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Comment by lp4v4n | Hacker News Reader

I don't agree with this. Addictive, unless we're talking about a chemical substance or something like that, is a subjective thing. At some point, books, movies, comics, etc, etc might have been considered addictive.

Social networks in general should be banned for underage people, that's the thing. And the social network itself should be liable for verifying the age its users, like a nightclub is liable for people who enter it. No bullshit operating system age verification, that's, trust me, totally intended to protect kids and not to spy on you.

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> Addictive, unless we're talking about a chemical substance or something like that, is a subjective thing.

What makes you say that? It's well known that the addictive patterns in these apps trigger dopamine the same way drugs do. In a sense, dopamine is the "chemical substance" central to the addiction. Heroine and algorithms are just different ways to get it.

https://med.stanford.edu/news/insights/2021/10/addictive-pot...

Everything you do “triggers dopamine”. Reading HN triggers dopamine. Eating breakfast triggers dopamine. Dopamine is also important for movement and many other things.

This is a lame reduction of brain chemistry that has been used to push agendas. Dopamine is not equivalent do addiction.

> calls it a lame reduction of brain chemistry

> posts a lame reduction of the argument

Argument was literally that “social media triggers dopamine” which was supposed to imply something else.

Stop trying to say “dopamine” when you really mean to refer to a behavioral problem.

> Argument was literally that “social media triggers dopamine”

It wasn't though? They said

> the addictive patterns in these apps trigger dopamine the same way drugs do

(emphasis mine)

> Dopamine is not equivalent do addiction.

What about porn, sex, and gambling addiction, which are all un-boosted dopamine addictions?

It's well known, but I'm not convinced it's true. Dopamine levels are measurable by blood test, and some drug abuse studies perform that measurement. Why does the literature on social media and dopamine exclusively talk in vague and general terms, rather than pointing to specific studies where researchers measured dopamine before and after 30 minutes of TikTok scrolling?

Addictiveness is measured by ∆FosB gene expression. The 'addictiveness' of a substance or activity is qualified by how much ∆FosB is expressed. It's decidedly not just a completely subjective thing. Books, movies, comics, etc. can all still be measured on this scale. Everything is addictive in some capacity, generally.

The reason why it is done this way is that “social media” is much harder to delineate and also not what is generally considered harmful.

Addiction at least is quite straightforward to differentiate from otherwise engaging things by whether it causes significant harmful effects. E.g. per Wikipedia "Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder characterized by a persistent and intense urge to use a drug or engage in a behavior that produces an immediate psychological reward, despite substantial harm and other negative consequences."

Addictive would be then something that (for a substantial portion of population) has a tendency to cause addiction.

>At some point, books, movies, comics, etc, etc might have been considered addictive

The difference compared to a book is that a book is not personalized for each individual reader, so the example is not a good one IMHO.

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