Digital Addiction: Stronger Than Heroin

[Hervé]

Kids turn violent as parents battle 'digital heroin' addiction

Dr. Nicholas Kardaras New York Post Sat, 17 Dec 2016 00:00 UTC

© Getty Images

Experienced sailors, Barbara McVeigh and her husband exposed their children to the natural beauty near their home in Marin County, Calif. — boating, camping and adventuring in the great outdoors. None of this stopped her 9-year-old son from falling down the digital rabbit hole.

His first exposure to screens occurred in first grade at a highly regarded public school — named one of California's "Distinguished Schools" — when he was encouraged to play edu-games after class. His contact with screens only increased during play dates where the majority of his friends played violent games on huge monitors in their suburban homes.

The results for Barbara's son were horrific: Her sweet boy, who had a "big spirit" and loved animals, now only wanted to play inside on a device.

"He would refuse to do anything unless I would let him play his game," she said. Barbara, who had discarded her TV 25 years ago, made the mistake of using the game as a bargaining tool.

Her son became increasingly explosive if she didn't acquiesce. And then he got physical. It started with a push here, then a punch there. Frightened, she tried to take the device away. And that's when it happened: "He beat the s - t out of me," she told me.

When she tried to take his computer away, he attacked her "with a dazed look on his face — his eyes were not his." She called the police. Shocked, they asked if the 9-year-old was on drugs.

He was — only his drugs weren't pharmaceutical, they were digital.

In August, I wrote a piece about "digital heroin" for the New York Post, and the response was explosive. More than 3 million readers devoured and shared the piece — though not everyone agreed on its message. Some readers felt that the notion of comparing screens and video games to heroin was a huge exaggeration.

I understand that initial response, but the research says otherwise. Over 200 peer-reviewed studies correlate excessive screen usage with a whole host of clinical disorders, including addiction. Recent brain-imaging research confirms that glowing screens affect the brain's frontal cortex — which controls executive functioning, including impulse control — in exactly the same way that drugs like cocaine and heroin do. Thanks to research from the US military, we also know that screens and video games can literally affect the brain like digital morphine.

In a series of clinical experiments, a video game called "Snow World" served as an effective pain killer for burned military combat victims, who would normally be given large doses of morphine during their painful daily wound care. While the burn patient played the seemingly innocuous virtual reality game "Snow World" — where the player attempts to throw snowballs at cartoon penguins as they bounce around to Paul Simon music — they felt no pain.

I interviewed Lt. Sam Brown, one of the pilot participants in this research who had been injured by an IED in Afghanistan and who had sustained life-threatening third-degree burns over 30 percent of his body. When I asked him about his experience using a video game for pain management, he said: "I was a little bit skeptical. But honestly, I was willing to try anything." When asked what it felt like compared to his morphine treatments, he said, "I was for sure feeling less pain than I was with the morphine."

Sure enough, brain imaging research confirmed that burn patients who played "Snow World" experienced less pain in the parts of their brain associated with processing pain than those treated with actual morphine.

The Navy's head of addiction research, Cmdr. Dr. Andrew Doan, calls screens "digital pharmakeia" (Greek for pharmaceuticals), a term he coined to explain the neurobiological effects produced by video technologies.

While this is a wonderful advance in pain-management medicine, it begs the question: Just what effect is this digital drug — a narcotic more powerful than morphine — having on the brains and nervous systems of 7-year-olds addicted to their glowing screens?

If screens are indeed digital drugs, then schools have become drug dealers. Under misguided notions that they are "educational," the entire classroom landscape has been transformed over the past 10 years into a digital playground that includes Chromebooks, iPads, Smart Boards, tablets, smartphones, learning apps and a never-ending variety of "edu-games."

These so-called "edu-games" are digital Trojan horses — chock-full of the potential for clinical disorders. We've already seen ADHD rates explode by over 50 percent the past 10 years as a whole generation of screen-raised kids succumb to the malaise-inducing glow. Using hyper-stimulating digital content to "engage" otherwise distracted students creates a vicious and addictive ADHD cycle: The more a child is stimulated, the more that child needs to keep getting stimulated in order to hold their attention.

Research also indicates that retention rates are lower on screens than on paper and that schools without electronics report higher test scores. And then there's Finland. A standard bearer of international excellence in education, Finland rejected screens in the classroom. According to Krista Kiuru, their minister of education and science, Finnish students didn't need laptops and iPads to get to the top of the international education rankings and aren't interested in using them to stay there.

Yet in the US, there is a national effort to give kids screens at younger and younger ages as parents worry that their little ones may somehow be "left behind" in the education technology arms race — the data be damned.

But not all parents are drinking the screens-are-wonderful Kool-Aid — some are fighting back.

Cindy Eckard, a Maryland mother of two, is launching a grassroots campaign to create legislation to limit screen time in schools and is testifying in front of a state Senate subcommittee hearing this month.

"I was shocked to learn that the Maryland State Department of Education had no medically sound health guidelines in place before they put so many of our children in front of a computer every day . . . The schools keep encouraging more screen time in the classroom without any regard for our children's well-being," Eckard told me. "Our children are owed a safe classroom environment, and right now they're not getting one."

Some parents are opting out of public schools for less technology-dependent schools. Many Silicon Valley engineers and executives, for example, put their kids in non-tech Waldorf schools.

Others, like longtime educator and consultant Debra Lambrecht, have decided to create new tech-free school models. Debra has created the Caulbridge School, a distinctly "Finnish-style" school that is intended to serve as a template for future schools throughout the country.

"The argument for technology in the earlier grades is often rooted in the fear of children falling behind. It is true that most children will use technology in their jobs and everyday life. It is also true that most children will learn to drive a car," Lambrecht said. "Certainly we would not give a 7-year-old child the car keys to give them a jump-start to be a more skillful driver. In the same way, we want to ensure children can effectively use technology as a tool and will bring all of their best thinking, creativity and innovation to bear."

A Long Island mother recently contacted me because her 5-year-old son in kindergarten was going to be forced by the school to use an iPad. When she complained and threatened to pull her son out of school, her school district threatened to call child protective services. I spoke to her school's superintendent, and he agreed to let her son opt out of using an iPad. But all the other kindergartners still need to use iPads for standardized-testing purposes. That Long Island mother has already reached out to her local legislators.

That seems to be the key. Parents need to educate themselves, find their voices and speak up. If enough parents organize, push for legislation and put pressure on their schools to limit screen time in school — as well as to delay the grade levels that screens are introduced into the classroom — then we might have a chance to slow down this digital epidemic.

Indeed, even the respected AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) has just this month modified their screen recommendations suggesting more tech-cautious guidelines: Children younger than 18 months, no digital media; ages 2 to 5, no more than one hour daily, to be "co-viewed" with parents.

But many, myself included, think these recommendations still don't go far enough. Because of what we know about screens as "digital heroin," I believe that kids below the age of 10 should have no interaction with interactive screens (iPads, smartphones, Xbox). There should be warning labels on such interactive screens that read: "Excessive Screen Usage by Children May Lead to Clinical Disorders."

Meanwhile, back in Marin County, Barbara pulled her son out of his suburban tech-filled public school and enrolled him in a more rural, less tech-oriented school. So far, she's seen huge improvements in his behavior.

She just found out last week that all fourth-graders in her son's new school will begin learning the increasingly popular skill of "coding" to design video games. Even in this rural hamlet school, kids were allowed to play violent video games indoors rather than having to go outside to play during recess.

She is now hoping to get political about this issue and to reach out to legislators to end the digital madness in elementary schools. "I am prepared to go to war with our public education over technology use. This is wrong," Barbara said with the determined voice of a mother fighting for her child's life.

"I feel like there is a war going on against our children," Barbara said. "And it's come so fast that we're not even questioning it."

On August 28, The Post published a piece by Dr. Nicholas Kardaras,"The Frightening Effects of Digital Heroin," that was based on his book "Glow Kids." In it, he argued that young children exposed to too much screen time are at risk of developing an addiction "harder to kick than drugs." The response was overwhelming, generating more than 3.3 million views on The Post's website and hundreds of letters from anxious parents. Now Dr. Kardaras writes about this parental revolt against digital heroin and reminds readers of the worst effects of the obsession.

Dr. Nicholas Kardaras is executive director of The Dunes East Hampton, one of the country's top rehabs. His book "Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids — and How to Break the Trance" (St. Martin's Press) is out now.

[Bill Ryan]

.
This is important. Herve's post is 8 minutes old, and I'm bumping it already.

[greybeard]

I could not agree more.
The OP is spot on.
Thanks Herve

Chris

[Daughter of Time]

This brings to mind something I read over 20 years ago which I never forgot. It was an interview with Dr. Timothy Leary sometime in the early '90s, if I remember correctly.

For those who may not know, Timothy Leary was a psychologist who experimented with, lectured on, and greatly defended the use of psychedelic drugs, especially LSD. His reason for defending LSD was because the drug expanded your mind.

Since LSD's use mostly went out with the hippie era, Dr. Leary was asked in this interview what the drug of the future might be. He answered "computers!"

He went on to say, and I'm paraphrasing here, something to the effect that while LSD was a drug for the few, computers would become the drug for the many, and in many ways, they would be far more addictive than any psychedelic drug because it would be far easier to buy since they're legal, far easier to take since one can use computers and seemingly function in day to day life and the user would not realize they had an addiction until the addiction completely took over their minds.

I didn't believe him at the time. I felt computers would be quite lame in comparison to LSD. It would seem I was wrong!

[wegge]

This reminds me of something I learned recently.
I´m getting an education in Somatic Experiencing, an bodily approach to resolve trauma.

So fast forward, when people due to an incident or many,they feel their body is no longer a safe habitat,
they can dissociate of parts or almost completely from their body.

And then they tend to avoid activities in the real world, that would put their nervous system into higher gear, and thus might bring back flashbacks from the trauma.
So, when we talk about game addiction, asuming there is some action, they still feel a bit of the thrill of this action but it´s safer for them, because it´s kind of outsourced
from their body into the digital world.

[Whiskey_Mystic]

I spent more than twenty years in computer game development. Companies like Broderbound, EA, and Zynga. A key component of game design is to trigger the brain to release small serotonin hits. Just enough to keep the player chasing the next one. We did not invent this. Casinos have been doing it for a very long time.

So, video game addiction is not a myth. It's the goal.

And it is not just kids. My audience when I worked on Farmville was women aged 35-55. One of them spent $80,000 on that game. I wanted to tell her she could buy a real farm for that.

Here is a recent article from SFGATE, the online arm of the San Francisco Chronicle.

A California man steals $5 million, spends $1 million on 'Game of War' cellphone game
www.sfgate.com


http://www.sfgate.com/aboutsfgate/ar...1-10790647.php

Games aren't all bad. They are good entertainment. I worked on games with Stan and Jan Berenstain -The Berenstain Bears Get in a Fight taught conflict resolution. I worked on Dr. Seuss titles with Audrey Geisel. But the industry has changed. We used to make art that we were proud of. Once the money men figured out that the game business was larger than the motion picture industry, everything changed and now the casino model has taken over many aspects of the industry. That's why I left. Well, I was actually kinda squeezed out because I resisted this change.

[Catsquotl]

Anyone who has checked their posts to see if it was thanked can relate to the addictive nature of a useless activity that somehow gives a possitive addictive feedback loop.

With Love
Eelco

[wegge]

Posted by Catsquotl (here)
Anyone who has checked their posts to see if it was thanked can relate to the addictive nature of a useless activity that somehow gives a possitive addictive feedback loop.

With Love
Eelco

or when you´ve conditioned yourself to your phone´s ringtone and there´s something happening inside you when you hear it.

[avid]

Having been 'deprived' of the internet and telephone recently for almost a month, the severance was horrendous, then I realised it was addictive, with sleepless withdrawal symptoms, panic attacks et al. I went to great lengths to achieve 'contact' by sitting in a Tesco's cafe using their wi-fi every week, a 20 mile round trip.
My grandson is online gaming most of his spare time, despite swimming training, extra tutoring and begrudging trips out with the dog. A young belligerent teenager he is becoming a violent, tantrum-throwing chap when deprived of digital gaming.
Very disturbing, parents not backing each other up to insist on rules, timing etc.
Who knows what's being shoved into these young minds, violence, no empathy, greed, selfishness...
We have to curtail their access to reasonable levels, and monitor the games industry more closely.
It's cathartic to 'pull the plug' on a regular basis.

[Hervé]

Posted by Catsquotl (here)
Anyone who has checked their posts to see if it was thanked can relate to the addictive nature of a useless activity that somehow gives a possitive addictive feedback loop.

With Love
Eelco

Yep:

Re-post from here:

Posted by Hervé (here)
[...]

No Statistics for Inner Poverty

by Henry Makow Ph.D.
(Updated and revised from May 18, 2014)
Re-post: December 17, 2016

Most of us are beggars and feel-good junkies, addicted to society to make us happy.

"They are but beggars that can't count their own worth."
― with apologies to William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet


Excellent records are kept for material poverty.
For example, 16% of Americans live below the poverty line which is $24K for a family of four, This includes almost 20% of American children.

However, a more serious epidemic is sweeping the nation: inner poverty.

While I estimate 95% of the population lives below the spiritual poverty line, this squalor garners absolutely no attention.

Inner poverty is a spiritual vacuum at the core of our being. Its symptoms are a sense of emptiness, sadness, meaninglessness and lack of direction. It's like the soul has gone AWOL.

What do people want?

We want to feel good.

How do we know if we are spiritually impoverished? We need the world to make us feel good.

We´re addicted to getting "fixes" like drug addicts.

INDICATORS OF SPIRITUAL IMPOVERISHMENT
Love or sex addiction.
You catch a glimpse of a beautiful creature in the distance and imagine a life of bliss together if only... You see a couple strolling hand-in-hand and feel envious..

Stinginess.
Why are so many well-off people so stingy? They feel poor.

Schadenfreude.
You derive some satisfaction or comfort from the misfortune of others.

(Sally Field)

We desperately seek recognition, acceptance and encouragement to feel good. This may take the form of sales, "likes," followers," "smiles,' or hits. One young friend was despondent because he texted three girls about "hanging out" and none replied.

Money makes us euphoric or miserable. We measure our day in terms of how much we made or lost. Another friend was burned up because potential clients were waffling. He had done work on spec for a client who wasn't even answering his emails.

We've been programmed to be beggars, feel-good junkies, addicted to the world to make us happy.

As a result, we feel like beggars. How can we stop?

HOW TO STOP FEELING LIKE A BEGGAR
Beggar behavior is habitual; these habits are ingrained, programmed by society, and very difficult to change.

The key to not feeling like a beggar is to stop acting like one.

Check your stocks just once a day instead of every five minutes.

If you can't do this, sell them all. Thoreau said, "We are rich in the number of things we can let alone."

Check your email or Face Book just 2-3 times a day.

Give. Encouragement. Money. Help. People in beggar-mode never give. Giving destroys this programming.

Mortify yourself to the world.

In religious terms, this means renounce the world. You refuse to gain your primary happiness from any other source but God, i.e. your soul connection.

You become indifferent to praise or blame except your own. It's funny that we place so much value on other peoples' opinion, and so little on our own. We make so much effort to gain respect from others, and so little effort earning our own. We need to learn to make ourselves feel good. Enjoy your Self. What an art that is.

We've been programmed to deny ourselves and conform to others. We have been programmed to disdain ourselves, to feel inadequate.

We need to reprogram ourselves, whether by constant prayer, meditation or by repeating affirmations. The mind is like a steering wheel. If we don't control it, someone else will.

We get a temporary thrill when the world puts a nickel in our cup, but the mind soon needs another "fix."

The organ of "feeling" is the soul not the mind. The soul is the entity that hears the thoughts. Our feelings usually correspond to thoughts. If we still the mind, as in meditation, we can experience the soul. Thus, the soul should determine the thoughts, not the world. Think uplifting thoughts. That's what faith is about.

CONCLUSION
The key is submitting mind to soul. We need to transfer our sense of self from the thoughts to the soul. Soul is the real Self. Soul, our connection to God, is our real identity.

We need to be Self-possessed. Self-controlled. Self-directed. Self-motivated. Self-sufficient. i.e. God-centered. By Self, I mean soul, not ego. Loving God is really loving your own essence.

People will treat you like you treat ("serve") your Self, our true identity and path.

Beyond the necessities, we don't need anything from the world. If we live within our means, we can turn our focus inward. We don't have to be beggars.


---
Note: Those interested in learning more about this approach can check out Eckhart Tolle's YouTubes and books.

Related - Makow -
How's Your Inner Beggar?
Thinking is a Bad Habit
Cohabiting With a Monkey


First Comment from Jim:
This is the very reason I closed my Facebook account.

I was very reluctant but my mother badgered me into joining FB, so I did. And it didn't take long for it to consume me.

I would rush home, log in, and read what people said about my latest post... or didn't say.

If there were no comments or 'likes', I was crushed. My day was ruined.

One day I had an epiphany. I had become an attention-seeking whore, or a beggar as you put it. I realized that constant pursuit of everyone's approval, rather than just living my life, was damaging to me.

Certainly, there are times when we need to be affirmed and advised by the people we respect but their opinions shouldn't be the guiding force in our lives.

===============================================

Now... where the hell has that inner poverty been inculcated into one? ... beside being hopeless sinner or infidel or goyim or... which leads to spiritual capitalism and the hoarding of brownie points...


PS: See this post (<---) also.

[Catsquotl]

Posted by avid (here)
It's cathartic to 'pull the plug' on a regular basis.

I agree, although it is only that if you "do it to yourself" so to speak. Imposing the experience on someone else will usually reap different results.

With Love
Eelco

[joeecho]

Addiction: Get them while they are young.





(Sometimes humor helps tells the story just as well as the somber type)

All I can say is....

[shaberon]

I'd say it was all somewhat debatable, mitigatable until the advent of portable devices.

In my personal odyssey, by the time I was twelve, I realized I had been sucked into cable tv and Atari, and I axed it from my existence. I was very reluctant to get a pc as an adult--mostly badgered by someone else to do it. It remained a pretty small part of my life, but, through the years, I feel like I got cornered into excessive use, because all the "regular" things of life simply got swept away. Sometimes I don't post here for a week or two, mostly because of desperately trying to get back into 3D activities.

When I was working at a place and had closing duties, at the end of the day when going to lock up, the co-workers would regroup for a brief conversation before leaving. But once they all were getting smart phones, it turned into: shut up and press some buttons. Not even wait a few more minutes until everything was done; just kill the conversation and ignore everyone around you and phone away. And that was what...roughly ten, fifteen years ago now? At this point, it seems like there's no one left to talk to or do anything with.

I'm not sure that narcotics would be the best alternative, but, note for note, I'd rate acid heads miles above such a digital addict. LSD was still around until 2000ish when they shut down that missile silo in Kansas that made 90% of the world's supply, so, to my perception at least, the end of acid/launch of smart phones was contemporaneous.

I really don't know how to countermand this stuff in any peaceful kind of way...

[ponda]

It might depend on what/how you are using the digital interface for. You can learn a lot these days by looking at a computer screen. Like all things, technology can be a useful tool or a distraction.

[joeecho]

When I step back and view this from a wider viewpoint it reminds me of an assimilation initiative. Perhaps to begin to trust certain digital information while rejecting the information shared heart-to-heart. Could it be that gaming is the equivalent to a gateway drug and even more so to the electronic educational games for the very young? Pandora's box applies.

[Selene]

When I worked with the horrendous problems of crack-addicted street hookers in my fair city - people who would do utterly anything to sustain their addictions – I maintained, in the face of expert opinion to the contrary, that addiction has much less to do with your character or willpower than it does with our human neurology.

The addiction is like a nuclear weapon: it doesn’t care who you are, how you feel, what kind of parents or upbringing, trauma etc you’ve had.

It cares only for the control of your brain.

The sooner that we recognize the overwhelming power of addictive material, the sooner we will be able to address its treatment. It’s not about you, or your willpower. It’s about overwhelming force.

And anyone who thinks “I’m stronger than this, I’m exempt …” is delusional. We are all at risk for something.

I am so very happy to see this discussion.

Regards,

Selene

[joeecho]

A difficult thing about child addiction is that they have it before they have a chance to understand it's significance. Once ingrained, try telling a child that too much gaming (for example) isn't in their best interest.

How does one stem the digital tide for their child when their peers, friends, siblings, and parents are all on digital conTRAPtions?

[Selene]

I recall a conversation I had in Bern, Switzerland back in the late 1980’s. The woman was telling me about the horrific and growing problem in Bern of heroin addiction – and they were stymied.

I thought: WTF? The ‘conventional wisdom’ says that drug addiction is caused by poverty, social inequality, trauma, weak sense of self, lack of nurture, etc etc. Get a life, and a therapist, in other words.

But the population of Bern didn’t meet any of those criteria: Switzerland is quite uniquely prosperous and homogenous, with stable middle-class families and homogenous cultural values, good prospects, good medical, arts and education for all, a solid work ethic, tradition, etc. Nothing that ought to be the source of an epidemic. Switzerland was quite literally the last place on earth that ought to have an addiction problem.

That’s when I began to wonder: What is addiction, really?

Regards,

Selene

[The Freedom Train]

Posted by Selene (here)
That’s when I began to wonder: What is addiction, really?

IMO - a mixture of blanket mind control programming, targeted psychotronic manipulations, and possession (demonic, astral, alien...).

[SpookyMulder]

Thank you Hervé.

Just like Whiskey_Mystic I have spent years in game development before stopping due to the direction most companies were taking. What used to be fun games became military simulations and aggressive entertainment. Of course do not think that it was an all act of randomness. And who backs the gaming industry, especially the big players?

You want to find some interesting games, well go check the "Indie" scene but still, the tide is also turning due to the advent of portable digital devices.

Back to digital devices, you cannot turn your head around and notice people hooked to their smartphones, on the train, on the ferry, on the plane, on the bus. They even attach USB slot in case your pretty precious runs out of juice!
You see adults and parents giving their personal devices to their 18 months old "babies" just for the sake of having some peace! People, friends and families go to restaurants and all sit at their dinner table playing with their devices.


The addiction is not only hitting kids, but adults. Go and find someone who actually read a paper book on a public transport and you will look like a crazy lunatic!

Welcome to the world of Smombies (Smartphones Zombies)!