Smartphone addiction stronger than opium - new research
In the Indian state of Odisha, a 17-year-old man was arrested for
selling his 26-year-old wife a month after the wedding. The buyer
paid 180 thousand rupees for that (
https://bit.ly/3BbZZP9).
With the money raised, the young man bought a smartphone. He
told his wife's relatives that his wife left him, but the relatives did
not believe him and turned to the police. This is one example of
the addiction of people to smartphones. There is no difference
between selling things for a dose of heroin or for a smartphone.
According to addiction expert Dr.Anne Lembke, smartphones turn
people into dopamine addicts, and every follower, like, or tweet
feeds this addiction. In an interview with The Guardian
(
https://bit.ly/3CrIrjD), the psychiatrist said that all smartphone
users are heavily addicted. She calls the smartphone a hypodermic
needle. People turn to their smartphones for quick pleasure, so that
with every like and tweet they feel their own importance. Every
second is opportunity to get a dopamine drug high, be it TikTok,
Instagram, Tinder, online shopping. Because of this, global rates
of depression have risen dangerously over the past 30 years, and,
according to the World Happiness Report, people in high-income
countries have become unhappy over the past decade. That is,
during the mass smartphoneization of the population.
As an expert on drug addiction, Lembke has spent the past 25+ years
treating patients addicted to: heroin, gambling, and plastic surgery.
People run out of money with chemical drugs, but a Netflix show or
TikTok feed never ends. In addition to diminishing attention span,
the obsession with instant gratification means that people are
constantly living in a "limbic brain/riptile brain" that processes
only emotions. When smartphone addicts face a difficult or unresolved
problem in work or social life, they immediately take out their
smartphone to avoid the severity of real choice and dopamine drug
abscess syndrome.
The smartphone version of the life eliminates the problems: faces
are filtered and beautiful, there are no awkward pauses, and if you
don't like what you see, then just block it. This is very different
from what life, was like before, when people had to endure more of
the real challenges of life. Lembke argues that smartphone addicts
have lost the ability to postpone gratification, solve problems and
cope with frustration, pain in many forms. Due to severe
obsessive-compulsive disorders caused by dopamine addiction.
