21 sats \ 5 replies \ @SwearyDoctor 8 Oct \ parent \ on: Bipartisan Group of States Sue TikTok Over App's Effects on Kids' Mental Health tech
yeah, this is part of the judicial war on tiktok.
Also, this whole "social media causes mental illness" thing has always been bullshit. They said that about series, movies, music, comics, and back in the day, also about the theater when it came up (in other terms, of course, "mental illness" is conceptually a very recent phenomenon).
no, corporate social media is exploiting you for clicks and is doing it by showing you things you love and hate. It connects you to all the shit in the world that the legacy media had been hiding from you, or at least only presented in very sanitized ways.
Also, we live in a society that systematically erases the very possibility of change; you're supposed to vote for parties that are all the same, choose between media that is all the same, consume goods that are all the same. "TINA" has been made the imperial ideology.
if after that, you fall into desperation, that's the correct reaction (until, of course, you realize that this is not beyond change, just not in the "given" channels.)
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no, sorry, but that's not how it works.
addictions, classically, happen when you regularly introduce something to the body, causing it to stop producing it (or a similar thing) with time. Thus, when you stop ingesting it, everything is busted. This is drugs and alcohol. This is the "original" idea of addiction.
Literally anything else is a metaphorical use of the term "addiction" that has gotten traction in recent year in wake of medicalization. i.e. the extension of the realm of responsibility of medicine for all kindas of things people have and do that's disapproved of by others. Gambling, sex, work addiction, all kinds of things are metaphorical uses of the term to gain a medical "grip" on something someone considers a problem (usually the family, unhappy with something someone does). There are literally cases of "bitcoin addiction" floating around, where wives were unhappy that their husbands were watching green and red candles all day.
(Sociologist here! There's a mountain of literature on the expansion of the addiction trope.)
Serotonin is simply what happens in the brain when something makes me happy. Shows and movies absolutely produce that if you like them.
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So... ummm this is what I studied, got my degree in, and did an undergrad thesis in so sorry you are stuck in the 20-30 years ago idea but we have learned more about the brain in the last 5 than in the entire human existence.
If you knew anything about this topic you would know A) a neurotransmitter is not "simply what happens in the brain when something makes me happy" and B) wouldn't ignore the HUGE impact dopamine has. Dopamine after all plays an enormous impact on brain chemistry in general dopamine creates a pleasurable high when desired actions are performed. It is directly involved with movement, memory, reinforcement, and reward.
Sorry sociology doesn't work when it comes down to a hard science and this is coming from someone who got his major in psychology and a minor in neuroscience.
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