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> “Social media research has largely assumed that [so-called] social media addiction is going to follow the same framework as drug addiction,” said Turner. Orbe

> “Social media research has largely assumed that [so-called] social media addiction is going to follow the same framework as drug addiction,” said Turner. Orben’s team and others argue that this is likely to be oversimplistic and are investigating whether the teenagers cluster into groups whose behaviour can be predicted by other personality traits. > It could be that, for some, their relationship is akin to a behavioural addiction, but for others their use could be driven by compulsive checking, others may be relying on it to cope with negative life experiences, and others may simply be responding to negative social perceptions about “wasting time” on social media. Finally! I feel less smart for not having thought of this myself! I was unable to meaningfully change my own phone habits (despite serious effort and roadblocks) until it clicked that I was coping for something. What that was and what I was doing to cope highlighted parts of my life like nothing else. Instead of simply abstaining from using my phone, I put time into activities that benefited the withered branches of my life. Old habits still die hard, but knowing that I'm coping as I'm coping helped me separate the good social media use from the bad.

nonethewiser 3y ago
This is the solution for a lot of behavioral problems. The instinct is to do the bad behavior less, but the solution may instead be to do something else more.
- deemster 3y ago
  A nail is driven out by another nail, habit is overcome by habit - Erasmus
  - jay_kyburz 3y ago
    I made a browser based strategy game that takes place over weeks. Instead of checking Facebook 3 times a day, I log into Neptune's Pride 3 times a day to chat with the other players and try and conquer the galaxy.
    - riffruff24 3y ago
      hah, thanks for the game. It was definitely an interesting and fun experience. Unfortunately I've to stop because my obssesive side took over. I practically check the game every hour. I cant sleep because my mind wont stop worrying about chat/trade offers, sudden attack and which planet/tech I need to focus on. It always popped out in my mind once in a while though. I might try it again to see if I've better control of myself.
    - buzzy_hacker 3y ago
      Woah! I love Neptune’s Pride, thanks for the game! While in college, I stayed at a hacker house airbnb over the summer with a bunch of newly befriended tech friends, and I got us all playing. I have fond memories of changing the trajectories of my ships as soon as people went to bed, double-crossing alliances. Good times.
apwell23 3y ago
Yes this is why I've been trying to ski as much as possible this winter. 1. Helps my eyes by letting them see things at a distance. staring far into mountains on the lift ect. 2. Keeps me away from internet. I have dumb phone and a whistle with me in my pocket. 3. Helps me reconnect with my body and rediscover what it can do. 4. Mountain air seems to clear up my sinuses 5. And ofcourse benefits of physical excerscise. 6. I just feel very fulfilled at the end of day a stark contrast to depression of day filled with daze of the internet. 7. This is bit of bro science but seems to improve my digestion. Being in internet daze all day seems to put a pause on my digestion.
- forrestwilkins 3y ago
  Exercise generally helps with digestion.
  - apwell23 3y ago
    For sure. I've noticed that my digestion improves if i am engrossed on the internet all day even without excercise.
Swizec 3y ago
> Instead of simply abstaining from using my phone, I put time into activities My relationship with social media, even HackerNews, really clicked when a meme (oh irony) said: ”You’re like a tiger in a cage. You know how they pace in circles when their enclosures lack enrichment? That’s you bouncing around apps on your phone” Haven’t quite figured out how to reliably stop that, but it’s true that when there’s enough enrichment, I can go days forgetting that my phone and the internet even exist.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
"The Myth of Normal" by Mate Gabor is a great place for people to start this work. Later it dawns on you that sure, like everybody else you have weaknesses and traumas that you've learned to cope with, but that doesn't excuse some people deliberately designing and pushing a product to specifically exploit that. That should give you dose of healthy positive anger of the kind that is transformative when acted upon.
johndhi 3y ago
any tips on how to identify what you're coping for?
- ggpsv 3y ago
  Not the parent but I can suggest what has worked for me. Talking to a therapist can be helpful in getting to the root of it. Meditation also helps, but it may be a longer road. In other words, whatever helps you live a more examined life. Regarding habits and the habit loop (what's being mentioned here), "The Power of Habit" [0] is a great read. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Habit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Habit
- edrxty 3y ago
  No shit, go see a decent therapist. This is literally the core of what they do as a profession. If they aren't helpful, just want to babble about the weather for 45 minutes, whatever, find a different one. PhD > Masters but I've met bad PhDs and good masters clinicians. Also, if you're struggling with getting things done because you're always dopamine seeking, get checked for ADHD. There are some extremely effective treatments that can make your life way easier if that turns out to be the problem.
- godelski 3y ago
  In addition to therapist, as others state, I'd also suggest just being more open with your friends (I also get that it can be intimidating to see a therapist and it's easy to justify not going, especially if you're in a good mood). Maybe grab some beers or something to create a scapegoat/plausible deniability if needed. I've long suffered from depression and this has been one of the most impactful moves for me, especially around identifying latent issues that appear more ethereal. It can be hard, especially in our general gender norms (I'm male) where some people will think it is a weakness (men and women), but to me strength is doing the hard things. YMMV, but I think it is important to have friends and/or partner(s) that you can be open with and just have the ability to vent. Fuck, sometimes I don't even know what I'm upset about until I let off a little steam first, and often just an outside opinion helps. I can also suggest small internet communities as these can be places to form friendships while having some PII type of anonymity and at least for me helped me be more open before I was ready to open up to friends. Places like HN and reddit are probably too large, but hey, I'll put this out in general to anyone, feel free to reach out over email[0]. You can also get something similar by just talking to random people at a bar. Whatever works best for you, but it all is a noisy process. But at the end of the day I think what's most critical is that you find some means of just opening up. You don't have to stick to one group either, and if you need to start at one place to build up to another, there's no problem with that. Take it as a journey, not a destination. But I will say having at least a one or two core friends (and ideally a partner) is going to be one of the most helpful things you can do for your mental health. A therapist will never be enough but you should think of them as a very useful and different tool (because you do want advice not coming from those who want to protect you. Outside opinions are invaluable and a good therapist will do their best, but consider they can only work with the context you give and what they can get from you). [0] In my profile. And if anyone has a suggestion for a better anonymous email, let me know. I'm kinda annoyed at proton's ads.
godelski 3y ago
I think this is an unfortunately not enough discussed topic. As sciences are young (as psychology relatively is) you work on broader problems and much more aggregated results. You make naive assumptions like everything exists in normal distributions or data is i.i.d. So you get results that are big generalizations and sometimes not even reliable. But then as a field advances, it naturally shifts into requiring more and more nuance and specificity. Where you have to start considering multivariate solutions (even if that's a mixture of gaussians, which, awesome tool btw) because you approach a natural wall at the explainability of your data with naive methods. And let's be clear, if we wanted to really rigorously study psychology -- at the same level as, say, physics -- then there would need to be a lot of crazy math invented and we'd probably still end up needing to do unethical things because holy fuck how do you control all those variables. (definitely warrants being open about error and unknowns) There's nothing wrong with that. But I do think it's wrong that we're not open about it, in so much that it isn't even always explicitly stated during a science education. We might say something like "all models are wrong" but I don't think that solidifies this thinking enough for novices and can create experts who still don't get it. Wherein it becomes a classic clique, where everyone knows the phrase but doesn't understand or practice the lesson. There's some noticeable downsides too. If you're constantly not reiterating what your base assumptions are and acknowledging the limitation of those assumptions, you forget they exist. It also becomes hard to communicate the significance of your work to the public and I think in some cases is often why the public ends up calling (sometimes rightfully, sometimes not) bullshit. I think there's also a major advantage to science, in being open about these helps newcomers (such as those entering graduate school) more readily understand the limitations of the field and what work needs to be done. But I think some incentive structures we have in place don't encourage great scientific behavior in this way. Speaking of which, other metrics can even end up making bridging this multivariate gap more difficult. Such as the all too well known p-value weirdness, you may end up rejecting works making progress towards this bridging by having these arbitrary requirements rather than evaluating works with more nuance, which can even then discourage attempting to build such bridges. I guess coming full circle to: it's complicated? Like everything else lol
steve_adams_86 3y ago
You've really nailed from my perspective. I used my phone as a way to withdraw and escape. Even the most mundane situations warranted some degree of escape. Very stressful times would boost my screen time dramatically. It seemed painfully simple in retrospect. Like any behavioural addiction, though, I had an endless supply of reasons to be on a screen at any given time. Scary stuff. I don't think I'm the kind of person people would think behaves that way, nor did I necessarily. But we're all human, and this is a very human thing. It sneaks into your life in such an insidious way, and does so much damage before you can consciously see it or feel it.

nonethewiser 3y ago

This is the solution for a lot of behavioral problems. The instinct is to do the bad behavior less, but the solution may instead be to do something else more.

deemster 3y ago
A nail is driven out by another nail, habit is overcome by habit - Erasmus
- jay_kyburz 3y ago
  I made a browser based strategy game that takes place over weeks. Instead of checking Facebook 3 times a day, I log into Neptune's Pride 3 times a day to chat with the other players and try and conquer the galaxy.
  - riffruff24 3y ago
    hah, thanks for the game. It was definitely an interesting and fun experience. Unfortunately I've to stop because my obssesive side took over. I practically check the game every hour. I cant sleep because my mind wont stop worrying about chat/trade offers, sudden attack and which planet/tech I need to focus on. It always popped out in my mind once in a while though. I might try it again to see if I've better control of myself.
  - buzzy_hacker 3y ago
    Woah! I love Neptune’s Pride, thanks for the game! While in college, I stayed at a hacker house airbnb over the summer with a bunch of newly befriended tech friends, and I got us all playing. I have fond memories of changing the trajectories of my ships as soon as people went to bed, double-crossing alliances. Good times.

apwell23 3y ago

Yes this is why I've been trying to ski as much as possible this winter. 1. Helps my eyes by letting them see things at a distance. staring far into mountains on the lift ect. 2. Keeps me away from internet. I have dumb phone and a whistle with me in my pocket. 3. Helps me reconnect with my body and rediscover what it can do. 4. Mountain air seems to clear up my sinuses 5. And ofcourse benefits of physical excerscise. 6. I just feel very fulfilled at the end of day a stark contrast to depression of day filled with daze of the internet. 7. This is bit of bro science but seems to improve my digestion. Being in internet daze all day seems to put a pause on my digestion.

forrestwilkins 3y ago
Exercise generally helps with digestion.
- apwell23 3y ago
  For sure. I've noticed that my digestion improves if i am engrossed on the internet all day even without excercise.

Swizec 3y ago

> Instead of simply abstaining from using my phone, I put time into activities My relationship with social media, even HackerNews, really clicked when a meme (oh irony) said: ”You’re like a tiger in a cage. You know how they pace in circles when their enclosures lack enrichment? That’s you bouncing around apps on your phone” Haven’t quite figured out how to reliably stop that, but it’s true that when there’s enough enrichment, I can go days forgetting that my phone and the internet even exist.

nonrandomstring 3y ago

"The Myth of Normal" by Mate Gabor is a great place for people to start this work. Later it dawns on you that sure, like everybody else you have weaknesses and traumas that you've learned to cope with, but that doesn't excuse some people deliberately designing and pushing a product to specifically exploit that. That should give you dose of healthy positive anger of the kind that is transformative when acted upon.

johndhi 3y ago

any tips on how to identify what you're coping for?

ggpsv 3y ago
Not the parent but I can suggest what has worked for me. Talking to a therapist can be helpful in getting to the root of it. Meditation also helps, but it may be a longer road. In other words, whatever helps you live a more examined life. Regarding habits and the habit loop (what's being mentioned here), "The Power of Habit" [0] is a great read. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Habit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Habit
edrxty 3y ago
No shit, go see a decent therapist. This is literally the core of what they do as a profession. If they aren't helpful, just want to babble about the weather for 45 minutes, whatever, find a different one. PhD > Masters but I've met bad PhDs and good masters clinicians. Also, if you're struggling with getting things done because you're always dopamine seeking, get checked for ADHD. There are some extremely effective treatments that can make your life way easier if that turns out to be the problem.
godelski 3y ago
In addition to therapist, as others state, I'd also suggest just being more open with your friends (I also get that it can be intimidating to see a therapist and it's easy to justify not going, especially if you're in a good mood). Maybe grab some beers or something to create a scapegoat/plausible deniability if needed. I've long suffered from depression and this has been one of the most impactful moves for me, especially around identifying latent issues that appear more ethereal. It can be hard, especially in our general gender norms (I'm male) where some people will think it is a weakness (men and women), but to me strength is doing the hard things. YMMV, but I think it is important to have friends and/or partner(s) that you can be open with and just have the ability to vent. Fuck, sometimes I don't even know what I'm upset about until I let off a little steam first, and often just an outside opinion helps. I can also suggest small internet communities as these can be places to form friendships while having some PII type of anonymity and at least for me helped me be more open before I was ready to open up to friends. Places like HN and reddit are probably too large, but hey, I'll put this out in general to anyone, feel free to reach out over email[0]. You can also get something similar by just talking to random people at a bar. Whatever works best for you, but it all is a noisy process. But at the end of the day I think what's most critical is that you find some means of just opening up. You don't have to stick to one group either, and if you need to start at one place to build up to another, there's no problem with that. Take it as a journey, not a destination. But I will say having at least a one or two core friends (and ideally a partner) is going to be one of the most helpful things you can do for your mental health. A therapist will never be enough but you should think of them as a very useful and different tool (because you do want advice not coming from those who want to protect you. Outside opinions are invaluable and a good therapist will do their best, but consider they can only work with the context you give and what they can get from you). [0] In my profile. And if anyone has a suggestion for a better anonymous email, let me know. I'm kinda annoyed at proton's ads.

godelski 3y ago

I think this is an unfortunately not enough discussed topic. As sciences are young (as psychology relatively is) you work on broader problems and much more aggregated results. You make naive assumptions like everything exists in normal distributions or data is i.i.d. So you get results that are big generalizations and sometimes not even reliable. But then as a field advances, it naturally shifts into requiring more and more nuance and specificity. Where you have to start considering multivariate solutions (even if that's a mixture of gaussians, which, awesome tool btw) because you approach a natural wall at the explainability of your data with naive methods. And let's be clear, if we wanted to really rigorously study psychology -- at the same level as, say, physics -- then there would need to be a lot of crazy math invented and we'd probably still end up needing to do unethical things because holy fuck how do you control all those variables. (definitely warrants being open about error and unknowns) There's nothing wrong with that. But I do think it's wrong that we're not open about it, in so much that it isn't even always explicitly stated during a science education. We might say something like "all models are wrong" but I don't think that solidifies this thinking enough for novices and can create experts who still don't get it. Wherein it becomes a classic clique, where everyone knows the phrase but doesn't understand or practice the lesson. There's some noticeable downsides too. If you're constantly not reiterating what your base assumptions are and acknowledging the limitation of those assumptions, you forget they exist. It also becomes hard to communicate the significance of your work to the public and I think in some cases is often why the public ends up calling (sometimes rightfully, sometimes not) bullshit. I think there's also a major advantage to science, in being open about these helps newcomers (such as those entering graduate school) more readily understand the limitations of the field and what work needs to be done. But I think some incentive structures we have in place don't encourage great scientific behavior in this way. Speaking of which, other metrics can even end up making bridging this multivariate gap more difficult. Such as the all too well known p-value weirdness, you may end up rejecting works making progress towards this bridging by having these arbitrary requirements rather than evaluating works with more nuance, which can even then discourage attempting to build such bridges. I guess coming full circle to: it's complicated? Like everything else lol

steve_adams_86 3y ago

You've really nailed from my perspective. I used my phone as a way to withdraw and escape. Even the most mundane situations warranted some degree of escape. Very stressful times would boost my screen time dramatically. It seemed painfully simple in retrospect. Like any behavioural addiction, though, I had an endless supply of reasons to be on a screen at any given time. Scary stuff. I don't think I'm the kind of person people would think behaves that way, nor did I necessarily. But we're all human, and this is a very human thing. It sneaks into your life in such an insidious way, and does so much damage before you can consciously see it or feel it.