Stuff You Should Know - Is computer addiction a thing?

Episode Date: December 8, 2016

Computer addiction is really an umbrella term for the various addictions that can come along with the computer. We're talking video games, porn, gambling and the like. We dive deep into the world of digital addiction in today's episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, San Francisco, we're coming back to see you. Aw, yes. Our second year in a row, we're gonna be going to SF Sketch Fest. I like to think it's the premier comedy festival

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We love performing there. Everyone is always so kind to us. And by San Francisco, we mean the entire Bay Area, of course. Yeah. So we will be there doing our thing for a one time only show on Sunday, January 15th at 1 p.m. Yeah, it's the rare Sunday afternoon. We're like the NFL of podcasters.

Yeah, exactly. That's what I've always thought. So all you have to do is go to the SF Sketch Fest site, look at the old calendar. And there are tons of great people performing. Oh, yeah. So I suggest like just doubling down and getting tickets to all kinds of good shows.

For sure. And hurry up and get tickets to ours because they've only been on sale for a week or so and they're already half sold out. That's right. So please hurry, San Francisco. Please hurry. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know

from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry over there. So this is Stuff You Should Know, the computer addiction episode. Yeah. So computer addiction, as it turns out,

is many things. And I'm gonna include smartphone addiction in this as computer addiction. Yeah, for sure. This was written before there were computers in people's pockets. But it is porn addiction. It is online porn.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Is there any other way? There's gent. Well, that's like when when poor Fred Willard went to like a porno theater and was caught or something not too long ago. And like everybody felt so bad

because everyone loves Fred Willard. And it wasn't like some big scandal. Everyone was just like, oh, poor Fred. Somebody needs to like explain to him how this is done these days. Like you don't need to leave your house. How are there even porno theaters left? I don't know.

Is it like a kitschy retro vintage kind of thing? Maybe. I would go to one of those. Okay. Just as you know. Just to go look around and be like, hey, nice to meet you. I just wanted to shake your hand.

How are you doing everybody? I won't be shaking hands, but I think it would be interesting. Like, you know, this is what it was like in the 1970s. Sure. You know? On Times Square. All right. I'm going to find me a porno theater.

I'm totally going. You know, Georgia theater used to be when that's how it started out. Really? In Athens? Yeah. Wow. I don't think I knew that.

Then God burned it down a few years back because of that. And Dave Matthews built it back up. I remember when he used to play there, like it seemed like every three months. Sure. Like I was in school there before he was a big deal. Right. I was like, who are these guys?

Why is her name always up on that marquee? They said, you'll understand someday. I still don't. When is that day coming? Well, now it's not going to, if it hasn't yet. So it is porn addiction. It is maybe gambling addiction. Video game addiction?

Gaming addiction for sure. Social media addiction, YouTube addiction. Yeah. A lot of things wrapped up under this big banner of computer addiction. Right. And everything you just mentioned is what's called collectively computer mediated communication.

Right. Or there's another subgroup called Internet Addiction Disorder. And we should point out right here that none of this, there's some controversy with some of this. And none of it is officially listed yet still, as far as I can tell. No, there was a push to get computer addiction

of some form or another, at least internet addiction disorder put into the DSM-5, which they put together a couple years back. 2013, I think. The American Psychological Association. But they said no. We should do a show just on that. Because I was-

The DSM-5? Yeah, well no, the DSM period. Because I was looking at the year, because I was curious when the next one was due. And then I looked at them throughout time. And I don't think there is, unless I'm wrong, it didn't look like there was any set, like every 10 years we're gonna put one out.

No, I don't know what schedule it's on. Maybe when enough of this stuff turns out to be- Bunk? Yeah, they're like, oh, we should probably rewrite this thing. Yeah, maybe so. Like, yeah, homosexuality isn't comparable to insanity any longer. We should probably rewrite the handbook.

Right. You know? And then we make addendums, or if it's just like, nope, it's locked until the next one. Right, until the next one comes out, you're insane, because you're gay. Yeah. But then the next day it comes out,

it's like, oh, you're cured. Anyway, so they tried to get something like that in the DSM-5 and it did not, correct? Apparently, what I saw is that there's a, basically a note in there that says like, we understand that this is a thing, that people are researching. So we're gonna keep an eye on it,

and it just needs more, we need to do more research on it. It's just too misunderstood or not well understood enough to warrant being included at this point. Which is how it should work. Like, cause all the different studies I looked at was, they're all pretty lame, to be honest. There's a ton of them though, right?

Yeah, but everyone I saw was, and we'll go over them, was like, we asked 20 people these questions. Right, I saw others that were legitimate. And they're also apparently a lot of neurological studies as well, because there's a big controversy, not just in whether you could actually be addicted to computers, or if it's just an impulsive, a failure to control your impulses.

Right. So people say, well, they're just lazy, they just wanna sit around in front of a computer all day, they doesn't make them addicted. Is that what all addiction is though? Is it failure to control your impulse? No, no. I guess we did our addiction show,

I should go back and re-listen. You could, and I think some people make the case that behavioral addictions, which are non-substance addictions, are failures to control your impulse, right? Other groups say, no, it's way off, these behaviors are still releasing dopamine in your brain, in which case it's following

the same mechanism of addiction that heroin or cocaine creates, it's just a behavior. So there's still kind of like a little bit of a budding heads over that even, which of course then that means that something as amorphous as internet addiction disorder couldn't possibly be agreed upon at this point. Right, and you can tell this article's dated too

because it talks about instant messaging. So every time it said that, I just crossed it out and put texting. Nice. It's kind of the new I am. So one other thing that got me too is I went and looked at this citation, it was written in 2007.

And what's scary though, is a lot of the stuff he's describing is taken as like totally normal and among the general population in the West now, you know? It is, it is pretty interesting. All right, well obviously if we're talking about the smartphones and computers, laptops, desktops, whatever your device, we are talking about,

basically if you look down the list of what happens if you are quote, computer addicted in quote, it's basically the same as any alcohol or drug addiction. Do you stay on the computer for much longer than intended or not notice the passage of time? You could say that with drugs. Do you make conscious efforts to cut back on computer time and repeatedly fail?

That's a big one. Big one. Do you think about your computer a lot when you're not using it or constantly look forward to the next opportunity to use it, drugs and alcohol? That is why I don't play video games back in, may I? Oh really?

Yeah, in like 97, 98, whatever the Clone Wars, wasn't that episode one? Who knows? Okay, well whatever episode, the one with Jar Jar Binks, probably the greatest Star Wars character ever created. That video game that came out in association with it, I found myself like thinking about how to play it better when I wasn't playing it and I was like,

what was this on? The computer? PlayStation I think? Okay. And I was like, this is no way to live, I'm not doing this anymore. So I stopped playing games altogether. Well, they definitely, like I think anyone who ever played a lot of Tetris had Tetris Dreams or would look at the world in some ways as a Tetris grid.

Yeah. Some games really have a knack for getting into your crawl that way. Like, you know, I've been playing a lot of, I don't know if you can think of the name of it now. Fallout? Fallout 4. They're very immersive, you know?

Dude, especially now. I mean, like that Star Wars game was cruddy. Like that wasn't the first and only game I'd ever played. I played plenty of other games and I could tell you that was not a good game. But I still, I think that made it even more, it strengthened my resolve even more that like if I was sitting there thinking about

how to play this cruddy game better, I should probably just stop playing games altogether. Yeah, so you haven't played any games since? No. Yeah, I don't play a lot. I think I've mentioned this before. I'll usually get, every couple of years, I'll get one game that's the best reviewed game

and I will play that obsessively for a little while then quit. So I'm sure you have like, tracked the progress of games these days and now that we're starting to move into virtual reality, it's like, we're gonna be totally lost as a species. All right, so continuing on, how it mirrors drug addiction. Hiding the extent of your computer use

from family and friends. Yeah, that's a big one too. Totally. Use the computer as an escape when feeling depressed or stressed. That one to me is kind of like, okay, I don't see that as a sign of addiction, but this is a Grabster article,

so I'll take it as gospel fact. Oh, is this Grabster too? Yeah. All right. Missing events or failing at non-computer tasks because you're on the computer. Poor job performance, family activities, you miss that family reunion

because you're playing Jar Jar Binks. Jar Jar Binks is Candy Crush, Bonanza, Rodeo. And then it could lead to things like marital problems, negative consequences, getting in trouble at work. Same can be said of alcohol and drugs for almost all these. Bryant. And then sadly, there have been cases where computer addicted or gaming addicted people

have either died or had their children neglected such that they either had health problems or died. And if you look it up, just look up gaming death or game binge death, and there are all kinds of stories. It seems like Taiwan is one of the worst. Taiwan had two people die within two weeks of each other from gaming binges in 2015. Yeah, well, they had three total,

and I think all three were in internet cafes even. So not even at home where they can't be disturbed. Right. This is out in public. Yeah, and apparently one guy was laying there for 10 hours before they realized. That's so depressing. And another, I couldn't believe this.

One other note that I saw in this article was that when the police and the paramedics came in to retrieve this dead body from the internet cafe, the other people playing didn't even stop. Like they just basically didn't even pay attention to the fact that a dead body was being removed from the internet cafe. Wow.

So there's a book called Death by Video Game, and it's actually not new. This happened in the 1980s even. Ever since there have been games, people have played them till they died. And I was just curious about Taiwan, and the author basically says Taiwan in particular have these internet cafes,

which is a cheap way to get online and stay online. Your thrills. Yeah, so they've got these cafes. There's a lot of smoking going on in there. A lot of caffeine drinking. The humidity in the country is really tough. And basically says all of this adds up to, and of course you're not eating well,

you're not exercising at all. And all of this adds up to really increased likelihoods of things like blood clots. And because you think like how do you literally die from like a 19 hour binge of a video game? It's all the other things that go into how you've treated your body really. Right.

Neglect, essentially. Yeah, I mean, a blood clot makes sense to me. I saw exhaustion. I'm like, what is this, the 1890s? You don't die of exhaustion from sitting around. Maybe you die of the vapors, you know? Blood clot I get, that makes sense. And it does too,

because your legs are sitting there immobilized. So of course you get a blood clot. Pulmonary thrombosis, right? Yeah. Or pulmonary, yeah, pulmonary thrombosis. Not good. Not good at all. Because it travels to your heart or your brain,

and all of a sudden your World of Warcraft character is just standing there not doing anything because you're dead. Yeah, I see what you're saying though about this article being written a while ago and then comparing it to today, because it says even when people do interact with friends, they may become irritable because they're away from their computer.

And now people aren't away from their computer ever because of the smartphone. And it's just morphed into this thing where it's just accepted that it's okay to be having a conversation with someone while they're looking at something else. Right, right. And I mean, the idea that you're sitting there

physically with somebody and they're hanging out online with other people, and that's who they're actually hanging out with even though they're physically with you in the room. Yeah, it's weird. But that's become, I mean, that's accepted. Behavior now. Even though it's not hard to step back one degree

and say, this is odd. Yeah, and I wonder what the long-term, like we're right in the infancy of this thing. We are. Like what are things gonna be like in 50 years? I was in a bar the other night getting some takeout dinner for the family. Takeout beer?

No, no, no, takeout food, bar restaurant. And I go to this place all the time. I go sit at the bar, order a drink, order the food, have my one drink, get the food to go. So I'm there for like 25 minutes, 30 minutes maybe. And I used to love going to sitting down in a bar and talking to strangers next to me. Striking, like a good bar conversation is like,

it's the best. And I sat down, I was between these two dudes. I looked at my left, guy was staring at his phone, looked at my right, guy was staring at his phone. People beside them were staring at their phones. Nobody was talking to each other. So I ended up having a good conversation with a bartender.

That's good. Which was fine. I love you, Kowski-esque of you. Yeah, that's true. But I don't know, man, it just depressed me. Yeah, no, I know what you mean. When you step back and look around at stuff like that, you can make the case that they're still connecting

with whoever they're talking to. Who they'd rather be talking to, I guess. Right, and that's actually, I mean, that was one of the things that Ed touches on in the negative effects of this, is that you start to prefer your online friends. Well, I mean, it's entirely possible that your online friends are better friends

than the people you're surrounded with in real life. So I don't know that that's necessarily a drawback, but there is definitely a case to be made in plenty of studies that suggest that we are growing ironically more socially isolated the more connected we become. Yeah, but I also get the feeling that in that bar, if I would have said, hey, man,

like, let's get a conversation going. Of course, I wouldn't do it that awkwardly. That's a great conversation. Hello, sir, would you like to speak with me? Hey, man, let's get a conversation going. What should we talk about? If I got a conversation going, and these people put their phones away for a minute,

they might be like, oh, well, this, you know, I'd rather be talking to this guy. Because a lot of times, I mean, we're assuming people are interacting with friends on social media, they might be watching cat videos or reading news sites, angry about the election, just feeding into their anger over and over and over. They might be like, dude, thank you for talking to me.

And because that was so much more pleasurable than like, it's sort of the de facto go-to of, well, I have 30 seconds to stand here and wait for the elevator. So let me check my social meds. The thing is, I don't necessarily agree with you. I think that the more we are drawn into our devices to communicate with others,

the harder it becomes to talk to somebody who says, hey, let's get a conversation going. No, no, no, I agree. In real life. I agree with that, you know? I think they would, if people did it though, they might be surprised and delighted like, wait, I can still do this.

Right, you know? Not me, I find I'm failing at it more and more these days. So it just makes me feel worse and worse. Come on. We're getting way into the opinion category and we're jerking a few people. Let's take a break. All right.

All right. On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough

or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.

Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael, and a different hot, sexy teen

crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye,

bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. We are back with facts and figures. OK. So one of the other things that struck me too, Chuck, was that losing, losing touch with the people in your physical life in favor of people online

that you're friends with. You're also, in a lot of cases, doing way more spectacular things with the people online than you are in your real life, like going into simulated combat. You know, you do interesting stuff with the people you're online with rather than, you know. Well, especially if you lead kind of a boring life.

You know, right. And that's all subjective, of course. But I don't know if your life is really boring everybody can tell. I saw this ESPN Outside the Lines episode on this wrestler at University of Michigan, Go Wolverines. His name is Marshall Carpenter. And I think he was a twin, if I'm not mistaken.

But he would spend 8 to 14 hours a day gaming on his computer and was done. Like he washed out of wrestling, quit Michigan, and went to rehab. And like had a guy come into his house every day to rehab him out of it. And there was a football player too named Quinn Pitcock that quit the NFL.

He played one season for the Colts because he was playing Call of Duty and only wanted to play Call of Duty. Wow. It's sad. But it is like, how can you not call that an addiction? You know? Right. No, it's true.

And examples like that are the ones that people point to, to say, yes, there is such a thing as computer addiction. And it does have pronounced effects not just on your NFL career. But if you're just an everyday schmo, it can have pronounced effects on your relationships too. Like for example, yes, you might prefer your online friends who you're playing Call of Duty with to your wife.

But you are married to your wife. And if you neglect or ignore her long enough in favor of your friends for Call of Duty, she may divorce you. Yes. And there's actually, there's never been from what I've seen a study that definitively showed it that, yes, online time equals higher divorce rates.

Right. But I found one that came pretty close. It was a 2014 study that appeared in computers in human behavior, a journal. And it found a 2.18% to a 4.32%. Those like decimal points let you know it's legitimate. Yeah. And that level rise in divorce rates

correlated with a 20% annual increase in Facebook use in a given area in the US, right? So every 20% that Facebook increased up to 4% in change. There was a 4% in change increase in the divorce rate for that area too. Yeah. It's entirely possible the two had nothing to do with one another.

It's also entirely possible that, yeah, it totally did. Yeah. But then there are people that say that, the people that say that, well, it's no different than sitting down and watching TV every night for four or five hours. Well, you can be addicted to television too, I think. Sure.

But I think the internet is a bit more immersive than TV, especially because you don't interact with the TV the way you do online, usually. Unless you're Elvis and Bob Goulet is on TV and you interact with it with your hand going. Was it Bob Goulet? It used to drive in a bird's-circ when Bob Goulet went on to it, yeah.

Oh, man, Will Ferrell, the Bob Goulet thing was so great. Yeah. Remember that? Yeah. I didn't know who was on TV when Elvis shot it. Bob Goulet. And sometimes he would just be like, the TV wasn't enough. He'd shoot his toaster or the dishwasher.

Yeah. I'm Robert Goulet because he would see Goulet everywhere. Wow. Elvis was on a lot of drugs. Yeah, but they were legal. God bless my grandmother. God rest her soul. They were from Memphis.

And it was always like, oh, Elvis, he was still Memphis' son. Like, oh, his doctors. They had him going every which way. Yeah, well, his doctors killed him. He was a big, fat junkie. He loved his drugs. I don't want to be the one to break it to you.

So I never did. I just let her think that. What's funny is the horribly ironic, but also hysterically ironic thing that he hated drug dealers. Like, he would get wasted on prescription drugs and get so worked up thinking about drug dealers living in his town that he'd want to go shoot them. And his boys would have to like restrain them

and calm them down. So he didn't go out and shoot some drug dealers. Sit down so you put this under your tongue. Come on, Biggie. Sit back down. Well, wasn't he like an honorary DEA guy from Nixon? He tried to be. I think they know.

There's that famous picture of him shaking hands with Nixon. He got that meeting arranged. Nixon didn't want it to happen because he's like, this is preposterous. I'm not going to make this guy a DEA agent. But Elvis was offering himself as a DEA undercover agent because he could get close to the hippies and all that. And Nixon was like, here's your junior badge.

Is there anything I can do to just let me know, man? There's a movie out about that now that I want to see that Elvis and Nixon meeting. I haven't seen it yet. All right, so back to addiction. I was not expecting Richard Nixon to make an appearance in this one. It wasn't either.

I did find one study. This is Dr. Susan Muller at the University of Maryland, Go Terps. She asked 200 students to abstain from all media for 24 hours, called it 24 hours unplugged. Had a colon in there even. There's like a lot of that too. There's like camps in Japan.

They have fasting camps. They call them where like you're just away from anything technological or connected. See, that's great. Yeah, I don't think it's great if you're one of the poor teenagers whose parents put you in there. I bet at the end of the week though,

you get these great stories about how like, I hated it going in, but you know, I made these new friends and then there were probably some that are like, this was the worst experience in my life. But she basically just had these kids, these students describe things and what it was like. Wasn't super scientific, but all of them said

that they were, could not function without it. And they, across the board, all 200, like there wasn't a single person that said like, oh, that was nice. All of them were like, this was one of the worst 24-hour periods of my life lately. Wow, wow. But then you also make the argument like,

this is how we communicate these days. This is how we get our news. Right. This is how we communicate through work. Like you can't just take away everything like that and say, all right, now relearn everything you know over this 24-hour period. Or keep up in modern society.

Yeah, so it wasn't the most fair thing to do. It seems like drawing it out over time might have been more useful than 24 hours or something. And it also raises another point of contention as far as determining what constitutes computer addiction. The computer is not an inherently useless or evil thing, right? Like, Ed compares it to heroin.

Like, you could legitimately sit around and use a computer for 10 hours in a day in a very useful manner. Yeah, you got a deadline for work or something? Sure, yeah. You sit around and shoot heroin for 10 hours. You're not accomplishing anything. You can point to that and be like,

no, that's not objectively good in any way, shape, or form. Yeah. Right? With a computer, you can be like, yeah, you could be sitting there playing candy crush for 10 hours straight, or you could be researching new things or learning a new language or getting work done or whatever. So it's not like you can point to, yes,

if someone sits down at a computer for 10 straight hours, they're a computer addict. Right. It muddies the whole thing, the usefulness of the computer and the ubiquity and necessity of using a computer for long stretches. It muddies the whole definition of what constitutes computer addiction.

Well, yeah, and while they have determined and actually shown in the brain scans, that it actually lights up areas similar to drug addiction and reward centers, it doesn't render those brain centers useless like when you do the heroin. The heroin. Which is kind of another way of saying what you were saying.

When you ride the horse. Is that what they call it? I think that's what they call it in the 70s. Oh, it's chasing the dragon. Or is that something else? No, that's that too. Oh, okay. There was this great MST3K episode in early one with Joel

and they were like injecting a monkey with something. And one of them, I don't remember who said it. They go, yes, sir, a little horse for a little monkey. All right. Should we take another break? Yeah. All right, we'll come back and we'll talk specifically about social media addiction right after this.

And we'll see you guys in the next one. All right. I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye. Bye. Bye. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper

because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh God.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you

through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right. Social Meads. As Hodgman calls it. Well, he ended up calling it So Meads by the end of the room. So Meads. Guys, clever. So Meads is a new, brand new world with social media.

And I think a lot of the online addiction now is centered around studying things like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat. Right. App addiction, I guess is probably a better way to put it. Yeah. It's a good point. So they've been studying for a little while in 2012, some researchers from University of Bergen did a study where they looked at Facebook dependency and they said that the

very nature of the site is problematic and that they found that the brain, the parts of the brain associated with preservation of the social reputation are what's at play there. Oh, I believe that. And basically, and this stuff that you sent me and I found other stuff too, the very way that those sites are structured are to get you addicted to them. Yeah. Yeah.

So there's this whole thing. There's basically, it's called behavioral design. There's a guy named BJ Fogg who's a experimental psychologist slash computer scientist. And he runs a, what's called the persuasive technology lab at Stanford. Yeah. And this guy's like a guru, a God out there who basically has taken this concept that yes, you can have a great idea. Yes.

You can have a killer app. Yes. You can have wonderful technology, but it doesn't amount to anything unless you get somebody to use it and to use it a lot to make a habit out of using it. And there's this basically, there's a push right now to make technology purposefully as addictive as possible, literally addictive. And we're at a point right now with the way that apps are designed where cigarettes were back in like the seventies when they started adding things like ammonia and sugar to increase

the, the amount of effect that nicotine had on the brain to make them more addictive. That's the point we're at with the apps that are being created and it's all based on how they're designed. Yeah. This, this one researcher called a NIR near EL, E-Y-A-L, great name, wrote a book called hooked colon, how to build habit forming products, basically said it starts with this trigger and the hook, which is in the case of social media and Facebook is lonely loneliness, boredom or stress.

Okay. So that's the hook that they get you with. Are you bored? Are you standing there at the elevator for a minute? Hey. It's so sad, but it's check out your Facebook feed. Are you standing in the grocery store? Don't talk to the nice lady next to you.

More of that little kid making cute faces. She didn't want to talk to you anyway. So you're bored and that's how they get you going. That's how they get you hooked to begin with that initial little trigger. Okay. But then it goes from there. So, so I think that, I think boredom would constitute a motivation. Yeah.

That would motivate you, right? Yes. The trigger is something like if you open up Facebook and there's the news feed and there's like all these different stories or your friends like something. And so you are activated to, you're motivated by boredom to go seek out the news feed. The news feed itself are triggers that you click and then all of a sudden you are immersed in your Facebook app. Yes.

And FOGS actually come up with this kind of shorthand formula for it. It's B equals MAT. So behavior, the behavior that you're after, which is interacting with Facebook is what Facebook wants you to do. It's where motivation, so you're motivated by boredom, ability, it's very easy to open up the app on your phone. You're able to, low hanging fruit is what we call it. And a trigger all come together.

So the trigger say is the news feed. The ability is just opening up the Facebook app and then the motivation is boredom. But there are plenty of other motivations. There's plenty of other abilities or plenty of other triggers. And what they found out is that the key seems to be ability, where if you make it as easy as possible for a person to do something, they're likely to do it. And once they do it, you can start getting them to do it over and over, so behavior becomes a habit.

Yeah. That's the key. That's the point. That's what they're after. And that's how they're designing apps these days to make it habitual. Yeah. Well, the Facebook in particular, like it's no accident that the, what's it called? Not the alert, but the notification is in red.

That's a color that they found draws like a more immediate reaction and response. Right. Stop sign is red. Yeah. That's why red light is red. That's why the Facebook alerts are red. Sure. That's why I'm red when I'm mad.

This other guy, what's his first name? Something Harris. This is sort of the depressing part. He says, you might say to yourself, it's my responsibility to exert self-control when it comes to things like getting on Facebook. Right. He said, but that's not acknowledging the fact that there are a thousand people on the other side of that screen whose job it is to break down whatever responsibility you

can maintain. Yeah. Which is, I mean, that's just dead on. And this guy knows his name is Tristan Harris. Yeah. He actually spent time under studying under BJ Fogg and he's kind of gone the opposite way. He's saying, hey, we actually are doing something kind of nefarious here.

We should really kind of cool it with the behavioral stuff. So he's kind of launched a push for people to rely on technology less or to resist the use of technology in their lives more. Yeah. It's like to basically, there's, I mean, some of it comes up in this article by Ed too, like doing things like setting alarms and then when the alarm goes off, your computer's off. Right.

You just turn it off. Yeah. And then parts of the day to using your computer, your phone, but I mean, it may have worked in 2007. It's just getting harder and harder today, like we were saying before. Have you ever been on LinkedIn? Yeah. I've got like a, it's totally neglected.

Like all LinkedIn accounts? Yeah. No, some people are super into it, I think. Well, I get, by the way, people, I'm not on LinkedIn, never have been. Nothing against it. Don't even fully understand what it is, but I don't need any more LinkedIn invites. Gotcha. Cause I'm not on it.

I get them all the time. But when LinkedIn launched, apparently they had a hub and spoke icon to represent visually what your network was, how big it was. And they said that that was a very intentional thing. When you look at it, that trigger to say like, well, look at my wheel. It's lame. Yeah. I can't have people seeing my wheel like that.

Yeah, I can. So I got to connect, connect, connect to people. Yeah. Facebook says he's like, yeah, people couldn't think, have people thinking they were losers. Yeah. So yeah, they started using the site like crazy. Well, I'm surprised. I mean, Facebook says how many friends you have.

I'm kind of surprised that's not featured a little more prominently, like, you know, or even represented in terms of popularity. I'm quite sure that they studied that extensively and found that it actually led to a reduction in Facebook. At least they, I guarantee that that wasn't, yeah, that wasn't something they overlooked. Yeah. Because it seems obvious that they would be like, you would click on someone's profile and it'd be like, this is so-and-so.

They're super popular. Right. You know, he's a hero. You're a zero. And then sadly, I'm not on Snapchat at all. But dude, using Snapchat is one of the most difficult things you could ever try to do. Well, they said in here, they said that Facebook's behavioral design makes, like, it's cute compared to what Snapchat is doing.

Yeah. Like Facebook, if you send someone a note, right, you get some sort of alert when they read your note. Yeah. Well, not an alert, but you can see like a little check mark, like so-and-so redness at this time. So that sets it up for a social obligation for the person who received the note to respond because they know that you know that they've read it now.

Well, yeah, or you see it as they've, you know, like they saw this thing three days ago. Right. So that's a- So that's a- That motivates a behavior. Yes. That's built-in design. Snapchat has a feature that displays how many days in a row two people have snapped each

other and then actually does reward you with like emojis and things. Right. People love gamification. Yeah. That's basically what it is, right? Yeah. So they said what Facebook doing is just like kids play compared to what they're trying to do with Snapchat and other apps in the future.

Right. This, it's I think an Atlantic article that that pulls from, they were saying that there's reports of people who are on these Snapchat streaks of like X number of consecutive days. They don't want to break their streak. Right. So if they know they're going to be away from their device or whatever, they'll give their password and login to a friend to have them Snapchat the other friend so that the streak will be unbroken.

Which I mean, if you step back and there's plenty of people who are like, so who cares? It's fine. This is the way the world is now. Yeah. Some teenagers are Snapchatting each other because so that they can get emojis. Is that really that wrong? And that's a legitimate response. And that is, I mean, that is at the same time though, I really feel like there's a lot

of shirking of responsibility for taking the human species in a certain direction without the human species being largely aware of it. Well, see, that's where that's exactly crystallizes my problem with it. It's not that sure that is sort of the world now and that's what people do, but it's the fact that we're being manipulated into doing so behind the scenes when they have those meetings and they're like, Hey, what if the Facebook feed, what if they auto played these videos? So before you know it, you're watching a video that you didn't even want to watch.

And then you're watching another one, right? Like, so let's put in the auto play feature and they call it here's called the bottomless bowl that infinite stream that you get sucked into because they found there was a study where people eat 73% more soup out of a self refilling bowl, don't regular bowl without even realizing they've eaten more. I want to see that bowl. They just kind of do, you just keep eating the soup and that's essentially what they're doing on Facebook and your other social media social media feeds is you get sucked in before

you know it. And then a half hour has gone by, right? Like you rationalize yourself like, you know, I can just go check a center friend request or a message. It'll take two seconds. Let me just check and see if they responded right 25 minutes later. They found is 25 minutes is the average time that you, it takes you to get back to what you were doing because you get distracted because of that feed.

You know, I've never been more aware of how often I check Twitter than I was when I was checking Twitter while I was researching this article. Oh, really? Just nothing to do with anything randomly. I'd just go open up Twitter and look, yeah, nothing, no change, nothing we're seeing. It is bizarre the habits you can form from it. So what do you do, Chuck, if you want out besides having to completely fast or unplug or whatever?

Well, like you were talking about the, if you are, if you are a bonafide computer addict. Oh, I mean, you can go through a legit 12 step program. Yeah. Like you can go through rehab. They are people out there doing that. Right. So if you feel like you need that or you're someone in your family needs that, like have an intervention.

Like these cases are talking about like this wrestler, you're gaming 14 hours a day, your life is suffering in some ways, in many ways, like there's just no way of getting around it. No, there's not. Cause again, like you're not getting exercise. You're not eating right. You're creating blood clots in your legs. You're not hanging out with the people who you're physically around with.

Of course there's problems. You could also, this one was good. I thought you can put the computer in the high traffic area of the house. That is a good one. Yeah. Instead of being up there in your bedroom in the closet. Yeah. Looking like a guy from reefer madness.

Yeah. Sit out in the open where someone might distract you into a human interaction. All right. Or be able to keep tabs on like, you've been at the computer for six hours now. What's your problem? Yeah. Okay. We'll keep going.

Yeah. And I mean, I find that our lives are, and I'm sure you're the same way. They're busy enough to where, I mean, I don't have time to do that. What six hours at the computer? Yeah. Six and eight hours of fun and like we do our research and our work online, but like I can't play fallout for eight hours. Yeah.

You know? No. I have responsibilities. Yeah. You do. But the fewer responsibilities you have, I guess the more prone you are. I think that was... Yeah.

If you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth, you're toast when it comes to gaming. Yeah. That's true. It says here that in a 2012 study, people who were more anxious and socially insecure appreciate the easy ways to communicate via the social means. But on the other hand, people who were more organized and ambitious were at a decreased risk of tech-related addiction and would just use it, you know, use it. Right.

For the things they need it for. I'd say that characterizes me. Yeah. You know? Yeah. It's a tool. Except for Twitter. Aside from checking Twitter.

Yeah. What else, man? You got anything else? I got one more thing. I just saw this good... Well, it was an article, it was a research paper, Internet Addiction Colon, a brief summary of research and practice from Hillary Cash, Lisette Ray, Anne Steele, and Alexander Winkler. And I just read the summation, but it's interesting.

They said, from our practical perspective, the different types of IAD, that's the Internet Addiction Disorder, they fit into one category due to various Internet-specific commonalities. So you talk about porn addiction or gaming addiction or any of these various addictions, except probably social media in some ways, because anonymity and riskless interaction are two of them, and then commonalities in the underlying behavior, which is avoidance, fear, pleasure, and entertainment, and then the overlapping symptoms, increased amount of time spent online and preoccupation, and other signs of addiction. But in the end, they say, you know, more research, more research, more research.

Yeah. That's what we need. Which, I mean, of course, is coming. This is probably the premier addiction of the 21st century. The thing is, we seem to be looking at it as less and less of an addiction and more and more of normal life. Yeah. So I don't know.

Maybe there will be less study of it. I'm just going to encourage people to, you don't have to go out and give up everything, but just try to spend a little more time talking to people. Yeah, just a little. Go to somebody and say, hey, make conversation with me. Just a little bit here and there. And let's get a conversation going. Pepper it into your life here and there and see if it does not provide reward.

Yeah. Another good one that I found at least makes you cognizant of it is when you are standing there waiting for that elevator or whatever and you go to grab your phone, just think and stop yourself. At least do it to just poke yourself for fun. Think of it as a gun. Yeah. You're going to get tackled for waving it around in public, tackled at best.

I've tried to do some of this lately too, where I do just start talking to people and it freaks people out a little bit these days. Yeah. Whereas it definitely, I don't remember it freaking people out like when I was in college. Yeah, I think you're right, man. You talk to people. Yeah, it's definitely changed. And now it's like, what do you want?

What are you talking to me? If you wanted to talk to somebody who wasn't around, you had to go to a pay phone back in your day. Yeah. You know? They still have those. I see them from time to time. They're neat.

It's like being in a living museum. It is. Well, I don't think either one of us have anything else. Instead, we're going to suggest that you go on howstuffworks.com, type in a search bar, computer addiction if you want to know more about this. There's plenty of other stuff you can look up to. And since I said search bar in there somewhere, it's time for listener mail. Yeah.

And, hey, sorry if it was a little soapboxy on that one. I didn't want to get too soapboxy, but I kind of miss folks talking to folks, you know? I'll talk to you. All right. You just tapped me on the shoulder. All right. Let's call this, uh, syntax, um, beef. Hey, guys, small issue ahead with the syntax episode, and discussing the colonial American

reaction to levees, like the sugar tax, you dismiss the purpose of the taxes making the king richer. Uh, it is a common misconception that the taxes were imposed on the colonies arbitrarily, and this is certainly the patriot narrative used to support independence. Go, Pat. But in fact, the taxes were levied to cover the cost of the devastating French and Indian war, which the colony survived only due to the British army's resistance. Uh, revisionist history nowadays tends to focus on the without representation part of

the no taxation request, as well as the effects of other laws such as forbidding settlement in the Appalachian regions and restriction of trade rather than taxes alone. But I want to clear it up because portraying King George five is greedy ignores legitimate political motives on the part of the British empire, which are often ignored in the revolutionary narrative. Did this e-mail come from the UK? No. Oklahoma.

Oh, okay. Okay. Sure. Right. So close. I love the show. Keep up the good work, guys. Sincerely, Thomas from Oklahoma.

Thanks a lot, Thomas. Good point. Good point. Thanks for setting us straight. Um, yeah, I think we kind of just did the nickel sketch of the king. I think it's pretty easy to fall into that trap. Sure. That's what they teach us in school.

Exactly. You want to get pushed around by the king, England? No. I saw a schoolhouse rock. I think I was a jerk. Schoolhouse rock with Jack Black? No, that was school love rock. Oh, that's right.

If you want to get in touch with me or Chuck, you can hang out with me on Twitter at Josh O'Clarke. You can also look us up at S-Y-S-K Podcast. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant or at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an e-mail to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com and as always, hang out with us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

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