this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2024
86 points (95.7% liked)
Asklemmy
44123 readers
579 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I've never met anyone with an apparent addiction - and I've met quite a few in my day - that were completely happy with the life they were leading. Probably because real addiction entails a loss of control that would be detrimental to your life and self-esteem. Even if you have no one around you, if you want to do anything else with your day besides drink and you constantly fail, it's not a good thing for your mental health. You'd continuously find yourself in degrading situations.
Coming to terms with "choice" in the context of addiction is a difficult thing to me. I'm really not sure where I stand on it. It's definitely not the same as making decisions when completely sober, you're not completely helpless or without personal responsibility either.
And then some people seem to be able to consume copious amounts of drugs or alcohol at some time in their life and then just walk away from it without issues. Perhaps it's genetics, or a personality thing, who knows.
I can imagine people being so distraught and apathetic that their addiction feels like the only thing that gives them purpose in life. I think that's why a lot of people find addiction - to make up for what they don't have. Or, in the context of younger people with phones, they just don't know a world without it.
If you live alone, have no kids or pets, and all you do after work is play video games or doom scroll or watch porn; as long as your bills are being paid, is this an "addiction"? Are these the kinds of people you've met?
I think we're only just beginning to see the ramifications of phone / social media addiction and our disinterest or fear in engaging with others in real life. Our devices are giving us all this unnatural dopamine drip we otherwise can't find in the wild. Is this an addiction and if so, is their reliance on screens going to become a problem as these young people face adulthood? Or is adulthood going to change for them? Not to mention how my 70+ year old mother is 100% addicted to the dings from her phone.
You're probably correct, although I also think once an addictive pattern is established there's often a kind of feedback loop where the pattern interferes with your ability and options to have a better life.
I guess there's a few ways to answer that question. In an extremely literal sense, no one is ever going to be diagnosed with anything if their behavior doesn't affect themselves or others around them negatively. But if we define addiction as a certain behavioral pattern, this person would still be addicted to their phone given that this behavioral pattern is present. Do they "play video games or doom scroll or watch porn" every day simply because they're bored, or because they can't help themselves? And if an opportunity arose and this person's life had a chance to turn significantly better somehow, would this behavior stand in their way?
I'm not saying I know the answer, by the way, and I'm certainly not judging anyone in this kind of situation.