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Comment by Kiln6125 | Hacker News Reader

There are quite a few of these studies from the modern era about the effect that these devices have on children. They posit the exact opposite of what you're saying here, and have data to back it up. I presume that these are what you're referring to as "non-scientific" here and have specific issues with their methodology, and not just disliking the concept that phone/social media could be bad in some fashion.

Can you explain why they are all false?

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I'll put in as much effort in my rebutal as was shown in the initial false statement (very little). In the 60/70s there was this idea that dopaminergic populations of neurons (of which there are many with different roles, but here lets simply talk about the mesolimbic populations in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and nucleus accumbens (NAc). Early electrophysiological studies found that activiating these populations could lead to animal models doing whatever was necessary to get them stimulated again. This lead to the idea of dopamine as the "pleasure chemical". But since then it's been found that in the VTA and (shell of) the NAc the dopaminergic populations don't actually encode for pleasure or reward at all. The reward/pleasure is mediated almost entirely by glutamergic neurons in the NAc, and the dopaminergic projections there from the VTA encode for belief in possible future reward, not reward itself. Dopamine is wanting (prediction of liking), not liking.

Furthermore, the idea that screens are a special type of stimuli that can directly bypass the senses and act like a dopaminergic drug to increase incentive salience (wanting) without there being intrinsic pleasure to the stimuli is absurd and unsupported magical thinking. It needs no special disproval; the burden of proof is on such a wild unphysical claim. Screens are not, and cannot be "addictive". That word has a medical meaning and it does not cover screens. You may object and say, "But what of gambling?" to which I respond, the DSM5+ and ICD10 both have it as "gambling disorder" because it's not an addiction and it's a grandfathered in disorder at that; all by itself. Additionally, the DSM spent the last decade addressing the potential issue of "screens" and each commitee returned with the same conclusion: not enough evidence for inclusion (latest was 2022).

If you really do want to learn the nitty gritty details and see the references I suggest starting with Kent Berridge's lab on affective neuroscience and his review papers, https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/berridge-lab/publications/

I don't think anyone is claiming this:

> Furthermore, the idea that screens are a special type of stimuli that can directly bypass the senses and act like a dopaminergic drug to increase incentive salience (wanting) without there being intrinsic pleasure to the stimuli is absurd and unsupported magical thinking.

Or at least it's not the damning point you're making it out to be. I think there is an issue with smartphones, attention, and development, but I don't claim that screens are anything other than an audiovisual medium. Nor do I think they need to increase specifically "incentive salience without intrinsic pleasure" to be a problem.

Do you not see gambling addiction as an issue in real life? Do you not see massively decreased attention statistics as an issue in real life? It feels like you're arguing against a position that is both incorrect and irrelevant, when the rest of us are talking about things that are obviously an issue in real life, regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with this approach.

Do you not struggle with anything like what is being discussed here, or see it in others?

No one is claiming it, true. They don't understand their claims stem entirely from this position and only make any sort of sense if they claim it. But they don't have the background knowledge to work out the foundations of their statement.

My personal experience and emotional response has no relevance to the neuroscience involved. As for your continued use of "gambling addiction": There is no such thing as gambling addiction medically as I explained. It's a social meme without basis that is overloading the word mostly for profit in non-medical "addiction" treatment centers. This is far more dangerous than the very gambling disorder it hopes to mitigate.

The issue is that the claims do not in any way stem from the concept that screens are the issue. Everyone else is talking about how the usage and content delivered through the screens are the issue. What you're describing seems to be semantics at best. It's akin to people talking about not going to strip clubs, and you saying "what's wrong with stages?".

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