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Comment by resonious | Hacker News Reader

Lately I've become convinced that video games and social media are in the same class as drugs and alcohol. They're a pretty fun way to kill time, but some people are predisposed to doing too much, and too much is dangerous.

Also similar to drugs/alcohol: it seems to affect some people more than others. I know people who can check FB/TikTok for a couple minutes and then they're done, and I also know people who continue to scroll Instagram while cooking. It's very similar to how some people can knock down some beers a couple times a month socially, but some people end up in a vicious spiral of drinking every single night.

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> video games and social media are in the same class as drugs and alcohol.

Disagreed - one key aspect of the latter is physical dependance where withdraws are potentially life threatening.

It's similar sledge hammer approach to putting weed on class 1 or treating all wrong doings as 'sin'.

They are not the same things, should not be thought as the same nor treated the same.

The concept of physical vs psychological dependence is kind of outdated, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EaiP31qWf0

I don't see anything wrong with talking about a video game or social media addiction. Of course it's nowhere near the same level of danger as a heroin addiction, but if it's counter-productive and there's the same kinds of behaviors involved, it can be a useful model.

Just the same, you can be addicted to coffee. Caffeine is a drug. It's not expensive, and it's not known for tearing families apart, but it builds a tolerance, it produces a withdrawal, and people will change their behavior to get access to more coffee, may become aggressive when they can't get access to it, etc.

If you think that you waste too much time on social media, then just like with drug addiction, there's a question of first realizing/accepting that this is even a problem at all. Then, once you've realized that there's a problem, you might want to think about coping strategies, replacing social media with other activities, developing healthier habits, etc. And just like with a drug addiction, you might find quitting cold turkey difficult.

> physical vs psychological dependence is kind of outdated

I wouldn't say outdated, but I do agree it is 100% up for debate.

Kurzgesagt did a really similar video[0] on addiction, but the basically walked it back from such a hard line stance in a correction/update video[1]. It's not so easy to tease apart the social vs the physical vs the pure mental.

> Just the same, you can be addicted to coffee. Caffeine is a drug.

Right, I think you're agreeing with me. That they have similar aspects, but to treat them the same - like putting caffine on Class 1 - would be insane.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdJAQZxJ6vY [1] https://youtu.be/JtUAAXe_0VI?t=224

I'm assuming you mean schedule 1. Nobody is suggesting that coffee should be placed in that category.

I don't think there's a problem in society with people equating coffee or videogames with highly addictive drugs. It's more the opposite. People don't realize that addiction is something that could happen to them, or that they have an addiction to something. Alcoholics and drug addicts often live in denial, even when it has really damaging consequences in their life. So, if someone is addicted to something that's not widely considered addictive, it's even easier to deny that this is even a problem.

When the idea of an addiction to porn or videogames is brought up in an online discussion thread, people are quick to dismiss that this even is a real problem. Consider though that gambling addiction is very much real, and a lot of gambling takes places with machines that are effectively simple videogames. Addiction to video games isn't as devastating, because you're not losing huge sums of money, just time, but presumably, the addictive mechanism is more or less the same.

> The concept of physical vs psychological dependence is kind of outdated, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EaiP31qWf0

You are conflating two terms here. Addiction (which is what the video is talking about here) is a set of behavioral patterns. I agree that the line between psychological and physiological in addiction is blurry. But addiction is not the same as dependence, which is about tolerance and withdrawal and is purely a physical phenomenon.

To give some examples, when a person misses work because they are drunk or when they spend their rent money on heroin, that is addiction. When a person has seizures because they haven't had a drink in two days, that's dependence.

I agree with GP, video games may be addictive but there is no physical dependence like there is with alcohol or, as you pointed out, even caffeine.

What about the way that people who scroll a lot lose their attention span, can't sit still without stimulation etc? Maybe dependence isn't exactly the same thing, but there is some kind of physical change happening in the brain, no?

>one key aspect of the latter is physical dependance where withdraws are potentially life threatening.

No, it isn't. Only a pretty small fraction of drugs that can have physical symptoms of withdrawal have potentially life threatening withdrawal.

Are you kidding me? Have you not seen people die from selfies?

Anyone can become addicted to anything and suffer the same consequences peddled by religion for "drugs". There is no argument against this, humans can programme themselves just as opiates, pathways are pathways.

My ex-wife was a Doctor with PTSD from being raped (she was raped by a doctor who was drunk, then raped by a physcologist who treated her, got her pregnant, then forced her to give up her kid) (med school, what a cesspool!)

She was addicted to gaming AND social media. They were the only way she could stop thinking about her PTSD which haunted her everyday. She is a functioning Senior ER doctor. She had all the same symptoms as my mate who was raped by an uncle when he was a child and consequently took up drugs in adolencence. he gave up drugs. She hasnt given up gaming, or scoail media, and she is only a trigger away from killing someone on the ER table due to it.

FYI i found out we were getting a divorce because she unfriended me from FB. Are u kidding me? What an ADDICT! Threatened to kill herself unless i had a baby with her. That was my last straw. She couldnt do a sh*t in the morning without scrolling. Somehow FB status was more real to her then life. Least she have a moment to recollect her trauma.

That's absolutely terrible for everyone involved and sorry to hear what's happening to you. Finding out a divorce via FB unfriend is pretty nuts.

I mean things can be addictive. I used to smoke hella weed and was dependent on it to function. Basically I was addicted to wake and bake and just be high all day. I was still “functional” to others but to myself I was miserable and a husk. I was going to the dispensary every couple days and spending forty bucks. I’m not saying weed is bad, but like anything else moderation and control are required. Now I just smoke on very special occasions like my bday or getting a promotion/raise. But let’s be real while accepting that some people (like me) can get addicted to some things.

I never got hooked on nicotine or alcohol. Nor on video games. But I’m sure some people do get sucked in and feel like crap.

Very few drugs have life threatening withdrawal symptoms.

Alcohol does but you have to abuse it to an extreme degree to reach that level. Most people with issues around alcohol are a huge distance away from getting dangerous withdrawal symptoms.

I will never understand how people moralize behaviours rather than outcomes. Drinking every night is fine if you don't do it to excess. A beer or two, or a glass of wine with dinner, or a nightcap, doesn't hurt anyone. Drinking every night to the level where you're damaging your health is a problem.

Having a few beers a couple of times a month is great. Binge drinking a couple of times a month to the point where you harm yourself or others is a problem.

It doesn't matter how often you do it. It matters what happens when you do. The time frame is essentially unrelated.

Two beers a day is very, very dangerous according to my girlfriend, a social worker.

All I can say is that mindset is more important than amount consumed. Just look at depressed people drinking, a single beer already makes the person more likely to become an alcoholic. yet two or thee beers every evening wouldn't suddenly create an alcoholic out of me.

My partner is a therapist and strongly advocates having a glass of wine with dinner most nights.

Two drinks each night versus one is quite a difference. It's double the amount of alcohol!

Current recommendation from the Netherlands Nutrition Centre:

> It is advisable to refrain from drinking alcohol, or to consume at most one glass a day. This advice applies equally to men and women.

> Moderate consumption of alcohol at one glass a day may reduce the chance of getting certain chronic diseases, but also raises the chances of getting breast cancer for women. Drinking more than one glass a day, is not beneficial at all, and has negative effects on health. It increases the risks of having a stroke; and getting breast, intestinal, or long cancer.

> The potential benefits of alcohol do not outweigh the negative effects on your health.¹

(Personally, I drink only in the weekends; usually one glass, occasionally two. It prevents making a habit out of it.)

1: https://www.voedingscentrum.nl/encyclopedie/alcohol.aspx

Two drinks each night versus one is quite a difference. It's double the amount of alcohol!

2 bottles of 5% abv beer has a little less alcohol than 1 normal sized glass of 13% abv red wine.

How are you calculating that? One standard 330ml bottle of beer at 5% has a little less alcohol than a standard pour (150ml) of 13% wine. As soon as you move to a pint or 500ml can of beer you go over it. This is why a glass of wine and a bottle of beer are taken as roughly equal in terms of alcohol content.

    330×5% < 150×13%

A glass of red wine is 250ml.

That would get you exactly three glasses from a bottle. That's… not a normal pour of wine in any country.

A standard size bottle of wine (750ml) serves five or six glasses, but the hospitality industry usually goes for five out of a bottle. 150ml (or 5oz) is what you can reasonably expect in restaurants and bars for the average glass of wine.

Do you honestly pour a third of a bottle at a time for wine?

250ml is a standard UK measure of wine.

175ml and 125ml are also UK standards but in a lot of places if you order wine by the glass you'll get 250ml.

In the UK that is a 'large' glass of wine. The NHS¹ calls 175ml 'standard' (slightly more than usual) and 125ml 'small'.

For the UK this is all not that relevant, because there the concept of the 'alcohol unit' is much more ingrained and used in public health campaigns, so you would work with those. E.g., with the recommended upper limit of 14 alcohol units, you could drink a standard glass of wine (175ml) six days of the week (12.6 units), or have a bottle of lager six days of the week and a pint of Guinness on Saturday (13.2 units).

1: https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/alcohol-support/calculating-alc...

Unless I've made an arithmetic error, those two American-sized beers (12oz each, 700ml of beer total) contain 35g of alcohol, and the American glass of wine (6oz, or 175ml) has 22.75g. Less alcohol than the two beers, but still more than most people should have on a daily basis.

First of all, drinking alcohol every day is too much if you count your alcohol units.

Second, first you start with a drink every week, then every day, then every hour,... that is how you develop your addiction.

Third, what you suggest is moderation drinking. People who are addicted to alcohol argue that it does not work and complete abstinence is the way to go.

first you start with a drink every week, then every day, then every hour,...

Unless you don't. I've had a glass of wine with dinner several nights a week for the past 20 years, and I haven't progressed to drinking during the day.

People use alcohol as a form of self-medication when they have other problems. If you don't have the other problems then limited regular alcohol consumption is probably fine (I'm not a doctor so I can't say it actually is.)

I agree with you. I do not have that problem either. But it is well known that some people are more prone to addiction than others. So general arguments like "one or two beers every day" is fine, are a bit dangerous.

> Third, what you suggest is moderation drinking. People who are addicted to alcohol argue that it does not work and complete abstinence is the way to go.

And people who are not addicted to alcohol argue that this approach does work for us with no effort, and that blanket advocacy for complete abstinence is moralising based on behaviours rather than outcomes.

Some people have an innate risk of alcohol addiction and should absolutely practice complete abstinence. Some people are at a risk of alcohol addiction due to their personal circumstances and the culture they live in and, while abstinence is not the only solution, it's probably the only feasible one. Some people have a tendency overdrink on occasion due to their personalities and social lifestyles, but they do not need complete abstinence to keep this under control and can do with intentional moderation. Some people enjoy social drinking and even getting a bit tipsy sometimes, but outright drunkenness feels so terrible for us that we are at no risk of alcohol addiction and see no point in practising complete abstinence ourselves.

Everybody is different.

I’d agree with you. It is in a similar vector.

The problem with that is that, different to drugs, social media is not regulated (in terms of UX and manipulation of behavior/emotions).

Social media is allowed to make their platform as addictive as they possibly can. You’re not allowed to create and sell a drug that is perfected for addiction.

Social media and video games are sort of a Wild West in terms of regulation, and I think we’ll have to see some in the next years to combat this.

The question is if these vectors of addiction are compounding or if it always affects people who were prone towards addiction anyway. My hope is the latter. Not that having a population of 10%(?) addictions isn't tragic, but it's better than eventually having a population of 90% addicts because we eventually offer personally tailored addictive products at scale.

The common denominator is of course dopamine, and drugs, social media, video games, etc, all offer an easy and reliable hit.

Every single thing you do involves dopamine. The difference with drugs (of which alcohol is one) is that they directly manipulate your brains neurochemistry. Nothing you perceive with your normal senses does that. Even sex doesn't have the same addictive effects as direct chemical manipulation of the dopaminergic neuronal populations. The idea that they are the same is very dangerous for society and will lead to the use of violence to control people where it is definitely not warranted.

Offline video games are healthier than social media IMO. They need focus. They leave you feeling rewarded after playing; the ones that don’t aren’t addictive (for me, at least). Either they have some finite (and usually short) content, or they become boring after playing many hours in a short period of time. (I guess this isn’t true for some people, and they should stay away from such infinitely playable games.) They leave you with fond, distinct memories. They don’t influence your worldview and politics overmuch. They can inspire your creativity and imagination. …

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