Comment by mdp2021
2 months ago
> fuck up ones reward system
I am personally not aware of those (products that would damage one's reward system), can you name some?
2 months ago
> fuck up ones reward system
I am personally not aware of those (products that would damage one's reward system), can you name some?
besides porn, things like facebook, tiktok, instagram, reddit... generalising, it's everything that acts as a button "gib me more novelty" that one can press as much and as frequently as they want.
surely, not everybody is hooked by these things, and it's definitely possible to use them without harm, but sometimes it requires training and (self-)awareness.
But every source of pleasure could create addiction, so it is not valid to point to a specific one, and the requirement of self control and gratification delay remains generally fundamental.
Not every source of pleasure is equally addictive by its nature.
However, I'm not talking about _addiction_, but messing with the dopaminergic system. It's, I'd say a specific kind of "pleasure" with particular mechanisms to trigger.
The problem here is not that a person "is not having control over doing, taking or using something to the point where it could be harmful to them" (https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/addiction-support/addiction-wha...). The problem is that the reward system gets broken. If a person is actually addicted to instagram scrolling, like people are addicted to smoking, it just adds another layer of complexity. As I observing from myself, "checking stuff on my phone" looks like a bad habit rather than an addiction.
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