Although experts disagree about what to call them, obsessives over gaming and social media share characteristics with those who overeat or can't stop drinking, taking drugs or gambling—and these
This sort of behavior does seem like an addiction, in the sense of a compulsive, regret-filled pursuit of transient pleasures that are harmful to both the individual and society. For gaming, the personal cost was highest for Swedish men."I am," Berg reported,"now the only male in my graduate program in economic history."
Often they showed signs of more than one. Medical researchers have discovered that substance and behavioral addictions have similar natural histories. They produce similar brain changes; similar patterns of tolerance; and similar experiences of craving, intoxication and withdrawal. And they reveal similar genetic tendencies toward similar personality disorders and compulsions. The manic gambler and the casino barfly are apt to be one and the same.
Libertarians and medicalization skeptics think forced treatment is absurd. The arguments over food addiction—Is it really an addiction like drugs? Is it an acquired brain disease to which some individuals are more susceptible than others?—have cropped up again over internet addiction. Only this time the debate has been messier, because internet addiction includes a much wider range of activities than compulsive eating.
Third, both developments—new bad habits and new outlets for old ones—have been engineered to maximize revenue, data on consumers and time spent on the device or app. Attention is the key corporate asset and behavioral science the means to claim it. For every individual trying to exercise self-control over computer use, pointed out the ethicist Tristan Harris, there are a thousand experts whose job it is to break it down.
Yet boys too pay a price for easy, uncensored internet access. They become ensnared in a loutish bro culture and a world of pornographic fantasy that can result in sexual dysfunction. The reason college men are having trouble getting erections, a male Ivy League student told Sales, is excessive porn use.
The primary danger, particularly with smartphones, is constant distraction from personal conversation, sleep, driving, study, reflection, practice and work, which translates into difficulty achieving or maintaining intimacy, health, safety, knowledge, creativity, expertise and socially constructive flow states.
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