Clicks, Likes, Tweets: Behavioral Addiction in the Digital Space FINAL

What is an addition?

1) impaired control over drug use

2) compulsive use, continued use despite harm

3) craving

- What is the only behavioral addiction recognized by DSM-5?

gambling disorder

- Understand the development of addiction - volitional to compulsive use

Volitional use of a substance or engagement in a specific behavior (Person remains in control of behavior or use (voluntary) Occasional Not impairing or leading to negative consequences)-> Compulsive use of a substance or engagement in a specific behavior (Impaired control (compulsive) • Functional impairment • Risky use • Tolerance and withdrawal)

Define internet gaming disorder: Understand differences in diagnostic criteria between internet gaming disorder and other addiction-related diagnoses

continuous and repeated involvement with video games, often leading to significant daily, work and / or educational disruptions. Has to meet five criteria to be diagnosed.

Impaired control over use

Using more than desired or expected. Can lead to social and familial conflicts and confrontations, or loss of interest in other activities

Compulsive use and continued use despite harm:

Wanting to cut down or stop using but not managing to. Harm= negative consequences related to use such as repeated mental, social, work, or familial interruptions, or use when potentially dangerous; frequent and constant consultations in brief periods with insomnia and sleep disturbances. Example texting while driving, playing instead of studying, texting despite thumb pain, Computer Vision Syndrome.

3) Craving

Excessive use, urgency, abstinence, tolerance, dependence, difficulty controlling use, craving use, increasing use to achieve satisfaction or relaxation or to counteract a dysphoric mood; the need to be connected, feelings of irritability or of being lost if separated from the phone or of sending and viewing messages with feelings of unease when unable to use it.

Criteria for Internet addiction

Preoccupation with the internet: person thinks about previous online activity or anticipates next online session 2) Withdrawal: anxiety, irritability and boredom without internet activity 3) At least one (or more) of the following: 1) Tolerance: marked increase in internet use required to achieve satisfaction 2) Unsuccessful attempts to control, cut back or discontinue internet use 3) Continued excessive use of internet despite knowledge of having a persistent or recurrent physical or psychological problem likely to have been caused or exacerbated by internet use 4) Loss of interests, previous hobbies, entertainment as a direct result of internet use 5) Uses the internet to escape or relieve a dysphoric mood (e.g. feelings of helplessness, guilt, anxiety) 4) Functional impairments (reduced social, academic, working ability), including loss of a significant relationship, job, educational or career opportunities 5) Course criterion Duration of internet addiction must have lasted for an excess of 3 months, with at least 6 hours of internet usage

Understand the statistics of frequency of cellphone use

As of 2018, 94% of individuals ages 18-29 in the U.S. owned a smartphone (Pew Research Center). • On average, young adults in the U.S. spend approximately 4 hours per day on their smartphones; amounts to 28 hours of smartphone use (more than a full day) each week. • However, 26% of adults and 39% of young adults are online "almost constantly

- Understand that there is a lack of conceptual definition of smartphone addiction

Lack of conceptual definition of smartphone addiction • Some studies focused on problematic use, some on addiction, some on dependence criteria • Lack of established measures and questionnaires • Ranges from 5% to 64% in samples of adolescents and young adults • The diversity of terms, criteria, perspectives, and constructs in the field of smartphone addiction creates difficulties for assessing epidemiological data.

Understand the role of dopamine

is the main neurotransmitter that helps to regulate motivation related to behaviors necessary for survival

Berridge experiment

Berridge showed that dopamine systems may mediate motivation in a manner separable from pleasure. When he destroyed the area which produces dopamine in rats' brains the animals did not seek more water-sugar solution but when they were fed it, they still showed they enjoyed it. They did not want the sugar but still liked it.

Olds and Milner

showed that electrical stimulation can serve for positive reinforcement in the brains reward system

- People, places, and things - triggers

The phrase "people, places, and things" refers to triggers. Triggers are the problematic cues that lead to a craving, a strong—often overwhelming—desire to obtain and use your substance of abuse or engage in the addictive behaviors

Rat Park Study

Study that showed rats in isolation consumed more morphine than those in pairs. Stress, isolation, and other emotional factors lead to addiction rather than the thing itself. 60 min of daily social interaction could make the difference.

Ancient brainTech environment

Our ancient brain has to deal with a high-tech world

Understand what elements make stimuli more salient

Top-down attention

Sustained Attention Higher-level goals Complex functions Executive functions • • monitoring & planning active ignoring (goal directed) Top-down attention has evolved from mechanisms related to food foraging. As our brains became more complex, they have progressively evolved to forage information as this guaranteed survival advantages.

Bottom-Up Attention

Perception-Based Fast Involuntary/Reactive "Primitive" Less affected by fatigue (stimuli driven) Bottom-Up Attention Responds to: Colors, Sounds, Movements àmemes & Survival stimuli (sex, food, threats)

The New York Sun

New Yorks first daily newspaper that went for a penny. Its instant popularity was due to coverage of sensational and sometimes fabricated stories and scandals. Its success was also the result of ubiquitous newsboys, who the innovative Day had hired to hawk the paper. By 1834, the Sun had the largest circulation in New York City. Among the many fabricated stories The New York Sun covered: "The Great Moon Hoax" in 1835

Tim Wu

capturing our attention allows media companies to sell ads. As long as our attention is had, money is made.

Propaganda and how industry is using similar strategy to advertise

Both strategies continuously force things upon us en masse. Most people are exposed to 5,000 ads per day.

illusion of multi-tasking

• "Fast Switching" happens when attention is shifted rapidly between tasks • This creates the illusion of multitasking • However, there are switching costs: studies on dual-task performance (called dual-task interference) show that performance on the two tasks simultaneously is worse than doing them sequentially, for most tasks.

Be able to differentiate between fake news and traditional news

Fake News- Reporting fake news motivated by financial or ideological motivations • Low accountability (not held to the same legal standard) • Lack of accountability decreases pressure to report accurately • Accurate research and factchecking is time and resource intensive, fake news firms can produce their output for cheap • Many consumers still consume and/or enjoy the output - All sites (which could be run by individuals or groups) only need a click; by that point, viewers have triggered advertisements

Traditional News- Business model involves researching and reporting accurate news for the benefit of paying consumers • Legal pressure exists (avoiding libel charges) • Consumers have expectations about the news from these sources • On account of their size, visibility, and public nature, they are largely held accountable for any blatant misinformation publishes

Ash conformity experiment

Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view. About one third of the participants who were placed in this situation conformed with the clearly incorrect majority on the critical trials. Over the 12 critical trials, about 75% of participants conformed at least once, and only 25% of participants never conformed. In the control group, with no pressure to conform to confederates, less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer. People are seven times more likely to share content online when they perceive other people are sharing it

- Describe the potential societal costs of fake news

Fake news leads to less accurate beliefs among citizens • Which may then undermine the democratic process and our ability to pick quality candidates • Fake news could reduce the demand for accuracy • Fake news could affect traditional news by encouraging firms to adopt new tactics associated with fake news outlets • More seriously, fake news could be used to stir up and intensify social conflict or in some cases suppress social conflict

How and why Fake News spreads

Social networks have 3 billion users and represent an important venue for moral and political discourse. • Social Networks have been used to organize political revolutions, influence elections, and raise awareness of social issues. • They are incredibly effective. Why? • Possibly because of the ability to engage users and spread moralized content through online networks à MAD (Motivation, Attention and Design) Model of Moral Contagion

- MAD model (motivation-attention-design) model

Motivation: people have group identity-based motivations to share moral emotional content • Attention: Moral content tends to capture our attention • Design: the design of social media platforms amplifies our natural motivational and cognitive tendencies to spread such content. • The quick and extensive spread of moralized content online can ruin the reputation of individuals and organizations within hours

Understand the relationship between electronics use and loneliness as well as factors contributing to this relationship

In line with the displacement hypothesis, early studies found that Internet use was related to increased feelings of loneliness • Later studies related Internet use to increases in individuals' well-being, because time online may increase social interaction with strong ties, hereby enhancing the quality of existing friendships. In line with this stimulation hypothesis, studies found that Internet use in particular may indeed decrease loneliness • There is well-established evidence for both hypotheses.

Describe the effects of loneliness

A 2010 study by Brigham Young University found that loneliness shortens a person's life by 15 years, about the same impact as being obese or smoking 15 cigarettes a day. • Other studies have found connections between loneliness and a wide range of health problems, including increased risk for heart attacks, stroke, and cancer. • Lonely people are more likely to suffer from insomnia, depression, and drug abuse. They are also more likely to suffer from more rapid cognitive decline in old age.

- Understand the hyperpersonal model of text-based computer-mediated communication

Text-based communication involves two distinct processes that alter perceptions: • Selective self-presentation: fewer cue systems afford users more control over their message construction, allowing them to create more favorable and intimate messages • Idealization of communicative partner: halo effect when initial message cues, or the context, suggest that a partner may be attractive in some way

paradox of choice

More choice gives people autonomy and individual freedom • Too much choice produces "choice paralysis" • More difficult to choose at all • End up less satisfied than if the choice was made with fewer options • Even a good choice can seem dissatisfying

jam experiment

consumers shopping at an upscale grocery store encountered a tasting booth that displayed either a limited (6) or an extensive (24) selection of different flavors of jam • The two dependent measures of customers' motivation were their initial attraction to the tasting booth and their subsequent purchasing behavior • The most popular flavors (strawberry and raspberry) were removed so potential customers wouldn't reach for flavors they had a firmly established a preference for • All consumers were allowed to taste as many jams as they wished and received a coupon for a $1-discount off when they approached the table- The large display attracted more interest than the small one. But when the time came to purchase, people who saw the small display were 10 times more likely to purchase than people who saw the large display

Factors related to the persistence of relationships

Leading relationship theories state that three factors are related to the persistence of a relationship, when from an evolutionary perspective, we are continually looking for better alternatives: • 1. Dependence based on satisfaction (your partner is meeting your needs) • 2. Quality of alternatives (how desirable is your best alternative partner) • 3. Investment (how much resources have you put into the relationship and what resources will be lost if it ended)

Internet use and accidents

• The National Safety Council reports that cell phone use while driving leads to 1.6 million crashes each year. • Texting while driving is 6x more likely to cause an accident than driving drunk. • 1 out of every 4 car accidents in the United States is caused by texting and driving. • Nearly 390,000 injuries occur each year from accidents caused by texting while driving. • Answering a text takes away your attention for about five seconds. Traveling at 55 mph, that's enough time to travel the length of a football field. • Of all cell phone related tasks, texting is by far the most dangerous activity. • An estimated 16,000 additional road fatalities from 2001 to 2007 due to texting and driving (to compare corona virus has made less than 3K victims)

Describe conditioning and sleep

sleep is about conditions that tell your brain to sleep

Describe how blue light affects melatonin secretion

Studies have shown that being exposed to the blue-and-white light given off by phones, laptops, and electronic devices at night prevents our brains from releasing melatonin, a hormone that tells our bodies it's nighttime.

Understand what motivational interviewing is

Collaborative strategy used to address ambivalence and elicit motivation to change problematic behavior • Ideal for patients in pre-contemplation and contemplation stages of behavior change • Acts on attitude, behavioral control and (sometimes) subjective norms in theory of planned behavior • Through specific processes, encourages autonomy and leads patients to make their own choices/self-discoveries, after weighting pros and cons of a specific behavior • Most interventions targeting maladaptive habits, including those for IA, have some MI components built into them

stages of behavioral change

pro-contemplation- unaware of the problem

action - practices the desired behavior

preparation - intends to take action

contemplation - aware of the problem and of the desired behavioral change

maintenance - works to sustain the behavioral change

Theory of planned behavior

Attitude: what you think about a specific behavior • Subjective Norm: what the people around you think about the specific behavior • Perceived Behavioral Control: self-efficacy - will I be able to do it? • Combination of attitude, subjective norm and behavioral control leads to intention and then to behavio

How are habits formed

Habits are formed and maintained through conditioning consisting of 3 parts: 1. A recurring cue/trigger/antecedent (whatever prompts the behavior) • Getting into the car • Hearing/feeling a phone notification 2. A behavior that is repeated contingent on the cue (the behavior itself) • Buckling your seatbelt • Checking phone 3. A reward/consequence (the payoff that trains our brains to repeat the habit in the future) • Annoying beep of car's seatbelt reminder stops • Finding out what the notification was • Once these associations are forged, perceiving the appropriate cues will automatically retrieve the response from memory and trigger an impulse to initiate it, thus decreasing sensitivity to outcome

How long does it take to form a habit?

On average, the researchers found that it takes more than 2 months (or around 66 days) before a new behavior becomes automatic. • They also found something even more interesting: • How long it takes a new habit to form can vary widely, depending on the behavior, the person, and the circumstances. • In Lally's study, it took anywhere from 18 days to 254 days for people to form a new habit.

Understand the optimal foraging theory/matching law and how it relates to changing cellphone use

• Foraging strategies have been shaped by natural selection and evolution • Animals optimize their foraging by managing costs and benefits • We use similar processes to decide when to get involved in task switching.

We tend to move from information to information (alert, tweet, notification, random curiosity) exactly as a monkey moves from tree to tree depending on distance and hope of new resources

- Describe willpower and its role in treating addictions

Researchers concluded that effort or "willpower" is finite and becomes depleted like a muscle with overuse. Self-control IS changing your environment to make desirable behavior more likely. It is not so much your will, as it is the strategies that you use.

antedecent/cue

Understanding what triggers excessive cellphone use

replacement behaviors

figuring out the best types of new behaviors

consequences (extinction)

altering of online rewards

Common triggers

social attention/engagement, escape from a difficult task, distraction from negative emotions, escape from boredom

Describe the phenomenon of boredom

Boredom is what a child or adult feels who is unaware of the true causes of his/her emptiness. Because the void is felt so indirectly, the solution is correspondingly vague. Instead of looking to our inner resources, we want a fix from the outside—something to eat, something to distract, someone to engage with. This is usually where the child's brain seizes on stimulation or social activity as the answer. Television, electronic games, or outside stimulation can cover up the void temporarily but never fill it. As soon as the distracting activity ceases, the boredom returns

Define cognitive distortions

an exaggerated or irrational thought pattern involved in the onset or perpetuation of psychopathological states, such as depression and anxiety

Compelling goals that are just beyond reach

People who play Tetris or a number of similar games, regardless of their abilities, spend most of their time in the zone of proximal development • • • They struggle with the game's slowest level until players slowly develop a sense of mastery that allows them to play the second level, and then the third, and so on The difficulty of the game escalates, but their abilities keep pace, or rather, fall just short of mastering the most difficult level they've managed to attain (Tetris)

Unpredictable positive feedback (intermittent reinforcement)

When rewards are unpredictable, we crave them more as we have seen before. Example of micro-cliffhangers can be found in the many online shopping platforms. Gilt is one of the most poplar • • On Gilt, new sales arrive without warning, so members constantly refresh their pages to check for new updates on lowered prices. The site offers members a low-grade thrill amid their otherwise predictable lives. • Because the offers are limited, there is also a perception of scarcity which makes the items even more appealing Finally, discounted price makes you feel closer to ownership, increasing the feeling of attachment towards the object

juice

Slot-machine success is measured by "time on device" • Similarly, videogame success is measured by level of engagement aka time spent on device, along with money spent while playing • To maximize the amount of time we spend on online videogames and platforms, designers use micro-feedback techniques designed to keep us captivated "juice" • These techniques are intentional. As per Bennet Foddy in Alter "when your mouse cursor moves over a particular box, text will pop up, or a sound will play. Designers use this sort of micro-feedback to keep players more engaged and more hooked in"

rat casino

dimming lights triggered primitive parts of rats brain to make them more likely to take risks

Describe the role of hardship

• Students preferred to endure the unpleasantness of a shock to the experience of sitting quietly with their thoughts. The experimenter's concluded, "most people prefer to be doing something rather than nothing, even if that something is negative."

endowment effect

An essential prediction of behavioral economics is that the ownership of something increases its value in the owner's eyes • This phenomenon is called the endowment effect • When we own something (car, dog, home, idea, followers, video game abilities), we begin to value it more than other people do. • • Garage sales are good places to test this hypothesis! This is also true of relationships - even if people are unhappy in their relationship, the longer they spend with their partners, the harder will be to let go.

Zeigarnik Effect

incomplete experiences occupy our minds far more than complete ones.

Social Contact Hypothesis

under appropriate conditions, interpersonal contact is one of the most effective ways to reduce prejudice between majority and minority group members • If one has the opportunity to communicate with others, they are able to understand and appreciate different points of views involving their way of life. • As a result, prejudice should diminish

parasocial interaction

phenomenon experienced by an audience in encounters with performers in mass media (e.g., on TV) where viewers come to consider media personalities as friends, despite having limited interactions with them. • Because the process is similar to interpersonal interaction, the socially beneficial functions of intergroup contact may result from parasocial contact as well

Describe the results of the Royal Society for Public Health

. YouTube (most positive) 2. Twitter 3. Facebook 4. Snapchat 5. Instagram (most negative)

Describe the recommendations of the Royal Society for Public Health

Introduction of a pop-up heavy usage warning on social media - seven in 10 (71%) young people surveyed by RSPH support this recommendation. Social media platforms to identify users who could be suffering from mental health problems by their posts, and discretely signpost to support - four in five (80%) young people support. Social media platforms to highlight when photos of people have been digitally manipulated - more than two-thirds (68%) of young people support.

social comparison

the inclination to compare one's accomplishments, one's situation, and one's experiences with those of others

At the core of this theory is the idea that people try to learn and know about themselves—their own abilities, successes, and personality—by comparing themselves with others.