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Comment by Gerard0 | Hacker News Reader

Serious question: are we sure we get a dopamine reward/thing when we do this? Has this been proven?

Not saying this "addiction" does not exist. I like some "drugs" and smoke and my phone is by far the worst and hardest to manage/quit.

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No, it's modern day bloodletting. Dopamine is involved in almost everything and that's why this weird metaphor of 'dopamine fasting' blaming it for random things became popular, however there is no scientific basis for it. (https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/dopamine-fasting-misunde...)

It's not an addiction in any serious sense of the term and it's arguably misleading and disempowering people. Not every habit change needs to be framed as addiction battling.

There's no single definition of addiction. Gabor Mate's sense of the term seems serious enough, and screentime/socialmedia habit certainly fits: a behavior that gives relief or pleasure but in the long run causes harm, and you can't give it up despite those negative consequences.

yes - more and more research is cropping up around the chemical response to social media usage but here's a particularly succinct paper - dopamine reward is absolutely associated.

https://www.iomcworld.org/open-access/neurotransmitter-dopam...

To Barrin's point, the jury is still out on formally qualifying this as "addiction" - and for most people the context of habit change is apt.

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