Media addiction is a manifestation of something, not the root cause.
I only partly agree. I have two children. We are loving parents and provide them with a stable house, lots of food, plenty of attention. They have friends, toys, games, books, musical instruments, bikes, and a whole neighborhood to explore. We are an extremely typical middle-class household.
But left to their own devices, they will happily spend every waking hour in front a screen, watching videos or playing video games. There most certainly _is_ something incredibly mentally addicting about passive content consumption. It doesn't need a root cause, just like you don't need one with alcohol and other substance addiction.
(And because this is HN, I am obliged to point out that I'm not saying media addiction can't be triggered by some other factor. Only that a trigger is not required to cause the addiction.)
To use your example of mild boredom: boredom is felt by everyone yet most people choose healthy choices over addictive behaviour. Is there simply some luck in how we are exposed to an addictive experience or do some people seek addictive rewards to overcome some greater pain?
One of the problems with porn is that it's so easily accessible. With alcohol or cigarettes or dieting it helps to have the thing out of site, ie don't buy it. But with porn, you can hop on any of the many available devices and in seconds get access to new videos every day. Also porn is very easy to hide. it's a lot harder to hide cig smoke, being drunk or high.
I think that's the beauty of this app - it has a strong blocker that makes porn not as accessible and the community aspect makes it hard to hide.
In my experience, kids who has plenty of access and exposure to multiple different hobbies tend to chose to spend their time on hobbies rather than passive consumption. I know one example where the parents goal was a minimum of 2 hobbies at any time when the kid grow up so that if they lost enthusiasm for one they can always refocus on the other. Together with school activities, homework, and dedicated (and planed) social time between the parent and child, there simply isn't much time to choose passive content consumption.
Every family is different and it is not a universal cure for anything, but I think it demonstrate that kids do not simply choose passive content consumption out of an addiction. They chose it when it seems like the best option among the accessible/experienced alternatives.
I used to think fat people were fat simply by choice. I mean, they are the only ones lifting the fork, right? But I no longer think it's this simple. We are the result of billions of years of evolution in a world where food was scarce. Those who didn't compete for food perished. Those who ate as much as they could when it was available survived. Nobody got fat because it was simply not possible.
Sex is similar. We are descended from males who mated with as many women as they could. Maybe not all men are like me, but there is a part of my brain that literally wants to mate with every attractive woman I see. Obviously this is not possible for many reasons, but like all men, I do have as much sex as I possibly can, it's just not that much (not more than once a day). But you can read stories from rock stars and the like who do have access to much more sex and it can ruin their lives. This high availability is analogous to the high availability of food in modern times.
Porn provides this high availability for normal people. It's like constantly available junk food. Even if I don't go looking for it, I am surrounded by it everywhere I look. Every other Youtube video is a woman with cleavage in the thumbnail. It's like being a fat person constantly surrounded with a buffet wherever I go. And remember, it's porn. It's not like I'm surrounded by cabbages and carrots, I'm surrounded by cakes and biscuits.
I fail to see how climbing a mountain or starting a business or any of the other wholesome pursuits you might be thinking of would curb the desire to eat or mate. The underlying problem here is deeply rooted in our animal brains. The best way to curb the eating problem is to ensure food isn't available. Don't keep any ready-to-eat food in your house. The best way to curb the sex problem is exactly the same.
> like all men, I do have as much sex as I possibly can
Not quite. We are descended from sexual pairs whose children survived long enough to reproduce. Often, it took at least both mother and father to keep children alive. And human female reproduction selects for males who stick around, primarily by hiding most signs of ovulation, unlike many other mammals with obvious signs of momentary fertility.
But you're not wrong either. Both male and female reproductive strategies want to maximize number and viability of offspring, but the female cost is much higher than the male cost in time and energy, so males can theoretically roam more easily. In the past, mobility and low populations generally limited that ability (though Genghis Khan managed). That's the disconnect between prehistoric and modern humans that porn and dating apps exploit.
Removing all carbs from your home forces you to get out of the house to get junk food. During that time or because of the effort involved you may be able to control your emotions and make a better decision. The problem with porn is that it is so easy to get another way Phone, Another computer, saved locally on your hard drive.