CategoryAddiction
Glued to Our Phones. Our Troubling Addiction to Social Media
It's disconcerting to see people out for a nature walk — completely absorbed in the traffic on their phones
LLMs Are Bad at Good Things, Good at Bad Things
LLMs may well become smarter than humans in the near future but not because these chatbots are becoming more intelligent
Snapchat Has Been Totally Exposed
Employees admit the harms of the camera app
Sports Gambling: The New Addiction Storming America
Making money off your favorite team just got wildly popular. But is it healthy?Super Bowl 2025 is less than two weeks away, with the Philadelphia Eagles finding themselves in a rematch with reigning champions, the Kansas City Chiefs. Sports engagement has ballooned over the past few years through the medium of online sports betting. Formerly illegal, sports betting has taken the U.S. by storm, with major celebrities and sports stars going on air advocating the practice. Making money off your favorite team just got wildly popular. But is it healthy? A recent article titled “I Got Divorced Because of Sports Betting” shows the dark side of the gamble. Pitched as an easy way to make money online, no one talks about the mad fury that ensues after your bet fails to deliver, your Read More ›
TikTok Is Banned in the U.S. No It’s Not. Yes It Is. No It’s Not…
The political stew aside, we need to look at the key ways TikTok differs from typical social media
AI and the Destructive Lies of the Tool Trope
You've heard this, right? “Technology isn’t good or bad; it’s a tool, it’s just how you use it that matters.” False.
TikTok Is Not Just Overgrown Chatting and Email
Foreign adversary’s AI-empowered threats to national security tip Supreme Court scales against TikTokSocial media like TikTok today interconnect active speakers and active viewers in all directions. The system monitors and stores all the communications, extracting volumes of data for each individual user. In China where the law allows it, the government can scan and analyze not only the speakers and viewers but can also retrieve specific facts about all of them. The government can restrict messages based upon speaker, viewer, and content — and use AI to craft and send personalized, tailored messages aiming to influence users’ buying and voting decisions, not to mention their psychological well-being. TikTok and the First Amendment Broad-band internet services, multi-billion-dollar social media, and expanding central government are merging into a muscular octopus of surveillance, data Read More ›
Australia’s Social Media Ban and Children’s Mental Health
An Australian psychiatrist hopes that his job might become easier in the future due to Australia's coming ban on underage use of social media
Beyond Social Media’s Impact on Mental Health
Social media addiction can harm more than our moodsA young writer, herself a member of Gen Z, has dared to point out the obvious about social media. Sure, it’s verifiably making us sad and anxious, but it goes beyond that: it’s turning us into bad people. Freya India, a columnist at Quillette and a new contributor to Jonathan Haidt’s Substack After Babel, notes that while it’s important to talk about social media and mental health, it’s just as vital to talk about what this stuff is doing to our character. She writes, Our loss of empathy, our lack of regard for others, our neurotic obsession with our own image — it’s taking a toll. Maybe subconsciously. But I think deep down we know it. We know when people are using Read More ›
David Foster Wallace: If Screens Are Your Main Media Diet, You’re Going to Die
The novelist warned about the pitfalls of the online life“If we ate like this all the time, what would be wrong with that?” So asks David Foster Wallace, compellingly played by Jason Segel, in the 2015 film The End of the Tour. Wallace is in the car with a Rolling Stone reporter, David Lipsky, cramming down sweets from a gas station when he says that. After Lipsky quips back about obesity, Wallace says, “It has none of the substance of real food, but it’s real pleasurable.” The End of the Tour is set in 1996 shortly after Wallace’s gargantuan novel Infinite Jest hit the literary scene and impressed the nation with its length, wit, tragedy, and insight. A massive book about loneliness, Infinite Jest takes place in a semi-futuristic Read More ›
Escaping the Dopamine Cartel
We can't even be bothered with "entertainment" anymore.
Facebook and Instagram Allegedly Hook Youngsters with Dopamine Triggering Tactics
Is This a Moral Reckoning? 41 States Sue Meta for Knowingly Addicting Young Users
The lawsuit claims that Meta's platforms are harming its young users. The data backs it up.
In Neuroscience Flap, Science Media Tackle “Pseudoscience” Claim
As the leading theory of consciousness is tarred by neuroscientists as “pseudoscience,” science media struggle to outline just WHAT science is
Cal Newport: Overstimulation Is Ruining Your Life
Turns out the solution is simple: don't use things that overstimulate you.
The Real Issue With the “New Drug”
Pornography is a drug, through and through, and is used mainly to alleviate negative emotions and meaninglessnessOne of the biggest harms of the Internet is online pornography. While prostitution (which has the root word porneia) has been around since the dawn of human history, never before has access to explicit content been so easy and varied. Today the porn industry rakes in around $100 million globally, with the U.S. making up $12-14 million of that revenue. According to this report, 40 million Americans regularly view pornography, and 25 percent of all Internet searches are porn-related. These stats are shocking, to say the least, but it begs the question of how we best understand and treat porn addiction in today’s context. While most of us would naturally assume such addiction is related to sexual impulses, “Dr. K,” Read More ›
Boy Scouts and Tech Addiction
You can't mimic the reality compared to what you see on the screenThe Boy Scouts of America once enjoyed a booming membership. But over the last decade especially, due to some policy changes, abuse scandals, and a giant lawsuit, the once great organization has seen a colossal decline. In last week’s podcast, Robert J. Marks sat down with former Boy Scout leader and his cousin Kent Marks. Together they talked about the tragic decline in the Boy Scouts program, which coincides with the enduring need to help boys navigate the many distractions and difficulties of growing up in a digitally mediated world. Today, Kent continues to lead boys on wilderness expeditions and believes that getting guys away from the screens and into the beauty of the outdoors is a key to their Read More ›
The Asbury Revival and the Cure for TikTok
In the age of social media addiction, young people need to know they can be imperfect and yet lovedSocial media portrays a world where everybody is happy and having a good time. Everybody, of course, except for you. There must therefore be something wrong with you. You are a loser. Teenage boys without girlfriends feel like social freaks. One in three teenage girls who use social media suffers from body image issues. Social Media and Depression Young adults who use social media are three times as likely to suffer from depression. Depression can lead to suicide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, female suicides aged 15-24 increased by 87 percent over the past 20 years and male suicides increased by 30 percent. The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry says suicide is now Read More ›
Andrew McDiarmid and Eric Metaxas on Thinking for Ourselves
Social media makes it very easy to farm out thinking until finally we do not know what or even whether we thinkRecently, Andrew McDiarmid wrote a piece in the New York Post on the neglected benefits of sitting quietly and thinking for oneself: … a recent study reported in the Journal of Experimental Psychology suggests that the act of “just thinking” can be more rewarding than we might realize. The authors of the paper acknowledge that the ability to engage in internal thoughts without external stimulation is a unique characteristic in humans, yet we regularly underappreciate the benefits of doing it. This might be one reason we’re so quick to reach for our phones — we don’t know what we’re missing. Andrew McDiarmid, “If you make one resolution in 2023, it should be this: experts” at New York Post (December 31, Read More ›