Generally speaking, society tends to adapt in a way that enables and emphasises maximum reward for minimal effort. Such aspects are common trends among societies and are especially prevalent in the modern society. In Adam Alter’s book Irresistible, topics regarding addictive, overall negative behaviors in today’s society are discussed. Alter then makes statements regarding the main perpetrators and their reasoning for such manipulations. Alter’s statements on the matter had me rethinking my perceptions and therefore my actions regarding my everyday behaviors. Daily repetitive tasks consisted of excessive Facebook and general mundane tasks. My self realization eventually lead me to delete said apps, allowing me to move on positively with …show more content…
He compares phone addiction to drugs and he proclaims that in some ways phone addictions can be worse than substance addiction. Alter then states, “substance addictions and behavioral addictions are very similar. They activate the same brain regions, and they’re fueled by some of the same basic human needs: social engagement and social support, mental stimulation, and a sense of effectiveness. Strip people of these needs and they’re more likely to develop addictions to both substance and behavior”(Alter pg 9). In other words, the means of addiction are attributed to receptors in the brain that are responsible for a pleasure reward system for certain acts, usage of the social media can be a catalyst for such a reaction. A common example of this is when one tends to seek social media approval with responses such as likes and or followers, thus triggering pleasure for such a mundane task. This “high” you receive from social media is short euphoric feeling similar to drugs, so you would get cravings of usage to receive happiness and or pleasure. The reason Alter believes that the social media or your …show more content…
Alter claims that the same tactics are apparent in the designs of casinos and mobile apps, both containing various similarities. Just like casino’s, mobile apps are designed in a way that would comfort the player and convince them that their interaction is going fine without the reminder of failure or stress. Mobile apps are designed in a way that allows for the user to receive pleasure for simple interaction and hence provoke further engagement. In an article written by Gavin Francis, a Scottish physician and author, writes that “Alter teaches marketing and psychology at New York University and wants to show us how smartphones, Netflix, and online games such as World of Warcraft are exquisitely and expensively engineered to hook us in”. Francis embellishes Alter’s argument and talks more about the dangers of these apps that make the user hooked. Both Francis and Alter’s arguments relate to a situation in which I found myself addicted to the social media app of Facebook on my phone. The app took advantage of my engagement and subliminally encouraged further engagement on my end. Facebook’s accessibility was what made the app easy to use, and therefore,
According to Emily Yoffe’s essay “Seeking,” pursuing trivial information is something people cannot stop doing. Yoffe posits people become addicted to the feeling of receiving a text message, a new tweet, an Instagram post, or other meaningless multimedia facets (Yoffe 599). She cites an experiment in which scientists put an electrode in a specific part of a rats brain, and when given the option to fire the electrode the rat would do so until it collapsed: scientists believed (and some still believe) that this was the pleasure center of the brain (Yoffe 599). Yoffe believes social media gives us a similar buzz. According to Dr. Panksepp, “Seeking is the granddaddy of the systems” (Yoffe 599). Yoffe explains this is why animals in captivity would rather have to search for food than have it delivered to them. For humans, however, this can be
Sally Satel, the author of “Addiction Doesn 't Discriminate”, uses many examples of logistic “cause and effect” statements to further explain her hypothesis on addiction. Her essay reveals some truths, which people have chosen to ignore. Today, in such an advanced society compared to past generations, discrimination has become negative and cruel. Thus people have speeches, which preach, “Everyone is equal”. Satel’s essay and many others have come to show that we must acknowledge specific differences in people to help them. Satel wrote with three different fallacies; addiction offers rewards, addicts ignore exit signs, and addiction enjoys specific people.
Sally Satel, author of “Addiction Doesn’t Discriminate? Wrong,” leads us down a harrowing path of the causes and effects that lead people to addiction. It can be a choice, possibly subconscious, or a condition that leads a person left fighting a lifelong battle they did not intend to sign up for. Mental and emotional health/conditions, personality traits, attitudes, values, behaviors, choices, and perceived rewards are just a few of the supposed causes of becoming an addict.
There are many different definitions in which people provide regarding addiction. May (1988) describes that addiction “is a state of compulsion, obsession, or preoccupation that enslaves a person’s will and desire” (p. 14). Individuals who suffer from addiction provide their time and energy toward other things that are not healthy and safe. The book
Salant presents a saddening stereotypical addiction story: the drug user. The excerpt from his book shows the depths to which the victims of addiction will stoop to get their “fix”, or the substance or device that the addicted desire. This excerpt can be considered “stereotypical” due to several reasons. The illegal and legal drug addiction is, unfortunately, the most popular and most well known of addictions because of its presence within modern day pop culture (movies, tabloids, etc), and due to its “popularity” within our culture, the use and abuse of drugs is one of the only kinds of addiction because no...
Many experts say that these people have developed an eating addiction, where even if they desire a healthier lifestyle, they feel inhibited by their body’s demand for more terrible snacks. When addiction comes up, people generally think of those who are dependent on illegal drugs but people can be addicted to many more substances and activities than what has not yet been legalized. In addition to nicotine and alcohol addiction, eating, gambling and stealing can all become addictions that have been studied seriously studied by many experts of the related fields. Going against the Western culture of independence, an over-reliance on an item, chemical, or habit sets people into a worrisome counterculture that drags them in chains after the item they cannot stop having. In psychologist Jim Orford’s educational book, Excessive Appetites, the reader has the chance to consider and explore the psychologist’s view of how so many things can show up in addictions. Not only does he bring up the topics already mentioned, he discusses addictions to gambling one’s savings away and reveals that overdoing exercise and even sex addiction can send a person down a dark path (2001). Interestingly, Professor Jesse Summers makes a different point in his 2015 article on addiction. The most commonly referred to
Throughout history, motivation has been one of the components to survival. Motivation is needed to get up in the morning and go on about the day in order to survive. As humans began to evolve, so did society, which meant our drive and motivation were derived from different goals rather than one common one. Rather than depending on biological drive, humans started to depend on the system of rewarding the good behavior and punishing the bad. This operating is known as Motivation 2.0 (Pink, 2009). However, this method is flawed due to the fact that this implies that humans are no different from a herd of livestock.
Drug users rationalize that they would be unhappier if they were kept from addictive substance, therefore they increase drug use. Increased drug consumption displays what is labeled as addiction in this theory. A situation is created where high drug use becomes a daily problem. Harmful addictions have two properties: reduced welfare and increased need for the good (Henden, Melberg, & Rogeberg,
The article ‘The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered, and It Is Not What You Think’ by Johann Hari shares an interesting perspective on the matter of addiction to drugs. It seeks to change the view that we have always had on addiction by fronting a different theory based on the findings of the author. The essay begins with a brief introduction of the timeline when drugs were banned, the war on drugs and how information on addiction has been unveiled to us. According to the author, addiction is an ethical shortcoming that is brought about by extreme decadent behavior that is almost a fixation that affects a captured mind. Several experiments are shared and the results that turn out in a bid to try and demystify what the author perceives as wrong views on addiction. As it appears, addicted people have a profound need to bond and shape associations. It's the means by which they get their fulfillment. If we cannot associate with each other, we will interface with anything we come across. From the findings and suggestions in the article, there is a huge surge of optimism that
Some critics argued that it is unreasonable to predict that a rational individual will choose to risk addiction under the knowledge of its potential harmful outcome. They claim that addicts will regret about their choice. Whereas, economists’ argued that addicts is possible to regret when they do not know their addictive tendencies until they have actually experimented. Otherwise, things they do are what they expect to regret. This criticism also modified and extended the rational addiction model that helps to explain the misconceptions of some “completely irrational” behavior (Orphanides & Zervos,
Main Point: What defines an addiction? According to Psychology Today, “Addiction is a condition that results when a person ingests a substance…. or engages in an activity….that can be pleasurable but the continued use/act of which becomes compulsive and interferes with ordinary life responsibilities, such as work, relationships, or health.” This can range anywhere from drug use to eating disorders, to gambling, to even texting in today’s generation. Shocking to say the least, especially when most people do not even know they are addicted or are an addict until they realize this definition.
So, it is clear that addiction is all around us and can attack anyone of us at any given time. Even studies conducted show that people neglect to speak around their dependency for two primary reasons. Foremost, because people do not comprehend, or they bear a total misconception to their addiction, that they do not realize that addictions can be critical to their overall wellness. Moreover, second, many people believe being an addict will never happen to them, but, in reality, most addictions start off as simple little habits. Such as starting with one drink after dinner and before you know it you are drinking several drinks a day. However, one does not opt to be addicted to a substance, because addictions are physical defects in the brain, a disease, and not one’s choice.
According to Kershaw, “the Internet 's omnipresent offers of escape from reality, affordability, accessibility and opportunity for anonymity can also lure otherwise healthy people into an addiction.” The Internet has a wide variety of information and activities available to anyone on a computer. Because the Internet is easily accessible everywhere, it is simple for anyone to spend countless hours on the computer and eventually develop an addiction. Additionally, biological factors in a human 's brain can increase the chances of a person becoming addicted. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a role in the reward and pleasure center of the brain. It also helps to control emotions. Sharon Jayson explains this concept in her article, “Ever-present Devices Can Push Our Crazy Buttons.” In this article, psychiatrist Steve Daviss of the Baltimore Washington Medical Center claims, "There 's good evidence the feedback we get from technology -- the retweets and bings and pings that come out of the phone every time somebody sends us a text message -- create a reward system in the brain that gives us a little squirt of dopamine each time" (qtd. in Jayson). Therefore, every time we use technology, we want to use it more and it may become
For example, having only five friends like or comment on a post is not nearly enough; it must be at least 50, but as soon as 50 people acknowledge the post, then the addict craves 100, and so on (“Social Media Addiction”). Once a person becomes addicted to social media, their self-esteem begins to depend on how many likes or comments that they receive on a particular post (“Social Media Addiction”). Recent findings show that addiction to social media shares some neurological features with other addictions, such as substance and gambling addictions (“Excessive Social Media Use”). Many experts believe that excessive use of social media “triggers two key parts of the brain associated with rewards: amygdala, which is the integrative place for emotions, behavior and motivation and striatum, part of the forebrain and a critical component of the reward system” (“Excessive Social Media Use”). Teenagers with addiction-like symptoms may "have a hyperactive amygdale-striatal system, which makes this 'addiction ' similar to many other addictions" (“Excessive Social Media Use”). Those with
Social media can become very addictive to some and it may cause negative effects on that person’s life. Everyday use of social media can make a person want to get on, to needing to get on the computer. Becoming hooked can affect a person in many ways. Such as, their job, family,