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I have a hard time not putting this into the lineup of anti-technology moral panic aided by pseudoscience intent on gobbling up a new field. Do we all remember

I have a hard time not putting this into the lineup of anti-technology moral panic aided by pseudoscience intent on gobbling up a new field. Do we all remember how "internet addiction" was, at first, a joke in a newsgroup until a psychiatrist stumbled upon it and thought they could make a name for themselves by transferring - badly - existing elements of addiction discourses on internet use? And we're still suffering from their success, which, in psych terms, means that the found enough people they could convince that, yes, really, what they were doing were "sick" (usually because that was a good way to appease their families)[1]? And usually because "healthy use of time", in puritan-capitalist societies, is always magically time spent productively to make money or support the family, God forbid (literally) that it was recreational? This smells somewhat related, in the line of "but really, it's stressing you. You don't realize, but it is. Trust me. The bill is in the mail." [1] https://journals.openedition.org/reset/122 https://journals.openedition.org/reset/122

tekla 3y ago
Yeah i read some of these articles and it sounds exactly like what 5G conspiracy shit or crystal crazies sound like, except with a veneer of respectability because of "tech"
sirbranedamuj 3y ago
Yeah I find it hard to take articles like this seriously. "Be cautious of intensely focusing on something for long, uninterrupted periods. Reduce distractions from notifications where possible. Stand up and take a walk every once in a while." like this is just generic health advice with a catchy name and trendy, vague connotations with tech overuse.
coldtea 3y ago
It's 2023. We're way past doubting the existence of internet addiction, and other such negative effects of technology on our health and healthy habbits. Might as well doubt thermodynamics. The reaction you have is in the long tradition of the naive "it's in the brain and concerns wetware, not material stuff we can measure, so it can't exist". Might as well argue that trauma doesn't exist, or conditional depression doesn't. Or any kind of mental pathology not seen as brain matter damage in a scan. Not to mention that in this case, what they describe, unlike something more abstract like addiction, wwould be easy to objectively measure with people wired to some lab equipment too.

tekla 3y ago

Yeah i read some of these articles and it sounds exactly like what 5G conspiracy shit or crystal crazies sound like, except with a veneer of respectability because of "tech"

sirbranedamuj 3y ago

Yeah I find it hard to take articles like this seriously. "Be cautious of intensely focusing on something for long, uninterrupted periods. Reduce distractions from notifications where possible. Stand up and take a walk every once in a while." like this is just generic health advice with a catchy name and trendy, vague connotations with tech overuse.

coldtea 3y ago

It's 2023. We're way past doubting the existence of internet addiction, and other such negative effects of technology on our health and healthy habbits. Might as well doubt thermodynamics. The reaction you have is in the long tradition of the naive "it's in the brain and concerns wetware, not material stuff we can measure, so it can't exist". Might as well argue that trauma doesn't exist, or conditional depression doesn't. Or any kind of mental pathology not seen as brain matter damage in a scan. Not to mention that in this case, what they describe, unlike something more abstract like addiction, wwould be easy to objectively measure with people wired to some lab equipment too.