[HN Gopher] Digital Addiction: Focusing on the Cure, Not the Dis...
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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.
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