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I think I'm similar. But why didn't people talk about newspaper addiction back then? Sometimes I wonder—even before smartphones, people spent that time reading

by jdw64 19d ago

I think I'm similar. But why didn't people talk about newspaper addiction back then? Sometimes I wonder—even before smartphones, people spent that time reading books, looking up information, and reading newspapers. That kind of addiction was seen as "positive." But in reality, it was probably disrupting daily life too, in its own way. When I see things like this, it sometimes occurs to me that the people who create "addiction" are the ones in power. Come to think of it, it makes me wonder why there was never any such thing as newspaper addiction.

psyklic 19d ago
You can read a lot of the newspaper and still finish by the end of breakfast. It isn't personalized, so many sections aren't of much interest.
- jdw64 19d ago
  But when I think about it, communities like HN don't exactly have only the taste I want either, do they? That's always the case, really. There are people whose daily lives fall apart because they read too many books, but that usually isn't categorized as a form of addiction. So sometimes I wonder how addiction is actually defined.
kelvinjps10 19d ago
But newspapers end and then each one cost money.
deleted 19d ago
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neom 19d ago
Well... https://aeon.co/essays/contagion-poison-trigger-books-have-always-been-dangerous https://aeon.co/essays/contagion-poison-trigger-books-have-a... and: https://archive.org/details/americannervousn00bearuoft/page/xii/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/americannervousn00bearuoft/page/... - one note on this, Beard blamed nervous exhaustion on steam power, the periodical press, the telegraph, the sciences, and uh... the mental activity of women... This excerpt for a tl;dr: https://english.web.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/english/documents/media/aqa_c19th_text_american_nervousness.pdf?time=1556093263781 https://english.web.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/english/doc... For how addiction is defined, google ICD-11, it's: Impaired control over the behavior, the behavior taking increasing priority over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation despite negative consequences, plus distress or functional impairment.. (I'm an alcoholic, 5 years sober)

by jdw64 19d ago

psyklic 19d ago

You can read a lot of the newspaper and still finish by the end of breakfast. It isn't personalized, so many sections aren't of much interest.

jdw64 19d ago
But when I think about it, communities like HN don't exactly have only the taste I want either, do they? That's always the case, really. There are people whose daily lives fall apart because they read too many books, but that usually isn't categorized as a form of addiction. So sometimes I wonder how addiction is actually defined.

kelvinjps10 19d ago

But newspapers end and then each one cost money.

deleted 19d ago

[deleted]

neom 19d ago

Well... https://aeon.co/essays/contagion-poison-trigger-books-have-always-been-dangerous https://aeon.co/essays/contagion-poison-trigger-books-have-a... and: https://archive.org/details/americannervousn00bearuoft/page/xii/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/americannervousn00bearuoft/page/... - one note on this, Beard blamed nervous exhaustion on steam power, the periodical press, the telegraph, the sciences, and uh... the mental activity of women... This excerpt for a tl;dr: https://english.web.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/english/documents/media/aqa_c19th_text_american_nervousness.pdf?time=1556093263781 https://english.web.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/english/doc... For how addiction is defined, google ICD-11, it's: Impaired control over the behavior, the behavior taking increasing priority over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation despite negative consequences, plus distress or functional impairment.. (I'm an alcoholic, 5 years sober)