[TimPC]

He doesn’t argue that the behaviours aren’t harmful at all but rather often manifest as a coping mechanism for another condition. He thinks it’s a dangerous idea to treat social media addiction as something to treat directly rather than something that likely indicates another problem. I don’t think it’s perfect because actual addictions are often caused by other problems (ex. Depression). I really wish the expert was forced to answer questions like whether it’s worthwhile to treat alcohol addiction directly without treating an underlying depression. It seems like this definition may not quite work the way he wants it to. The distinction may be if you treat the depression directly the social media addiction disappears but if you treat the depression directly the alcoholism still needs to be dealt with.

[dalbasal]

Yeah... maybe (obviously) I shouldn't have commented without listening, caveats or no.

That said, this is also true of heroin addiction. It is highly related to other, often social, malaises. This has been experimentally proven in rodents. Lonely, unhappy rodents are far more addiction prone. It has been observed in people too, notably the vietnam war example.

I don't even think there is a common treatment for alcoholism anymore that doesn't relate to "underlying" issues. AA, and related group therapies are all about creating a supportive community. Social isolation is a major factor in addiction.

That's kind of what I meant. These hard lines don't exist, and I think many that do exist for research purposes. Hard to study something that isn't discreetly defined. Physical withdrawal symptoms were once a primary researchers' definition of addiction, even though addicts rarely think of it that way.

[ghodith]

“This has been experimentally proven in rodents”

If you are talking about the rat park[0] series of experiments, that conclusion has hardly been “experimentally proven.” There are many replication issues and the authors themselves don’t support the popular conclusion often taken from their research.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

[dalbasal]

My apologies. "Replication crisis" (or Ted Talks, really) strikes again. I should have said "demonstrated," though that's probably a cop out.

From the wiki article and its meta research source, it seems that researchers do support the general idea that housing, enrichment and social conditions affect addiction. Popular science has just overstated the results.

"While the Rat Park studies did not use methods that are reliable by current standards, enrichment has been shown to reliably reduce opioid consumption and this effect can generalise to other drugs of abuse."

https://journals.helsinki.fi/jrn/article/view/10.31885.jrn.1...

Incidentally, I don't understand why stuff like this is still ambiguous. This is a classroom experiment, resource-wise. Why hasn't it been refined, replicated and conducted at scale sufficient to be reliable?

[jrochkind1]

Hm, in my observations and reflections, most addictions are in part coping mechanisms for something else.

So I think what he's saying about treating the gaming "addiction" without attention to the underlying trauma being coped with -- probably applies to actual/other addiction too, rather than being a distinction?

[possibleworlds]

“Actual addictions” are caused by actually addictive substances or patterns of behaviour. Genetic predisposition is also a significant and often misunderstood factor. Yes there can be links to underlying mental health issues, but addictions are primarily cause by things that are actually addictive. Nicotine, for example, causes immediate withdrawals and cravings in the short term, and basically rewires your brain chemistry with sustained long term use. Addiction to nicotine is not caused by depression, it is caused by nicotine.