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Comment by tardedmeme | Hacker News Reader

What is addiction? Can you explain to us how you think about addiction?

Everything is an addiction. Nothing is an addiction. Instead of jumping down a semantic rabbit hole, it might be more useful to look at specifics since obviously its a spectrum.

I can say with certainty that opioids are addictive. I can also say with certainty that doomscrolling is pretty far on the opposite end of that spectrum. I have yet to meet someone who would steal copper pipes off of an abandoned building or sell their body on the street for a few scrolls of tiktok.

But why do you get out of bed at all in the morning? What drives you to exist...are those reward systems in the brain addictive? Why are you sitting at your keyboard right now arguing with a random stranger on the internet?

Are you procrastinating something else you should be doing instead...and is that Hackernews' fault or yours?

So, buried within this extended mostly-non-answer, it seems your definition of an addiction is something that drives someone to steal copper pipes.

Litigating the semantics of a word doesn't get us anywhere closer to defining the limits of personal responsibility.

You'd like the goalposts to sit closer so its easier to offload responsibility onto abstract external entities.

I'm arguing this doesn't change who has to be the one to close the app, shut off the TV, turn off the video game, close the bag of candy and take risks in the real world.

And I'm not understanding what point you're trying to make, except that you don't think social media is addictive because people don't steal copper pipes to get more of it.

I believe the argument is that for something to be addictive, the user has to feel compelled to keep using it that they would take some outsized/extreme risk/action in order to keep using it. It doesn’t have to literally be about stealing copper pipes, just, any action that an ordinary person wouldn’t do, justified because it lets them keep using. e.g drug addicts will steal, even from their own families, or lose their homes because they spent the rent money on drugs. So then the question becomes: if you had to pay to use social media, are there people who are so addicted to it that they would steal, or choose social media time over their bills? If you can actually imagine someone being so addicted to it that they would do this, then you can say social media is addictive.

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