Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s almost exactly like a slot machine. You scroll down, and get a randomly scheduled “dopamine hit”.
But can we say that unpredictability is what makes it so addictive?
Could I interest you in an article about it?
Is social media more like cigarettes or junk food?
51–60 of 75 posts
Re: Is social media more like cigarettes or junk food?
#52I think most of the people overemphasize the harmness of social media. I actually find connecting with my real-life friends a meaningful and satisfying experience. But things are getting worse once I started to follow influencers and those I don't know in my real life.
More and more social media sites don't let you just follow "your friends".
They start automatically shoving suggested accounts in your face along with ads. On Instagram and FB both every 3rd or 4th post is a "suggested page". Also the algorithm has deemed that I don't need to get posts from the actual real people I follow unless I specifically go to their pages to see.
Re: Is social media more like cigarettes or junk food?
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
> cause a biochemical reaction in the brain? That's rather meaningless. I don't think there's much of anything you can look at, or do, or think about, without brain activity being somehow involved. What with the brain being where thoughts live.
I mean there is the introduction of a chemical into the blood stream that acts on neurons. This does not happen with screens and speakers. It is not meaningless. In fact it's a super important distinction. By pretending that multimedia can directly alter someone's behavior you throw out the entire idea of human volition. Even if it were true on some level our entire legal code and indeed western society is based on t…
I’m going to try with a counter argument here that might seem trivial at first but encourage you to think a bit more deeply on it.
Multimedia consumption does directly alter your behavior.
You see an add for fries and you want fries and you go out and buy and eat them. If you hadn’t watched that video you wouldn’t have done that. Yes, it was still your choice to do so (avoiding the question of free will), but it was also the choice of the addict to shoot up one more time. Seeing the burger introduced psychoactive chemicals (endogenous ones): dopamine is one of the most relevant and well understood.
And to be clear - it’s not unique because it’s related to food and therefor a substance you put into your body like a drug. As others have pointed out gambling and porn addictions rely on similar mechanisms, and doom scrolling/compulsive news checking are tied to the same chemical mechanisms in the body.
From a medical perspective this is pretty well understood. Social expectations and norms that feed into regulations and laws are wildly subjective, so it’s not surprising that there is a lot of inconsistency in how and what is regulated and illegal when looked at from the perspective of biological mechanisms.
Re: Is social media more like cigarettes or junk food?
#54Do people not actively curate what they like? E.g. using more of "Not Interested". I generally follow artists because they have great taste. I am very religous in disliking if a particular post is not benefitting me in consuming it.
Some platforms don't pay much attention to these instructions. LinkedIn is impervious to my suggestions.
Re: Is social media more like cigarettes or junk food?
#55I think most of the people overemphasize the harmness of social media. I actually find connecting with my real-life friends a meaningful and satisfying experience. But things are getting worse once I started to follow influencers and those I don't know in my real life.
More and more social media sites don't let you just follow "your friends". They start automatically shoving suggested accounts in your face along with ads. On Instagram and FB both every 3rd or 4th post is a "suggested page". Also the algorithm has deemed that I don't need to get posts from the actual real people I follow unless I specifically go to their pages to see.
This. Old Facebook was okay. Planing parties with friends, connecting with people you haven't seen in years and so forth. But when I noticed they put suggested posts in my feed and just hiding posts from friends, it wasn't worth the time anymore. Also lot of other problems (showing off how good your life is to get likes and so forth. Just a lot of tiny issues)
Re: Is social media more like cigarettes or junk food?
#56I think most of the people overemphasize the harmness of social media. I actually find connecting with my real-life friends a meaningful and satisfying experience. But things are getting worse once I started to follow influencers and those I don't know in my real life.
Did you read any books about it?
Re: Is social media more like cigarettes or junk food?
#57Technofeudalism
Re: Is social media more like cigarettes or junk food?
#58Depends. I have quit social media, cigarettes, and nicotine at large. Nicotine was the easiest, cigarettes the hardest.
Ironically (pure) nicotine is not that bad for the health, it’s just really addictive so it have been added to cigarettes for just this. It can even have some good benefits if you are chronically stressed. I wonder if it could be an alternative to benzodiazepines for occasional use. I never took nicotine so I don’t know how quick the addiction would come. With benzodiazepines it’s a really hard addiction but not if y…
The problem with nicotine is the instant effect. If you use patches, the take up and let down is so slow as to not be noticed. Inhalation is much more addictive. Quitting is actually super easy, just a couple days of irritability. YMMV. If you want to try nicotine, anything but oral/lingual is ideal.
Re: Is social media more like cigarettes or junk food?
#59Junk cigarettes - it has the addictive quality of nicotine.
Re: Is social media more like cigarettes or junk food?
#60On the basis of the headline alone, I would say "cigarettes" because I have quit two different social media sites using the technique described in the book "Allen Carr's Easy Way To Stop Smoking"
Wouldn't this be consistent with social media being easier to quit than both junk food _and_ cigarettes? Given that, I'm not sure how can conclude which of them is more similar. As an alternative take, my understanding of the difference between cigarettes and junk food is that cigarettes are more physically addictive than junk food (which at least to my naive medical understanding is more of a "psychologically addict…
At least according to the “Easy Way” book, the physical addiction to nicotine only lasts on the order of hours. The book makes a compelling case that cigarette addiction is primarily psychological.
Alcohol, on the other hand, is physically addictive and the horror stories that I have read about alcohol addiction have been pretty upsetting.