Myths and exaggerations about technology addiction (2020)

Worth noting that the post this is on a blog run by a professor who achieved success by selling a book on how to make your product addictive, [1] and after this became passé he wrote a second book on how individuals can resist the distractions of the products that use tricks like the ones he peddles in this first book. [2]

I'm sure there is good and interesting science about the pros/cons of screens and social media, but I wouldn't turn to this fellow's blog to get an unbiased view.

1: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LMGLXTS/

2: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07PG2W6DC/

I’m going to head the likely discussion off the pass: like articles on nutrition or fitness, discussions on screen time inevitably devolve into share-fears where everyone is describing and possibly advocating their own lifestyle approach, and it’s very subjective.

And that extends to responses to TFA. Personally, I think this article does a fine job dispelling some of the hysteria around screen use. But on the other hand, it probably goes too far towards minimizing the effects of ubiquitous hyper-stimulation. Part of it is segments like this:

> A popular view is that screens are like cigarettes—the less you consume the better. That simply isn’t true. A more nuanced comparison would be that screens are like food—it depends on what you’re consuming and how much.

But that’s a straw man. No one is talking about the dangers of Khan Academy or Duolingo. They’re talking about the addictive nature of social media and other infinity pools of content and engagement. That’s what the danger of screens is about.

Eh. Some solid points in there, but I feel the overall conclusion may be a little too..diffusionist.

We should absolutely keep a critical eye on pop science, check for bias and straight lies. We should absolutely be aware of the concept of Moral Panics and see our own opinions in light of that, yes.

But does that mean technology addiction is actually confined to the small realm of literal digital gambling?

Since this discussion is already chock-full of metaphors, let me make one as well: I am currently in Italy, where a good dinner is usually accompanied by a good wine. Say I am an alcoholic - would this kind of drinking I just described be the core of my addiction? No. Would it, in itself, be even negative? No. Would it be a good idea for me, the alcoholic, to refrain from all drinking, including this? Absolutely fucking yes.

Just because technology can't be called "universally bad", just because this kind of addiction is new and hard to measure (no pendant to measuring tobacco residue in the lung etc.), does not mean it does not exist.

If I may paraphrase the Wikipedia definition here, addiction is strong behavioral urge despite negative consequences.

So, maybe smartphones do not alter the literal (biological) attention span. But what about your ability to do deep, concentrated work? Mine definitely got fucked, and I can point at root causes.

So, maybe we haven't established causality between screentime and depression. But I will tell you what you can't do when your first and last interaction of the day is checking notifications: Quiet and serene self-reflection, or any other kind of self-therapy approach.

Maybe my anecdata is an outlier, but I can certainly correlate less screentime with happiness, monetary success, romantic satisfaction, sleep quality and psychological health quite clearly, down do an amount of screentime way below what's considered average.

/rant

This was longer than expected, maybe my point is just: Absence of proof is not proof of absence.

> So next time you spot a headline that warns you of the disastrous mental health effects of digital technology or how the internet might degrade your mental capacities to those of a lake-living vertebrate, remember these common journalistic fallacies. If it sounds too sensational to be true, it most likely is

It seems like the writer is really splitting hairs here. So someone who doesn't gamble online but doomscrolls Twitter is not addicted to something? The author seems to avoid the meaning of screen time (e.g. gachas, reddit, etc) with a literal interpretation of the word. This particular quote strikes me as rather weird given the credentials of the author:

> The fact that phone use triggers dopamine releases in the brain is sometimes used as an argument that tech companies are hijacking our brains. Screens are often compared with hard drugs, and are frequently called “addictive.” The thing is, everything that makes you feel good involves dopamine. Receiving a text from your grandmother or ticking off an item on your to-do list also triggers a release of dopamine, so does having a tasty meal.

This reads like a Phillip-Morris headline on the reason "cigarettes aren't any worse than soda". There's a distinct difference between the dopamine hit I get in order to fulfill a biological necessity and one I get because of UIs designed in a lab. If it wasn't dopamine these ad agencies are targeting why do many studies produced by them mention increasing the addictive ability by raising rewards? The science is pretty much conclusive on spaced reward mechanisms. The author here seems to be deliberately obtuse, going so far as to commit the same fallacies they are trying to show are misunderstood.

Sometimes I wish blog posts had to state conflicting interests. Something smells fishy here.

I feel the need to offer anecdotal to such a subject though I realize this perhaps does not carry the same weight as scientific studies yet I think it is still important.

A few months ago, I met up with a friend I hadn't seen for 2 years. Often, and for the entirety of the bus journey back home, I saw him scrolling through his phone. When this first occurred, I thought maybe he had received a message from someone, or that there was something important that he needed to do. I become curious so I ask him what he is doing. His response? "Oh, I'm just looking at Instagram." Perhaps it could be concluded that this is just the behaviour of one individual but I think behaviour like this is becoming increasingly more common.

I have endeavored in recent times to stop using my phone so much. In particular, I have completely removed Instagram, and Twitter from my phone, both of which feature endless scrolling. I absolutely do not regret doing so, nor do I miss these apps. Instead, sometimes I might read a book, or an article, or perhaps I'll just do nothing, and reflect on the day, and what I'm going to be doing next. And I think the issue with technology is that there's always something to do. With a newspaper, eventually you'll read everything you're interested in, and you'll stop. Same with a magazine. But when you're scrolling through Twitter, there is always something to keep you engaged, and to stop you leaving. And this is not by accident but rather it is intentional because, of course, the more time you spend on the app, the more ads you see. I now feel so much better mentally when I stopped such apps.

There are, of course, benefits to technology. If that weren't the case, I would not be here now. But I am a bit concerned that we are indulging to much in the distractions that technology brings rather than the amazing things it can do for us.

The author makes some good points about the media not being scientifically rigorous, but really doesn't offer any evidence to support their claim that claims about tech addiction are wrong. In reality, all they are proving is that "some" claims are exaggerated or unsubstantiated.

Cynically, this "guest post" was published on a blog by the guy who wrote the book "Hooked: How to Form Habit-Building Products". It's a brilliant book, and you can use the patterns in it to build good products, but a lot of the patterns in there underpin the foundation of many of the dark patterns we see in products today.

A lot of us might feel that tech is a net win, even with all the addiction and privacy concerns, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't always try to do better. That's what tech is all about. Tech isn't like "real life", we can change things without major effort and disruption. Constant improvement is normal in tech.

Dopamine might be natural and healthy, but the problem isn't that we are excited about the next episode of a show. The problem is that we scroll 30 second YouTube shorts that we aren't excited about.

Endless scrolling is a real problem. It's basically made for disposable content. The way FB is designed makes everything ephemeral unlike older forums.

I am perfectly fine with 99% of tech. I like the fact that I no longer have to use paper notebooks. I like that a phone, laptop, and e-reader can replace about half the functional items people used to have. I don't even mind being tracked everywhere I go. I've been helped out plenty of times in random situations by looking through the records of everywhere I go that Tile, the bus system, and Google have of me.

But clickbait is close to straight up false advertising. It's counterfeit entertainment, more addictive but less enjoyable than regular media. And it's absolutely everywhere, taking up time and resources that could be better spent on a million other things.

If there's a problem, we should fix it. It's not like we couldn't change Facebook. It's not like environmental issues where everything is connected and production comes with pollution.

Tech is mostly holonomic and we could get rid of a lot of the super addictive elements without much change. Just fire the behavior engineers or whatever they're called and get normal UI people to design what consumers actually want.

> The fact that phone use triggers dopamine releases in the brain is sometimes used as an argument that tech companies are hijacking our brains. Screens are often compared with hard drugs, and are frequently called “addictive.” The thing is, everything that makes you feel good involves dopamine. Receiving a text from your grandmother or ticking off an item on your to-do list also triggers a release of dopamine, so does having a tasty meal.

Dopamine is not cocaine in the brain. Its release is perfectly healthy and natural.

A bit OT, but I'm frequently annoyed when "dopamine" itself is frequently portraied as a bad thing and only mentioned in connection with drugs or addiction - when on its own, it's really just part of the mechanism how positive feelings are "physically implemented" - no matter if those positive feelings come from having completed your phd or having a drug high.

I wonder if that connects with some general unwillingness to see ourselves as biological beings unless illness or unwanted behaviour is involved.

Might be interesting to make a "dihydrogen monoxide" style hoax which calls for a total ban on dopamine, post it on Facebook and see how many people would support it...

“The root of addict in latin is the word addicere, which means religious devotion. It was an attribute of beginning monks. There is an element in the book [Infinite Jest] in which various people are living out something that I think is true, which is that we all worship. We all have a religious impulse. We can choose, to an extent, what we worship, but the myth that we worship nothing and give ourselves away to nothing, simply sets ourselves up to give ourselves away to something different. For instance, pleasure or drugs or the idea of having a lot of money, being able to buy nice stuff.” -DFW

This article just reads as trying to sell more books about how an "addict, err normal distracted person" can be mindful and set boundaries. Strangely this is also the same tactics used with alcohol, gambling, and smoking. All which are "addictive" purely because there's a negative association with them. Why can't you be addicted to things like posting on Hacker News? I'm sure many of us would meet the definition.

I think you have to be careful with just dismissing myths and claiming technology addiction as just "distraction". If you've been on any sort of technology addiction journey / digital minimalism effort in your lifetime, you will probably have anecdotal evidence of many of these "myths" actually having some truth to them. If you're a parent you will probably have noticed by now how your kids act with and without technology.

Myth 1: ”Tech Use Alters the Brain”

Myth 2: ”We Get Shorter Memory and Shrinking Attention Spans”

Myth 3: ”Phones Are Addictive”

Myth 4: ”Phone Use Causes Mental Illness”

Myth 5: ”Screentime Is Bad for Kids”

I taught adults in international settings (i.e. i go on site, to their culture) on and off for the last three decades.

> Studies have found that screen time shrinks people’s attention span to less than that of a goldfish

In my experience, attention span has decreased from 50 to 90 minutes to 15 to 30 minutes in adults in high-discipline-oriented fields.

There might not be a research for the goldfish attention span, but it sure feels like it for me.

The trick is to talk about "screens", rather than e.g. tiktok, facebook, twitter and the like.

Of course the screens aren't to blame.

> If you only hear about the negative effects of screens and social media, the logical solution would be to stay away from them as much as possible. But by doing so, one misses out on the opportunities provided by digital devices, like using tech to supplement connections in the real world or to learn something new online.

People are obviously already aware of the benefits of using devices with screens. We don't need to be reminded that FB helps us reconnect with old friends, or that the internet helps us access information. Why would the news write a story on that?

News stories tell us about the extent to which negative social and health markers have appeared in the wake of social media and smartphones becoming ubiquitous. We can then use that information to decide whether the obvious upsides are worth the potential downsides.

This is a trash article. It's basically a top-level PR guide for denial of responsibility for corporate bad behavior.

People are absolutely addicted to their phones. It's very easy to see: just take it away for a paltry amount of time. Sometimes minutes is all it takes.

The top revenue app-games are all a litany of sunk cost fallacy, gambling dopamine payout ratios, and false identity membership, along with dozens of other approaches to addict people. All without gaming commission regulations like Las Vegas gambling has.

These tactics are being used in completely unregulated form for children's games for all ages.

Social networks strategize and redesign for maximum engagement. What is "maximum engagement" look like? Yeah, that's called addiction, people.

I agree that it would be misleading to maintain that most of us are addicted to our smartphones. My favorite definition of addiction is "a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure" (source: episode 33 of the Huberman Lab podcast: https://podcastnotes.org/huberman-lab/episode-33-dr-anna-lem...) caused by an all-encompassing involvement with a substance or activity. Most of us do not have an all-encompassing involvement with our smartphone that is gradually removing or has gradually removed our ability to take pleasure in anything other than our smartphone.

But smartphones and social media share with addiction a nasty adverse effect: they sap our motivation for weeks after we indulge in them. Pleasure and motivation are intricately connected in the human mental architecture, and it turns out that pleasures that can be accessed easily and without effort tend to sap our motivation (again, for weeks after the pleasurable experience).

Older technologies like television have the same problem, but most of us are smart enough not to start watching television till later in the day, after we've accomplished something that took effort, and probably hours of sustained effort. The big difference between TV and the web or a smartphone is that the web and the smartphone have many practical, productive uses, which gets us to use them early in the day, perhaps just after waking up, but while we are using them we are always only a few clicks or taps away from a diverse range of pleasures that can be had without effort (or with just a slight amount of effort, e. g., reading 10 or 20 headlines on HN that you are not interested in before finding one that gratifies your sense of curiosity) and of course the fact that they're pleasurable cause us to learn to make those few clicks or taps without even thinking about it.

"The problem is not pleasures. The problem is that pleasures experienced without prior requirement for pursuit is terrible for us." (Source: neuroscientist Andrew Huberman in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBwM-mCLQQo)

In conclusion, it is natural for the average person to reach for the word "addictive" when describing social media and smartphones. Even though the average person's smartphone habit might differ from a "true addiction", both are potent sources of pleasure and both share at least one terrible adverse effect: namely, experiencing the pleasure frequently enough will tend to make it hard for the brain to stay motivated by "healthy" pursuits where the reward comes only after sustained effort.

In episode 33 of the Huberman Lab podcast (https://podcastnotes.org/huberman-lab/episode-33-dr-anna-lem...), the person being interviewed (a Stanford psychiatrist specializing in addiction) says that people who go cold turkey on their true addiction find that it takes their brain about 3 or 4 weeks to regain the ability to take pleasure in the normal healthy things, which is the basis for my belief stated above that indulging too frequently in easily-accessed pleasures on the web or on a smartphone can sap your motivation for weeks afterwards. Even if frequent smartphone use is distinct from true addiction, they both have a similar unbalancing effect on the central brain circuit for focus, drive and motivation (which involves dopamine).

ADDED. In retrospect, it would've been better if I had written this comment as an account of my personal experience, but I don't have time for a rewrite, and it currently has 5 points so I will leave it up. I wish I had written something like this: I've been an internet user for over 30 years. Curiosity is a strong motivator for me, and right from the start (30 years ago) I found using the internet quite pleasurable, Usenet newsgroups (then called netnews) being the initial source of pleasure and curiosity-gratification. I've always been aware of the danger of wasting too much time on the internet, but it wasn't till 3.5 months ago that it occurred to me that spending time in pleasurable pursuits on the internet might interfere with my brain's ability to keep me motivated during bouts of sustained efforts for weeks after the internet use. I then (3.5 months ago) put myself on a strict "media diet" and have found that it did increase my ability to stay focused and motivated. The lack of said ability has been a huge problem for me for decades; my ability to focus and persist at effortful tasks is still not great, but it is much better than 3.5 months ago.

"Here's what's happening instead" is invalid addition.