Module 6 Flashcards
Internet and Smartphone addiction
“Are Teenagers Replacing Drugs with Smartphones?”
- Matt Richtel
American teenagers are growing less likely to try or regularly use drugs, including alcohol. Possible reasons are:
- falling cigarette-smoking rates are cutting into a key gateway to drugs
- that antidrug education campaigns, long a largely failed enterprise, have finally taken hold
- constantly stimulated and entertained by their computers and phones
- gadgets simply absorb a lot of time that could be used for other pursuits, including partying
This correlation does not mean that one phenomenon is causing the other, but scientists say interactive media appears to play to similar impulses as drug experimentation, including sensation-seeking and the desire for independence.
Monitoring the Future - survey that measures drug use by teenagers
Over the past year: 8th, 10th and 12th graders, use of illicit drugs (other than marijuana) was at the lowest level in the 40-year history of the project.
Use of marijuana is down over the past decade for 8th and 10th graders (even as social acceptability is up).
While marijuana use has risen among 12th graders, cocaine use, hallucinogens, ecstasy and crack are all down (LSD, however, has remained steady.)
In some communities, over the past decade, heroin use among adults has become an epidemic; it has fallen, however, among high school students.
According to Dr. Nora Volkow:
Interactive media is “an alternative reinforcer” to drugs. Teens can get literally high when playing these games.”
According to Dr. Silva Martins, Columbia University:
“Playing video games, using social media, fulfills the necessity of sensation seeking; their need to seek novel activity. This is all theoretical, however, it still needs to be proved.”
Arguments against:
The correlation of drug use has not fallen among college students.
“While drug use has fallen among youths ages 12-17, it hasn’t declined among college students, according to Dr. Sion Kim Harris, co-director of the Center for Adolescent Substance Abuse Research at Boston Children’s Hospital”.
According to Dr. Joseph Lee at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation:
“Drug use and experimentation has changed because the opioid epidemic has exposed many more people and communities to the deadly risk of drugs, creating a broader deterrent.”
Feedback Loops
Some researches believe that these devices are things that people can fall back on (loop) to offer a happy stimulant (or hit)
David Greenfield, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine says:
“people are carrying around a portable dopamine pump, and kids have basically been carrying it around for the last 10 years.”
“Web addicts have brain changes, research suggests” - Hellen Briggs
Internet addiction: a clinical disorder marked by out-of-control internet use.
There was evidence of disruption to connections in nerve fibers linking brain areas involved in emotions, decision-making, and self-control.
Of the 35 brain scans of men and women between 14 and 21, a total of 17 were classified as having internet addiction disorder (IAD).
MRI brain scans showed changes in the white matter of the brain - the part that contains nerve fibers - in those classified as being web addicts, compared with non-addicts.
Results also suggest that IAD may share psychological and neural mechanisms with other types of substance addiction and impulse control disorders.
