The research does show there are subgroups who are at greater risk for a tech addiction, including adolescent and young adult males, as well as kids with ADHD or an autism spectrum disorder.6 In my experience, it’s boys starting about the 5th grade who are more likely than other populations to show signs of addiction. Yet because boys’ obsessive use of video games is so common, as discussed in Chapter 5, this may be normalized by parents.
“Why did my kid develop a problem when his (or her) friends didn’t?,” parents demand to know. Unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer for them, as science may never be able to predict with certainty which children will develop a tech addiction, only that certain groups of kids are at greater risk. It’s much like drug addiction, as some adults can use cocaine, methamphetamine, or other drugs many times and put these substances down for good while others develop a destructive habit soon after the first use.
What we can say is that tech addiction is becoming more commonplace. Whether measured in the United States, Europe, or Asia, the rates of technology addiction—what is often called “pathological video game or Internet use”—range from about 7% to 11% of teen and young adult gamers.7 That means tens of millions of kids now suffer from this syndrome. Because tech addiction is less understood and recognized in the US, addicted kids are often labeled as having problems with depression, anger, anxiety, learning, or focus—when their core problem is really a harmful obsession with various technologies.
THE ADDICTED BRAIN
The latest brain imaging techniques, including MRI and PET scans taken during real-time experiments, reveal that gambling and video gaming impact the mind in a similar way to drugs and alcohol. This is one reason why the medical and psychiatric communities now believe addiction is best understood not as the compulsive use of a substance but as something that occurs in the brain as the result of substance use or the performance of certain behaviors.
Imaging studies show that video gaming triggers the release of dopamine at levels comparable to an intravenous injection of amphetamine,8 a powerful and addictive psychostimulant. Other imaging studies show that video gaming mirrors the effects of drugs and alcohol as it stimulates the brain’s pleasure pathway.9 Areas of the brain impacted by video gaming include the cingulate gyrus (an area involved in motivation) and the prefrontal cortex (the key area affecting insight, self-control, and decision making). This helps explain why kids can become fixated on digital devices, cease to care about the things that once mattered to them most, and yet have no insight regarding their problem.
Such research has helped pave the way for widespread acceptance of both gambling and video gaming/Internet use as two behaviors capable of causing addiction. In 2013, after decades of investigation, gambling was the first behavioral addiction to be recognized in psychiatry’s chief guidebook, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). While video game/Internet addiction was seriously considered as a diagnosis, the DSM-5 committee decided that more research should be done before official acceptance—it took decades to formally recognize gambling addiction—so the DSM-5 now identifies Internet Gaming Disorder as a condition that warrants further study.10
As research adds to the substantial literature on video game/Internet addiction, the US medical and psychiatric communities will likely move in the direction of China and South Korea. Both countries are overwhelmed by youth video game/Internet addiction, recognize it as a diagnosis, consider it to be a leading public health problem and a threat to their economies, and have devoted hundreds of treatment centers to address it.11 In the film documentary, China’s Web Junkies, a mother says of her son who has been placed in a boot-camp-style treatment center, “Since my son started playing online games, he changed to another person.… He became very cruel.”12
The Chinese and South Korean governments are so concerned about the effects of video game addiction that they have enacted national rules to limit children’s access.13 Other countries are waking up to the crisis. Japan’s Ministry of Education estimates that more than 500,000 Japanese children between the ages of 12 and 18 are addicted to the Internet.14 The Ministry is therefore investing heavily in research on the disorder and provides tech “fasting” camps for children.
SELLING A MYTH
In contrast, in America, flip on the TV or read the average online parenting article and you will see news reports hyping the advantages of children’s use of video games, social networks, and the Internet without mentioning the risks of addiction. Why? Those bringing us our news are often part of conglomerates that have financial ties to companies that sell kids gadgets and apps. Moreover, news sources frequently depend upon ad revenue from an increasingly powerful industry, which can influence the slant of news stories.
Just considering video games, the worldwide market for video game titles, gaming consoles, online mobile and PC games reached $93 billion in 2013, up from $79 billion in 2012.15 Adding further to the “everything’s good” message about kids’ tech use is the steady drumbeat of industry PR. Rich Taylor of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the video game industry’s lobbying and public relations arm, claims: “There simply is no concrete evidence that computer and video games cause harm.”16
WHAT TECH ADDICTION LOOKS LIKE
Because various addictions show similar patterns in the brain, it’s not surprising their symptoms mirror one another. The hallmark of any addiction is that a person continues the behavior in spite of significantly harmful consequences in real life, often in multiple areas: e.g., the alcoholic who keeps drinking even though his habit cost him his job, or the teen tech addict who keeps gaming even though his obsession has led him to fail classes and ravaged his family relationships.
The effects of a tech addiction are often tragic. Highly capable teens give up their educational and career aspirations in order to spend more time playing with technology. Loving, honest kids turn cold to their parents’ touch and habitually lie to cover up their habits. Parents of addicted children who try to reduce their kids’ tech use are met with threats of suicide or physical attacks.
The focus of this chapter is on tech-addicted children but the condition also afflicts adults. A number of parents I work with have divorced primarily because their ex-partner was addicted to gaming. Other parents describe their current partner as cut-off from them, their children, and real life by technology-related behaviors. As a result, children suffer from an overwhelming feeling of loss and anger, and are more likely to become addicted to technology themselves.
Researchers and practitioners often use the symptoms of substance or gambling addiction as a guide to deciding if a person is addicted to video games or the Internet. I have modified the DSM-5 gambling addiction symptoms to identify technology addiction.17 While these signs should not be used definitively, they are a good starting point for assessing how much someone is harmed by their use of technology.
Signs of Unhealthy Technology Use
•Needs to spend increasing amounts of time video gaming or using the Internet in order to achieve the desired excitement
•Is often restless or irritable when the use of video gaming or the Internet is stopped or decreased
•Repeated unsuccessful efforts have been made to control, cut back, or stop video gaming or using the Internet
•Is often preoccupied with using video games or the Internet
•Often uses video games or the Internet when feeling distressed (e.g., anxious or depressed) in an effort to feel better
•Often lies to conceal the extent of involvement with video gaming or the Internet
•Has significantly damaged relationships with family members, or academic or work performance because of video games or the Internet
The more of these signs a person shows, the more serious their problem with technology. If most or all of these signs are present, this suggests a possible addiction.
TRICKS OF THE TRADE
How did this phenomenon develop? The extremely competiti
ve environment of the consumer tech industry provides possible answers. Corporations have found that the most profitable tech products—those that keep users coming back again and again—greatly stimulate the brain’s reward center. As tech industry executive Bill Davidow says in his Atlantic article “Exploiting the Neuroscience of Internet Addiction”: “The leaders of Internet companies face an interesting, if also morally questionable, imperative: either they hijack neuroscience to gain market share and make large profits, or they let competitors do that and run away with the market.”18
How do tech corporations hijack our brains? They use the same behavioral psychology techniques the gambling industry uses to attract and manipulate gamblers. One strategy, variable ratio reinforcement, provides random rewards to users (think slot machine) and is well known to develop compulsive responses in people as well as animals. Video game makers create experiences in which players never know how and when points will be metered out, or when they will stumble on a special prize. Similarly, social network developers create ideal environments for variable ratio reinforcement—users never know when they will receive a “like” or a positive post.
Compulsion loops are another method tech developers use to get players to spend more time online, and, after they leave, to feel the itch to return. Compulsion loops reward a player’s efforts with more game time or increasing levels, making it difficult for players to walk away. In the Facebook video game Farmville, for example, once players plant a crop, they have to wait before they can return and harvest the crops, at which time they’re rewarded with “farm cash” to buy more crops, etc. Players feel compelled to return time and time again, keeping the loop going. Game designer Adrian Hon, originally trained in neuroscience at Cambridge and Oxford Universities, states: “Farmville is basically a compulsion loop dressed up in plants, with goals being doled out on a player-controlled schedule and new content (crops, buildings, decorations) always tantalizingly within range.”19
The qualities of today’s tech environment also allow for the use of behavioral manipulation techniques beyond what the gambling industry can employ. Game makers use the principles of avoidance (players must continue to play to avoid being punished by losing points, having crops die, or seeing animals get sick) and arousal (violent and sexualized images stimulate users to continue).
Like many alcoholics who face pressure to continue to imbibe from their circle of drinking friends, social factors play a role in getting and keeping kids hooked on tech products. Beginning in elementary school, many boys face extreme peer pressure to give up their lives to online gaming communities. For girls, more than boys, the need to belong on social networks is a powerful motivator to never let go of their phones. As Joel Bakan, professor of law at the University of British Columbia and author of Childhood Under Siege, notes: “What the rapid rise of social networks suggests, and what kid marketers are now coming to understand, is that the lives and dramas of kids themselves are likely the stickiest content of all.”20
These are just a few tricks that the industry uses to manipulate kids’ behavior. If these techniques are combined in just the right way, disguised in the compelling content of games or social networks, kids don’t know they’re being manipulated. They believe they spend so much of their lives gaming or on their favorite social networks because they want to, because it’s fun.
RATS IN A MAZE
To understand the pivotal role that behavioral psychology plays in the development of entertainment tech products, it’s helpful to start at the beginning, with the research of B.F. Skinner. This experimental psychologist designed a tool commonly known as the Skinner Box, a chamber in which behavioral manipulation could be scientifically tested on lab animals. Skinner found that the right mix of rewards and punishments could get rats, pigeons, and chimps to do just about anything. Skinner believed that for this purpose, humans are no different than animals. Our behavior is shaped primarily by outside forces, not our own free will. He concluded that for humans, freedom is an illusion. It’s just a matter of who’s controlling us.
In 2001, while receiving his Ph.D. in behavioral and brain sciences, John Hopson wrote a paper titled “Behavioral Game Design,” now considered a seminal work in the video gaming industry. He described how techniques learned from Skinner’s experiments on lab animals can be used to manipulate video game player behavior. Hopson answered questions such as “How to make players play forever” and “How do we make players maintain a high, consistent rate of activity?” He says, “This is not to say that players are the same as rats, but that there are general rules of learning which apply equally to both.”21
Hopson is extremely intelligent, however his description of using behavior manipulation techniques tested on lab animals to influence video game players is frightening and sad. For corporations that make entertainment technologies, these techniques have been revolutionary, greatly influencing the design of video games and social networks. When his paper was published, Hopson was contacted by Microsoft, which offered him a position in video game development. He says his work at the company helped inspire the development of the Xbox Live, Microsoft’s online gaming system. He also helped develop Xbox games popular with kids, including those in the Halo series.22
BIG BROTHER
Since the mid-1990s, experimental psychologists, neuroscientists, and other experts in the brain and behavior, traditionally involved with lab studies of animal and human subjects, have found a home in the consumer tech industry. Increasingly, they oversee game development.
As a result, the content of today’s video games, whether it’s about tough-guy soldiers or cute fuzzy creatures, matters less and less. What increasingly drives product development is user research. User researchers are experts in behavioral psychology and the manipulation of human behavior who rely upon detailed statistical analyses of our behavior to tweak products to be extraordinarily enticing and hence more profitable.
On its Redmond, Washington, campus, Microsoft has a sophisticated human research lab called Playtest.23 At this sprawling facility, Microsoft psychologist and User Research Lead Tim Nichols and his staff study children as they video game, delve deep into their minds, and collect mounds of data to create products that perfectly exploit the proclivities of young brains. Because of such efforts, Microsoft is considered the gold standard in user research.24
Across the video gaming industry, scientists bring kids and young adults into state-of-the-art labs to observe them as they game. One-way mirrors and cameras record the facial expressions of subjects while they play. If children look away from the screen, they’re questioned to find out why. Behavioral techniques are used to fine-tune the game to make an end product kids can’t look away from, and can’t put down.
The industry’s increasing use of experts in human behavior combines with advancements in measurement techniques to push the bounds of user research. Popular video game maker Valve employs experimental psychologist Mike Ambinder. At his lab, players are hooked up to biofeedback devices that measure skin conductance (which shows player arousal level) and track their eye movements (to gauge where players are looking in real time). Results inform game development.25
The video game industry has come a long way since John Hopson wrote his paper describing how tests of lab animals should influence game design, but in many ways little has changed. Experimental psychologists and similar experts continue to study lab subjects to find the best methods to influence behavior. What is different? The subjects now include children.
A DANGEROUS TIPPING POINT
The tech industry publicly claims that its intimate analyses of our behavior are intended to improve user experiences, that the primary purpose is making video games or social networks more usable or fun. These words hide a darker truth: a cut-throat business environment that fosters the development of consumer technologies so perfectly designed to capture attention that they promote addiction.
Sucking Kids’ Lives Away
Bill Fulton is a ga
me designer trained in cognitive and quantitative psychology. He started Microsoft’s Games User-Research group and led it for seven years before founding his own consulting agency. He’s up front about the intent of today’s gaming industry, saying: “If game designers are going to pull a person away from every other voluntary social activity or hobby or pastime [emphasis mine], they’re going to have to engage that person at a very deep level in every possible way they can.”26
That’s a remarkable description of game designers’ motives. For children, “voluntary” activities include running around outside, spending time with their family, or putting effort into homework. A multi-billion dollar industry devoting its resources to developing entertainment technologies that intend to suck kids away from the rest of their lives is scary, yet it helps illuminate why frustrated parents can’t get their children to do much besides sit in front of the computer or play with their phone.
Choosing the Virtual World Over the Real One
While writing her trilogy of books on our relationship with technology, psychologist Sherry Turkle became increasingly concerned that children would begin to prefer the virtual to the real world.27 Tech-addicted children have reached this tipping point. We see the result: Kids who extensively use the games and social networks our society labels appropriate for them, and end up preferring that world to the real one. This is the nature of addiction: People become involved with a substance or behavior at the expense of their real lives.
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