How New Addictions are Destroying Us

when I say addiction you probably think of substances first cigarettes alcohol caffeine drug addiction might also then think of new addictions work social media phone screens gaming YouTube even performance addictions these are so-called behavioral addictions and the way we talk about them leads to a broader question is the very face of addiction changing [Music] in fact so many of our addictions seem to be becoming instead online ones as our psychologies fuse into the hyper real post-modern screen attached cyber psychologies symbiotic with tech itself and dependent on it what happens to those compulsions that we feel that pull towards click bait towards likes towards Doom scrolling what's it doing to us I have addictions too many they're not too bad these days but I smoke a bit I drink a bit I eat too much sugary stuff and Drawn to Twitter and I convince myself that YouTube videos are research because of this job even my reading my work habits my exercise Verge on feeling like addictive compulsions the modern world the one that arose out of developments in science factories industry the enlightenment was an attempt in many ways to fix a pre-modern problem scarcity what happens when for some of us the problem of scarcity is overcome the modern problem of overcoming scarcity turns on its head and becomes a post-modern problem that of abundance and excess from too little to too much a wiring has evolved over the course of Millennia as a response to the scarce landscape of the Savannah post-modern life is a constant fight against the ghosts of that wiring is that new fight the new face of addiction becoming an epidemic drug overdoses in the U.S have tripled since 1990. opioid use has risen by 300 300 million of us have an alcohol disorder in the 20th century 100 million people died early from smoking many psychologists estimate that one in 10 Americans qualify for social media addiction one study estimates that seven percent of gamers are problem Gamers and 1.4 percent are addicted Facebook itself found that Instagram was harmful to teenage girls 30 of us could be classified as addicted to our phones seven percent of us to gambling and seven percent first to online shopping so is it true to say that we live in an age of addiction philosopher Kent Donington has written persons with severe addictions who are among those contemporary prophets that we ignore to our own demise for they show us who we truly are so what's going on here if this broad pursuit of pleasure arranges from tobacco to Tetris sex to social media booze to buying gaming to gambling how do we think about addiction at all it all seems so broad so vague the American Society of addiction medicine defines addiction like this addiction is a treatable chronic medical disease involving complex interactions among brain circuits genetics the environment and an individual's life experiences people with addiction use substances or engage in behaviors that become compulsive and often continue despite harmful consequences of course addiction is complex personal subjective but I think two parts of that definition are important compulsion the pull of addiction the diminishing of our free will to resist and the harmful consequences we live in a constantly shifting context of addictive hooks environments designed to draw Us in to pull our Behavior to advertise Pleasures to flash signs and slogans and headlines and photos to notify us of trivial but tempting updates we live in an attention society that seeks to take possession of our minds over and over from all directions in fact Studies have shown that substance addictions to nicotine say and behavioral addictions to phones say indistinguishable in brain scans cocaine addiction and gambling addictions for example show similar patterns in cues Cravings dopamine release withdrawal symptoms and so on professor of marketing Adam alter in his book irresistible says that there's a pattern that describes the brain of a drug addict as he injects heroin and a second that describes the brain of a gaming addict as he fires up a new World of Warcraft Quest they turn out to be almost identical so if all addictions are based on that compulsion combined with harmful consequences how can we think about the historic change towards these new post-modern addictions in a 1993 wired article on this new thing called the internet Mitchell Kapoor predicted that we could wind up with networks that have the principal effect of fostering addiction to a new generation of electronic narcotics glitzy interactive multimedia successors to a Nintendo and MTV their principal themes revolving around instant gratification through sex violence or sexual violence their uses and content determined by Mega corporations pushing mindless consumption of things we don't need and aren't good for us he then asks what could prevent such a fate is the internet just The Logical culmination of our history of trying to make Pleasures ever present we've built entire civilizations and progress on the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain as psychiatrist and alembic rights as a result we've transformed the world from a place of scarcity to a place of overwhelming abundance we've evolved for scarcity and live in some cases and in some places with abundance the industrial modern capitalist pursuit of Pleasures On Demand is what historian David Courtright has called limbic capitalism he says that limbic capitalism is a technologically advanced way of doing business that encourages excessive compulsion and addiction targeting of the limbic system are quick emotional reactions feelings our deepest evolutionary desires are base impulses sugar money celebrity sex gambling luxury throughout history we've sought to institutionalize and secure these Pleasures food drink shelter are the most obvious but we've also sought to maximize the potency and availability of things by distilling Spirits building casinos producing cartons of cigarettes brothels creating slave trades for sugar Global fast food supply chains designing persuasive social media systems and Hollywood limbic capitalists seek to supply pleasure and reap predictable profits in 1663 the mathematician gilamo cadano carefully studied many gambling games and created lists of probabilities of outcomes wins and losses further mathematicians made it possible for casinos and lotteries to professionalize gambling and make the extraction of profits from gamblers a scientific Pursuit in casinos had booths women food cigarettes take away natural light Etc add beds to sleep in and you have a winning hand today big Tech Giants work on the probabilities of you opening an app at a certain time of day the best way to predict what your click like on or share sales in your inbox work on the chance of you responding to a certain percentage off at a certain time it could be said that we've built civilizations on the pursuit of dopamine the most important neurotransmitter in our brain the feel-good chemical the reward molecule what's interesting about dopamine is that it might be more important for the expectation of reward than the reward itself dopamine is Central to addiction the more dopamine released the more addictive the drug when we engage in addictive behaviors we get a burst of dopamine then our homeostasis system the system that balances and regulates our body tips the other way producing withdrawal symptoms the dopamine released is a reward for behavior that we assume is good fun exciting social and so on but usually evolutionarily speaking it was also rare a treat sugars and fats being the prime example when we have too much of these things our dopamine Baseline drops to balance out we down regulate we get that big reward that big hit that our system has to recover we experience withdrawal donors boredom Temptation and so on we also build up a tolerance we require more and more of the thing to get the same result the same fix and we spend more of our time pursuing it resulting in many cases in an unbalanced life nourished life now we instinctively know this when it comes to booze caffeine and other substances we get hangovers and crashes but remember the brain scans of the heroin addict and the World of Warcraft addict look identical dopamine spikes withdrawal symptoms tolerance apply to social media as much as to cigarettes as much to sugar as it does to phones before we get back to limbic capitalism one of the most fascinating findings in studies of dopamine is that it's not just released as a reward but also and maybe even more importantly in the expectation of a reward memory is Central to the release of dopamine we remember a certain cue a certain pattern predict or remember a certain outcome and get excited we see a fast food restaurant or a pub I have a beer and think cigarette are my salivates at cooking food gamblers get as excited when the slot machine starts spinning then from the win itself what we get in all of these things accuse we get a little cue when our phone buzzes dopamine is released in expectation of what it is more than the what it is itself cues the expectation of reward or hooks are Central to a post-modern addictions I can feel a slow stream of dopamine release when I'm out exploring the experience of novelty anticipation thinking through new things in real time all reward with dopamine release but too much of any good thing becomes a problem when it tips us off balance too much work too much sugar too much gambling too much social media and under limbic capitalism those hooks corporate signs logos headlines notifications games that promise of a big hit of dopamine drawing Us in like the siren song it's All everywhere and here's the biggest problem with limbic capitalism eighty percent of alcohol sales go to 20 of the heaviest users the gambling industry makes 80 percent of profits from 20 percent of gamblers in social media use the top one percent of users create the majority of content limbic hooks appeal to the most vulnerable Among Us those that are most likely to form addictions those with psychological needs those in poverty kids those of us with genetic predispositions towards addiction but they appeal to the most vulnerable Among Us and the most vulnerable parts of us alter says that a staggering 41 of the population has suffered from at least one behavioral addiction over the past 12 months when we are surrounded by dopamine on tap when we live in that age of abundance an opioid epidemic fried food everywhere booze everywhere online gambling 24 7 social connection 24 7 the promise of novelty 24 7 any film or video at any time any music at any time when we have a lack in our lives a psychological need is becomes easy to replace it with a crutch and social isolation a lack of social support trauma poverty genetics combined with ease of access and potency engineered weed strong alcohol hypertuned online gambling Etc are all predictors for addiction what we see under limbic capitalism is the design and production of sophisticated techniques to appeal to the release of dopamine the mathematization of gambling the use of new printing techniques and bold colors to grab our attention the proliferation of signs and signs to draw us into Apps and adverts autoplay algorithms to predict what you like when you like it headlines that will fire your fight and flight and the most powerful of all the simple screen in short cues and hooks are ubiquitous everywhere attempting the promise of quick Rewards and so the key to the attention economy a subpart of Limbic capitalism is to dangle digital drugs that are likable clickable repeatable that entice persuade and cajole us just think how different your everyday landscape is to how we've evolved probably know the story Odysseus on his way home gets his crew to tie him to the mask to hear the siren song for himself that sweet alluring melodious sound that draws seafarers towards the Rocks while his Shipmates put wax in their ears as they navigate past Homer's Odyssey is a foundational story in human history is it any wonder that this temptation towards sweetness and doom a metaphor for many things is such a well-known part of that story such a well-known warning in human psychology there's something primordial about the warning of the pool down the dopaminergic tract some kind of original sin Maybe how many times have you seen a notification like this and been compelled to click and see what's new how many times a day do you check your email on autopilot how many times have you not noticed that the reason you're drawn to this notification sign is because it's in red to get your attention game designers use compelling feedback rewards sounds flashes animations that reinforce the reward of that little dopamine hit virtual reality will make all of this multi-sensory in his history of attention Tim Wu writes that the inventor of Email Stephen lukasik was arguably the first to develop that little habit that consumes the attention of so many of us the check-in the impulse triggered by the intrusive thought that whatever else one is doing I need to check my email 70 of office emails are read within six seconds accounts are checked 36 times every hour almost half of people describe this compulsive checking as a loss of control we've become addicted to inbox zero to running streaks on our sports watches to a Duolingo streaks to posting once a day to beating a high score to catching up on that last Netflix cliffhanger once one company starts vying for our attention it sets in motion a chain of competition in which you either present your hook your corporate hook your gesture to the world your demand for attention or you get out hooked yourself you go out of business you lose in the great game of content creation that we now live in we write that under competition the race will naturally run to the bottom attention will almost invariably gravitate towards the more garish lurid outrageous alternative whatever stimulus May more likely engage what cognitive scientists call our automatic attention as opposed to our controlled attention the kind we direct with intent the Sirens of our postmodern addictions tempt us away from the physical world to our phone screens in 1958 Aldous Huxley author of Brave New World wrote that the development of a vast mass communications industry concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false but with the unreal the more or less totally irrelevant failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions even our goals become a hook that can turn into addiction we must beat the last video view we must get more likes than the last post I must get more views on this video than the last one I must run a faster Pace than last week must beat that high score on a game must get more followers goals are everywhere alter writes that the internet has exposed people to goals they barely knew existed and wearable tech devices have made goal tracking effortless and automatic where once you had to seek out new goals today they land often Uninvited in your inbox and on your screen metrics analytics the comparing of yourself to everyone on the planet closes the gap between performance and possibility and with it comes pressure why do we become addicted to social media there are many factors but a few Universal ones stand out to me as interesting first novelty as hunter-gatherers we're wired to seek the new exploring whether in the wild or in the digital Wilderness is addictive another is that big Tech have learned a lot from the gambling industry Studies have shown that the maybe Factor the idea of maybe getting a win that maybe of having a new email a new friend request the thrill of the chase releases more dopamine than the win itself in studies pigeons pack a button to release food more furiously when the food is released randomly instead of consistently the like button changed the psychology of sharing we now gamble with the maybe Factor each time we share something new new photo new update a new video how will people respond to it social media uses what psychologists call variable reinforcement the rewards vary and Studies have found that variable reinforcement is the best way to train animals into obedient habits he knows use so-called luck ambassadors when you're near your point of giving up and leaving when you've lost repeatedly someone's dispatched to give you a free drink or a voucher in the same way when you haven't logged into an app or a game for a while you'll get a free little update a notification a gift of some coins or a special piece of news philosopher James Williams proposes a thought experiment how would you design a society as weak willed as possible it would he says deliver an endless supply of informational rewards on demand whether that's outrage headlines or cute cat photos and what's worrying is that those informational rewards become more and more personalized to suit our particular weaknesses professor of Psychiatry David Greenfield who finded the center for internet and Technology addiction says that the internet amplifies the intoxicating impact of stimulating content via the efficient delivery mechanism into our nervous system he describes the internet with its variable rewards beeps buzzes colors flashes animations and notifications as the world's largest slot machine is the slot machine gets even more sophisticated it's it's only going to get harder to resist an early Pioneer of the idea of Behavioral addictions the psychologist Stanton peel said that an addiction is an extreme dysfunctional attachment to an experience that is acutely harmful to a person but that is an essential part of the person's ecology and that the person cannot relinquish the word ecology stands out to me there ecology landscape the world that we find ourselves in the internet of course is the new digital landscape and the hooks and cues the new indispensable parts of our lives does that mean we should wander through the digital landscape and just give in to it the idea of ecology and addiction is so essential that during the Vietnam war heroin epidemic many in America were fearful of what would happen when veterans that had become addicted to heroin serving in Vietnam brought that addiction home with them politicians in particular fed a widespread heroin epidemic on domestic soil but it didn't really happen many who were addicted in Vietnam didn't bring that particular problem back with them the reason was that the ecology the landscape the relationship back home was completely different the same cues and hooks weren't there anymore Williams has described computers as wondrous machines that also appealed to the lowest parts of us like core technology the value of something like a phone is of course neutral it's what we do with the tech that matters to combat post-modern addictions there are two paths we need to both better arm ourselves educate ourselves and Foster a culture of awareness and design and create responsible Landscapes that protect vulnerable people kids addicts and the vulnerable Parts within all of us arming yourself is difficult many psychologists have argued that abstinence alone is rarely enough instead we need to focus on the psychological needs that the addictions are a cover for something that's not being fulfilled in the moment psychiatrist Anne lembik writes that many of us use high dopamine substances and behaviors to distract ourselves from our own thoughts I think the trick to beating an addiction is to replace it with something new something else something more meaningful to allow yourself to think about what the need is in the moment ask honestly why the compulsion is there Escape fun boredom fear a reward then try to replace the addictive behavior with a new habit that does the same job psychologically Twitter Doom scrolling is the result of needing a break and seeking novelty go for a walk instead or flick through a paper AAA teaches to avoid the hooks and cues people places and things that trigger compulsive Behavior remember the expectation of reward is difficult to resist once the hook has lodged itself under your skin if Twitter is open in a visible tab it's much more difficult to resist clicking to see what the notification is than if you're logged out notifications can be turned off on your phone but the idea that we should all just work to resist the limbic temptations that surround us is the naive neoliberal dream we should focus on the landscape of hooks and cues too the designers of the system and our laws and regulations are all responsible for the structure of our experience problem with relying on the individual to resist limbic Temptations is that as design ethicist Tristan Harris says willpower is not enough when there are a thousand people on the other side of the screen whose job it is to break down the self-regulation that you have and to then give raka says that portraying the problem is one in which we need to be more mindful of our interaction with apps can be likened saying that we need to be more mindful of our Behavior while interacting with the artificial intelligence algorithms that beat us at chess equally sophisticated algorithms beat us at the attention game all the time billions of dollars and millions of Engineers programmers designers even psychologists and focus groups all spend their time and attention working out how to attract your attention so in response we must focus our attention on demanding effective digital Landscapes that align with our goals and needs rather than appeal to the weakest parts of ourselves and prey on those addictive Tendencies within us and are a danger to our kids in one survey half of kids said they felt addicted to their phone and three quarters felt compelled to respond to texts posts and notifications immediately self-harm posts and self-harm itself seems to be on the rise excessive gaming is correlated with negative mental health outcomes excessive social media use correlated with anxiety and depression early adulthood is the highest risk age for developing addictions if you don't develop an addiction earlier in life you're less likely to develop one later on and one big reason for this is that as Ulta says young adults are bombarded by a galaxy of responsibilities that they're not equipped to handle they learn to meditate by taking up substances or behaviors that dull the insistent sting of those persistent hardships combine this with having devices on tap that provide consistent drips of dopamine on demand and we could be on course for a generational disaster ask most parents of kids that age and they'll tell you it's impossible to resist the pressure for kids to have phone and social media accounts when all of their friends do it becomes unfair on them if they're the only ones without it's just as harmful for them to be ostracized and so the duty of care the duty to do something must instead fall on institutions schools governments regulation and the social media and big Tech Giants themselves there's a quote I find interesting from the American philosopher Matthew Crawford he says the left's project of Liberation led us to dismantle inherited cultural jigs that once imposed a certain coherence for better and worse on individual lives this created a vacuum of cultural Authority that has been filled opportunistically with attentional Landscapes that get installed by whatever Choice architect brings the most energy to the task usually because it sees the profit potential I think what he means is that historically we had authoritative guides about how we should act they came from places like the church from cultural ideas of things like masculinity what acceptable decorum might be what should or shouldn't be allowed on television and radio and so on but those cultural political and social guides have largely disappeared and been replaced with the market at their worst those cultural jigs as he calls them restricted us but at their best they provided a kind of landscape an ecology that guided us in replacing them with the market we leave ourselves open to whoever can attract our attention as the highest bidder with the sweetest most addictive hook and that's dangerous when it comes to a traditional addictive substances tobacco alcohol drugs we intervene in their use in several ways by limiting access by restricting by age or say by regulating their ingredients to make sure they're safe we do the same for casinos and gambling and for advertising drugs and other addictive substances we also have cultural and social expectations and media pressure to make sure substances are made and sold responsibly in Liberal societies both are meant to be a light touch adults should be left to make their own decisions but I think there is legitimate reason to regulate when addictive Technologies are affecting the most vulnerable regulation and our expectations of platforms like social media should be designed to protect categories like children and addicts these labels for example that we have on cigarettes and tobacco over here this one says tobacco smoke contains over 70 substances known to cause cancer I think they're a good example of light touch regulation although I'm unsure how much they work they don't do much for me but I think the intention is good should the same sort of warnings be on social media should the social media age limit be at least 16 not 13 say should we expect push notifications to our phones to be turned off by defaults when we install new apps yes we should there are plenty of light touch solutions that stop short of being blunt instruments that simply ban websites or get involved in what can and can't be posted we often think of Regulation as two black and white another one would be autoplay being turned off by default in algorithms of fear Veil gonim writes that we're not driving people to content that could help us as a society you can build algorithms and experiences that are designed to get the best out of people and you can build algorithms and experiences that drive out the worst it's our job as Civic technologists to build experience that drive the best we can do that we must do that now this is one of the biggest problems with giving in to the race to the bottom limbic capitalism dangle digital sugar in front of everyone's eyes of neoliberalism the Cyber ecology becomes full of addictive hooks that we have no protection against recently I keep coming back to this quote from the sociologist Sigmund Bauman he writes the Deep contradiction of our age is the yawning gap between the right of self-assertion and the capacity to control the social settings which render such self-assertion feasible it's from that abysmal Gap that the most poisonous effluvia contaminating the lives of contemporary individuals emanate fights that poisonous affluvia we must Take Back Control [Music] thank you as always for watching and a huge thanks of course as always to my patreons without which this just wouldn't be possible so if you want to see scripts if you want to chat in the Discord server if you want your name in the credits but most of all if you just want to help support make this content then click the link in the description below if not you can like you can share you can leave a comment all those things that help the algorithm thank you so much and I'll see you next time [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Then & Now

Views: 1,070,578

Keywords: behavioural addiction, internet addiction, phone addiction, gambling addiction, attention economy, self improvement, personal development, behavioural addiction vs substance addiction

Id: AdHOXKLgGUY

Length: 36min 50sec (2210 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 23 2023