was that you grew up. | | > I don't think that as a society we have figured out what the | next evolution of community looks like. | | Honestly, it might look like a society in which people go back | to church. | empyrrhicist wrote: | > way fewer Christian parents (of whatever denomination) see | a gay child as a sin than whenever it was that you grew up. | | Maybe, but I'd need to see numbers - and certainly the | hateful are very vocal. Anecdotally I've watched the moderate | Lutheran church of my parents undergo the same schism between | progressives and regressives we see everywhere else over the | last 20 years. | | > Honestly, it might look like a society in which people go | back to church. | | Perhaps, but that's simply not an option for many. After | losing my religion and continuing to learn about the universe | as seen scientifically, the idea of joining an organization | with a supernatural doctrine is just impossible to imagine. | The idea of people pretending to know such wildly specific | things about the nature of reality without evidence is | viscerally offensive to my sensibilities. | svachalek wrote: | Yes. I haven't been to church much lately but in more | conservative denominations (Catholic, Lutheran) I've seen | direct politics in the pulpit, go vote for this or that | Republican or support "our" party. Having grown up with | "separation of church and state" seeming to be something | everyone could agree on, it gives me chills. | perfmode wrote: | why militantly? | empyrrhicist wrote: | Not OP, but I probably fall at least somewhat into that | category. Most people that feel strongly about their non- | theism seem to do so in response to their direct or indirect | experience with the religious. I grew up in a very Christian | environment, and painfully coming to the realization that my | methods for dealing with existential anxiety were based on | lies made me extremely bitter. | | Even now, after many years of becoming better adjusted and | working on myself I'm still a bit salty about it, and I don't | think it can be good for children to experience. I also get | grossed out, for lack of a better term, at all the self | congratulatory nonsense that goes on in religious | communities. I have no problem with religious people, and | have a number of lovely ones in my life, but if people start | even lightly evangelizing at me my hackles go up quick. | klyrs wrote: | Speaking as one who used to identify in that way: I was | raised adjacent to militant Christians -- they were in my | family, in my neighborhood, in the non-religious third-place | communities I belonged to. I felt the need to fight in the | war that they brought to my doorstep. | giantrobot wrote: | > The tragedy is that what was once a centerpiece of community | has dwindled, and I think we are seeing the effects across | society. Lack of community promotes addiction. | | The Skinner boxes that are engineered into social media is a | huge part of addiction. Social media is filled with digital | versions of the psychological traps found in casinos. Social | media weaponized dopamine. | thaumaturgy wrote: | Maybe you grew up long before I did, but my childhood began in | the late 70s, and I remember Proposition 8 (2008), Matthew | Shepard (1998), satanic panic (1980s and 90s), and I know | people my age and younger that survived conversion therapy | "camps". | | I don't really disagree with the rest of your points, and I can | be convinced that churches have gotten incrementally more | political since 2008, but I don't think the differences are | quite as stark as you say. Churches have been political and | cruel to out-groups for a long time. | | I suspect that some of the perceived difference can be ascribed | to experiencing church as a child vs. experiencing it as an | adult. | treeman79 wrote: | Left wing is all about killing unborn babies. Eradicating any | authority, other than what comes from the government. So God / | religion has to go. Recently openly grooming and mutilating | children. | | Of course Christians are going to move away from far left | positions. | | Study rise of Communist in China, Russia, It does not end well | for anyone of faith. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-04-24 23:01 UTC)