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Technology “Addiction”

jasonfeifer.com

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Re: Technology “Addiction”

#31

Post by grenoire »

louis___ wrote: post #16
dalbasal wrote: post #8

I haven't listened to the episode, so this may be off, but... 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.…

Exactly this. 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…

Seriously, this is about the equivalent of telling somebody with a substance dependence (I think weed is likely the best analogue, with a weaker physiological dependence, that is) to just quit it. These devices are not inhaled, injected, ingested, but they are very much a tool in releasing hormones.

Re: Technology “Addiction”

#32

Post by jrochkind1 »

I always agreed that "addiction" was the wrong word for most/all things that were not chemical substances.

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...

Re: Technology “Addiction”

#33

Post by ultrastable »

agreed that the social media addiction studies are trash, but this is representative of how flawed the understanding of addiction in this discussion is:

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

Re: Technology “Addiction”

#34

Post by jrochkind1 »

TimPC wrote: post #19
dalbasal wrote: post #8

I haven't listened to the episode, so this may be off, but... 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.…

He doesn’t argue that the behaviours aren’t harmful at all but rather often manifest as a coping mechanism for another condition. He thinks it’s a dangerous idea to treat social media addiction as something to treat directly rather than something that likely indicates another problem. I don’t think it’s perfect because actual addictions are often caused by other problems (ex. Depression). I really wish the expert was…

Hm, in my observations and reflections, most addictions are in part coping mechanisms for something else.

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?

Re: Technology “Addiction”

#35

Post by ultrastable »

"Nir Eyal: The vast majority of people stop playing these video games. Do you think people are still going to be playing Fortnite and Candy Crush in 10 years or so? Of course not, they'll be doing something else once they get interested in other things that they decide to pursue. So, if it's really the behavior this technology is doing to us, that shouldn't make sense. They should be addicts for life, but that's clearly not what happens."

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

Re: Technology “Addiction”

#37

Post by ethbr0 »

jl6 wrote: post #28
ethbr0 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Broadly speaking, I tend to think of "addiction" (rightly or wrongly) as the errosion of free will. 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…

Feels like you are drawing a distinction between harms, and recursive harms. 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.

That's a good, simpler way of putting it: summing over all harms, including future ones.

For single act harms, future terms don't exist.

And for recursive, add in a probability weighting, if one wants to be pedantic about modeling.

Re: Technology “Addiction”

#38

Post by twodave »

ultrastable wrote: post #35

"Nir Eyal: The vast majority of people stop playing these video games. Do you think people are still going to be playing Fortnite and Candy Crush in 10 years or so? Of course not, they'll be doing something else once they get interested in other things that they decide to pursue. So, if it's really the behavior this technology is doing to us, that shouldn't make sense. They should be addicts for life, but that's clea…

True--still, with many things (I'd say anything besides actual hard drugs) it's easy to confuse casual use with addiction. "Spending a lot of time" playing a video game is NOT the same as skipping meals, lying, self-isolating and losing sleep to keep playing.

Re: Technology “Addiction”

#39

Post by travisjungroth »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #32

I always agreed that "addiction" was the wrong word for most/all things that were not chemical substances. 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…

> Through that process, I started to see a lot of similarities between my use of social media and my use of cigarettes.

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.

Re: Technology “Addiction”

#40

Post by slibhb »

dalbasal wrote: post #8

I haven't listened to the episode, so this may be off, but... 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.…

> People rarely prostitute themselves (or others) for tobacco though

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?

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