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Comment by walleeee | Hacker News Reader

> addiction is [dependency] plus inability to quit the habit despite strong and persistent effort

> I am not saying tech addiction can't happen, I just haven't seen any evidence to that effect

Which planet do you live on? It's hard to read this in good faith.

Nobody has a "technology usage" addiction. The digital dopamine drip-feed in your pocket delivers by design in a way a spoon or double-entry bookkeeping does not, despite the fact that you can use the spoon to get high on a substance you traded for money.

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It sound like you are well educated on the mechanics of addiction, using terms like "dopamine" as if that indicates addiction. People get dopamine from all sorts of every day activities and interactions, care to explain how that indicates addiction? If I exercise habitually (which gives tons of dopamine) do I have an addiction or just a habit I enjoy?

Did you know that even LSD/Acid has no biological/medical addiction property, but caffeine does? Addiction requires a literal rewiring of the brain at a biological level.

And please try to avoid the passive-aggressive "which planet do you live on" tone, it doesn't help with the whole civilized discussion thing on HN :)

the difference is simple, addiction is the compulsive/habitual action of something that does not have positive effects, more likely negative than neutral. For example, being "addicted" to gym is fine, because even if you enjoy the dopamine after, not the actual exercise, it's still good for you overall, and you cannot really overdo it. Caffeine makes you more productive, and you cannot really spiral, hence why caffeine is legal, but opioid drugs are not.

But for tech, scrolling tiktok for 5 hours a day, definitely does not have positive outcomes. It's like gambling. It's dopamine hit for dopamine hit's sake, and the delivery system is actively harming you.

If a person has a bad habit of needing to drink a bottle of beer and drive to work every day, would you call that an addiction or just a bad habit? I would call the drinking an addiction but the drinking-and-driving a bad habit.

Caffeine is a good example you mentioned, it is in fact addictive. It forms a chemical dependency similar to nicotine. Not all addictions are harmful and not all bad habits are addictions. The 'dependency' is what qualifies the habit as an addiction, in other words, you can't function or function well without the habit.

Empty comment from me but thank you for being more nuanced than most about what constitutes an addiction. It’s tiring to listen to the HN wringing in some performance of outrage of who can be the most offended yet least affected by the article.

(The moderator(s) are praised endlessly but have done a terrible job of steering the community. They’ve merely shut out voices that were the loudest and most disagreeable, a phyrric victory at best)

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