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Comment by bityard | Hacker News Reader

> 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.)

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> 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.

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.

I have wondered if this is materially different from previous generations children sitting glassy-eyed in front of the TV? I certainly spent at least a couple of hours a day doing that as a kid, with the added minus of having little control over what was on, or any way to block advertising... I suppose it did expose me to a lot of things I wouldn't have voluntarily sought out, though.

A couple of hours a day isn't great, but it's probably fine. That leaves you plenty of time for other things. Some kids these days spend far far longer than that in front of screens.

I agree with your view on the addictiveness of media, exept that the addiction has no root cause. My experience with alcohol and other substance abuse problems is that there is always an underlying psychological root cause. I beleive the same to be true of media addiction; excessive use to the point of "addiction" is escapism from some psychological distress.

I think this is completely wrong, our brains have reward pathways and someone could just as easily be escaping mild boredom rather than psychological distress. I have known a number of opiate addicts, including myself for a time, and in all cases it was triggered by a prescription due to an accident, or experimentation among otherwise exceptionally happy kids. In two cases this resulted in the person's death by overdose. Now, eventually the addiction did cause psychological distress, certainly, but I disagree categorically that there has to be some underlying psychological root cause.

I think I follow your logic, but I think it has an ommission. Using your model, how do you explain the majority of people who use addictive things with no issue, they have reward pathways the same as the "addicts". Are there not other factors that make the difference between a user and an abuser of something?

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?

With all due respect, kindness and context that I do not know you, your kids, family context, views or environment.

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.

My kid goes through phases. We don't restrict or give any special attention to the device and he is free to use it as he wishes apart from just before bedtime. He will go through phases of using it more or less or sometimes not at all. There have been months where he never turned it on once. Given that computing is such a massive tool for life I'm not sure why you think your kids using a computer is a negative thing?

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