Hey, San Francisco, we're coming back to see you. Yes, our second year in a row. We're gonna be going to s F Sketch Fest. I'd like to think it's the premier comedy festival in the United States. Probably well in the world, you think, so, yeah, what about Beijing? Nope, it's a it's a close second. For a second. Well, we love San Francisco, 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 one pm. Yeah, it's the rare Sunday afternoon. We're like the NFL of podcasters. Yeah right, that's 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 How Stuff Works dot 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. Mhm uh. And I'm gonna include smartphone addiction in this as computer addiction. Yeah for sure, because this was written before there were computers in people's pockets. But it is porn addiction. It is online porn. Yeah, um, yeah, exactly. Um. Is there any other way there's gent Well, that's like when when poor Fred Willard went to uh like a a porno theater and was caught or something, and like everybody felt so bad because everyone loves for Fred Willard and it wasn't like some big scandal. Everyone's just like, oh, poor Fred. Somebody needs to like explain to him how this has done these days, Like you don't need to leave your house. How are there even porno theaters? Least? I don't know. Is it like kitchy 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 was just wanting to shake your hand. Won't be shaking hands, but I think it would be interesting. Like, you know, this is what it was like in the nineteen seventies, you know on Times Square. All right, I'm gonna find me a porno theater. I'm totally going. You know, Georgia Theater used to be one. That's how it started out in Athens. I don't think I knew that. And 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 seems like every three months. When like I was in school there before he was a big deal. I was like, who are these guys? Why is her name always up on that marquee? They said, you'll understand Sunday. I still don't. When is that day coming? Uh? Well, now it's not going to if it hasn't yet. So it is porn addiction. It is uh maybe gambling addiction, video game addiction, gaming addiction for sure, social media addiction, YouTube addiction. Yeah, and all a lot of things wrapped up under this big banner of computer addiction, right, and everything you just UM 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 UM computer addiction of some form or another, at least Internet Addiction Disorder UM put into the d s M five, which they put together a couple of years back, the American Psychological Association UM. But they said, no, we should do a show just on that because 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 him throughout time, and I don't think there is unless I'm wrong. It didn't look like there was any like set like every ten years we're gonna put one out. No, I don't know what schedule it's it's on. Maybe when enough of the stuff turns out to be bunk. Yeah, They're like, I was probably write this thing. Yeah maybe so like, yeah, homosexuality isn't comparable to insanity any longer. We should probably rewrite the handbook, you know. And I wonder if they make addendums or if it's just like, Nope, it's locked the next until the next one comes out you're insane because you're gay, But then the next day it comes out it's like, oh, you're cud anyway. So they tried to get something like that in the DSM five and 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 going to keep an eye on it, and it just needs more what we need to do more research on it. It's just too misunderstood or not well understood enough to morerant being included as which is how it should work. Like, because 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 and was like we asked twenty people question I saw. I saw others that were legitimate. Um, And there are also apparently a lot of neurological studies as well, because there's a big controversy not just in whether, um, you could actually be addicted to computers or if it's just an impulsive of failure to control your impulses. Um. So people say, well, they're just lazy, they just want to sit around in front of a computer all day. That doesn't make them addicted. Is that what all addiction is? Though? Is it failure to control your impulse? No, 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. Um, in which case that 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 got a little bit of budding heads over that even which, of course, then that means that something as a morphous is Internet addiction disorder couldn't possibly be agreed upon at this point. Uh. And you can tell this article is 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 the citation. It was written in two thousand seven. 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, yeah, you know it is. It is pretty interesting. Um, all right, Well, obviously if we're talking about the smartphones and computers, laptops, desktops, whatever your device. Um, we are talking about basically if you look down the list of of what happens if you are quote computer addicted in quote, it's basically the same as any alcohol or drug addiction. Um, do you stay on the computer front? It's longer than intended or not noticed? Notice the passage of time. You could say that with drugs. Uh. Do you make conscious efforts to cut back on computer time and repeatedly fail? That's a big one, big one. Uh. Do you think about your computer a lot when you're not using it or constantly look forward to the next opportunity use it? Drugs and alcohol? That is why I don't play video games in Yeah, in like seven whenever the Clone Wars with that episode one who knows Okay, well whatever episode, the one with jar Jar binks, probably the greatest Star Wars character ever created. Um, the 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 was this on the PlayStation? And uh, I was like this is 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 Tetras streams or would look at the world in some ways as a Tetris grid. Um, some games really have a knack for getting into your crawl that way. Like you know, I've been playing a lot of I can't even think of the name of it now. Um, they're very immersive, you know, dude, Especially now. I mean like that that Star Wars game was was cruddy. Yeah, Like I that wasn't the first and only game I'd ever played. I'd played plenty of other games, and I could tell you that was not a good game, But I still that I think that made it even more Its strengthened my resolve even more that Like, if I was sitting there thinking about how to play this cruddy game better, Um, I should probably just stop playing games altogether. Yeah, so you haven't played any games since? 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 track the progress of games these days, and now that we're starting to move into virtual reality, it's like you're we're gonna be totally lost as a species. Alright. So continuing on how it mirrors drug addiction, UM, hiding the extent of your computer used from family and friends. Yeah, that's totally use a computer as an escape when feeling depressed or stressed. That one, to me is kind of like, Okay, I don't I don't see that as a sign of addiction. But this is a grabstor article, so I'll take it as gospel fact. I was a scrabstor too, all right. Um missing events or um 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 banks charge r binks is candy crush, bonanza rodeo uh. And then it could lead to things like marital problems, um negative consequences, getting in trouble at work. The same can be said of alcohol and drugs for almost all these Bryant uh. 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 they are all kinds of stories. It seems like it seems like Taiwan is one of the worst. Taiwan had two two people die within two weeks of each other from gaming binges in two thousand. 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, you know, disturbed, this out in public. Yeah, and apparently one guy was laying there for ten hours before they realized and another I couldn't believe this. One other um 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. I think they just were basically didn't even pay attention to the fact that a dead body was being removed from the internet cafe. So there's a book called Death by Video Game and um, it's actually not new. This is this happened in the nineteen eighties. Even ever since, there have been games. People have played them until they died. And Uh, I was just curious about Taiwan. And the author basically says Taiwan in particular, um at these internet cafes, which is a cheap way to get online and stay online. Yeah, so they've got these cafes. There's a lot of smoking going on in there, a lot of caffeine drinking. Um, the humidity in the country is really tough. And basically says all of this adds up to UM and you know, of course you're not eating well, you're not exercising at all, uh, and all of this adds up to really increased likelihoods of things like blood clots and UM. Because you think, like, how do you literally die from like a nineteen hour bench of a video game? It's it's all the other things that go into how you've treated your body really neglect essentially. Yeah, I mean, a blood clot makes sense to me. I saw exhaustion. I'm like, is this the eighteen nineties. 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. Um, so of course you could 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 Warcraft character is just standing there not doing anything because you're debt. Uh. I see what you're saying though about this article being written a while ago and then hearing 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. Um, 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 basically, I mean, that's accepted behavior now. Yeah, I know, 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, Like what are things going to be like in fifty years. I was in a bar the other night getting some take out dinner for the family, take out beer, I don't know, take out food, bar, restaurant, and um, and I got this place all the time and go sit out the bar, order drink, order the food, have my one drink, and get the food to go. So I'm there for like twenty five minutes, thirty minutes maybe. And I I used to love going to sitting down in a bar and talking to strangers next to me, striking like the good bar conversation is, like it's the best. And I sat down I was between these two dudes. I looked at my left, I was staring on his phone. Looked at my right, I 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 the bartender, which was fine. How Yukowski, yesk of you. Yeah, that's true, But um, I don't know, man, it just depressed me. Yeah, no, I know what you mean. When you step back and look around and 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 that Ed touches on in the negative effects of this is that you you start to prefer your online friends. Well, I mean, there are it's entirely possible that your online friends are better friends from the people you're surrounded with in real life, you know. 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 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 offer, because it would have been that's a great conversation, sir, would you like to speak with me? Hey man, let's get a conversation. But 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. It might be watching cat videos or reading uh news sites angry about the election, just feeding into their anger over and over and over. Um, 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 thirty seconds to stand here and wait for the elevator, right, 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. Go 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, you know, not me. I find I'm failing at it more and more these days. So it just makes me feel So we're getting way into the opinion category and where irking a few people. Let's take a break, all right, we are back with facts and figures, okay. So um. One of the other things that struck me to chuck was 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 your in your real life, like going into simulated combat. You know. That's that you do interesting stuff with the people you're ine online with rather than you know, um well, especially if you lead kind of a boring life, you know, and that's all subjective, of course, but um, I don't know if your life is really boring. Everybody can um. I saw this ESPN Outside the Lines episode on this wrestler at University of Michigan, Go Wolverines. Name is Marshall Carpenter and I think he was a twin if I'm not mistaken. But he would spend eight to fourteen 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. Uh. And there was a football player too, named Quinn pitcock Um 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. It's sad, but it's it is like, how can that? How can you not call that an addiction? You know right? No, it's true. And examples like that are the ones that the people point to say, yes, there is such a thing as computer addiction, and it does have pronounced effects not just on you know, your NFL career, but if you're just an everyday schmo, it can have pronounced effects on your relationships to like for example, um, 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, Um, she may divorce you. And there's actually there's never been from what I've seen, a study that definitively showed it, Um that yes, uh, online time equals higher divorce rates. But I found one that came pretty close, as a two thousand fourteen study that appeared in Computers in Human Behavior a journal, and it found a two point one eight percent to a four point three two percent. Those those like decimal points that you know it's legitimate, um, And that that level rise in divorce rates correlated with a annual increase in Facebook use in a given area in the US. Right, So every that Facebook increased up to four percent and change, Um, there was a four percent and change increase in the divorce rate for that area too. 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. Um. 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, um, but I think the internet is a bit more immersive than TV, especially especially because you don't interact with the TV the way you do online usually, right unless your Elvis and Bob Goolays on TV and you with your hand going, was it Bob Goulay? It used to drive him when oh Man Will Ferrell, the Bob thing was so great, remember that. Yeah, I didn't know who was on TV when Elvis shot it. And sometimes he would just be like with the TV wasn't enough. He'd shoot his toaster or the dishwasher. Yeah, I'm Robert grew because he would see Gooley everywhere. Wow. Yeah, els is on a lot of drugs. Yeah, but they were legal. God bless my grandmother, God rest her soul. She you know. They were from Memphis, and it was always like, oh, Elvis, you know, he was still Memphis's son. Like all his doctors, they had him going every which way. His doctors killed him. He was a big, big fat junkie. He loved his drugs. I don't want to like be the one to break it to you, so I never did. I just let her think that. What's funny is that horribly ironic um 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 and you want to go shoot him, and his boys would have to like restrain him and calm him down. So he didn't drug dealers sit down to put this under your tongue on biggie sit back then, Well didn't he wasn't he like an honorary d A guy from Nixon. He tried to make it. I think they know there's that famous picture of him shaking hands with Nixon. He got that that meeting arranged. Nixon didn't wanted to happen because he's like, this is a preposterous I'm not gonna make this guy d E agent. But Elvis was offering himself as a d E, a undercover agent, because he could get closer to the hippies and all that. Um, And she was like, here's your junior badge. Anything I can do, just let me know. Man. Uh, there's a movie out about that now that I want to see that Elvison Nixon meeting. Yeah, yeah, I haven't seen it yet. Um. Alright, So back to I was not expecting to Nixon to make an appearance in this that wasn't either. I did find one study. This is Dr Susan Mueller at the University of Maryland, Go Turps. She asked two hundred students to abstain from all media for twenty four hours, called it twenty four 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 him 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 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 and then they're probably something, are like this was the worst experience, right. Uh. But she basically just had these kids, these students describe things and what it was like wasn't super scientific, but um all of them said that they were I could not function without it. And they across the board, all two hundred, Like there wasn't a single person that said like, oh that was nice. All of them are like this was one of the worst twenty for our periods of my life lately. Uh. But then you also make the argument like this is how we communicate these days, is how we get our news. Is how we can communicate through work? Uh, Like you can't just take away everything like that and say all right now, relearn everything you know and over this twenty four 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 twenty four hours or something. But and it also raises another point of contention as far as determining what constitutes computer addiction. Um, the computer is not and inherently um useless or evil thing, right, Like Egg compares it to Heroin, Like you're you could legitimately sit around and use a computer for ten hours in a day in a very useful manner. Yeah, you got a deadline for work or something. Um, you sit around and shoot Heroin for ten hours. You're not accomplishing anything. You can point to that and be like, no, that's not that's not objectively good in any way, shape or form. Right. Um, with a computer, you can be like, yeah, you could be sitting there playing candy crushed for ten hours straight, or you could be um 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 ten straight hours, their computer addicts. But the whole it muddies the whole thing, the usefulness of the computer and the ubiquity and necessity of using a computer for long stretches 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 uh, brain centers useless. Like when you do the heroine the heroine, which is kind of, you know, another way of saying what you were saying, when you ride the horse. That's that what they call it. I think that's what they call it. In the seventies, I was chasing the dragon or is that something? Okay, there's this great MST three K episode and 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, they're a little horse for a little monkey. Alright, U should we take another break? All right, we'll come back and we'll talk specifically about um, social media addiction right after this. Al right, social meds, as Hodgeman calls it, well, he ended up calling it so means by the it 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. A prediction. I guess it's probably a better way to put it. Yeah, it's a good point. So they've been studying for a little while. In two thousand twelve, Uh, 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, uh they found that the brain, the parts of the brain associated with preservation of the social reputation are what's at play there. And um, 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. Um, there's basically it's called behavioral design. There's a guy named b. J. Fogg who's a experimental psychologist slash computer scientist and he runs a uh what's called the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford. And this guy is like a guru god out there, UM who basically has taken this concept that yes, you can have a great idea, Yes you can have a killer app. Yes you can, UM 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 the apps are designed where cigarettes were back in like the seventies when they started adding things like ammonia and sugar to increase 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 UM. This one researcher called n. I. R. Near ell e Y a L great name. UM wrote a book called Hooked Colon How to Build Habit Forming Products. UM 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 a board the standing there at the elevator for a minute. Hey, it's so sad, but it's actually your Facebook feed. Are you standing the line in the grocery store. Don't talk to the nice lady next to you. Ignore 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 cooked, to begin with that initial little trigger, but then it goes from there. So so I think that I think boredom would constitute a motivation that will motivate you. Right. The trigger is something like, um, 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 too. You're motivated by boredom to go seek out the news feed. The news feed itself are 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 um B equals M A T so behavior the behavior that you're after, which is interacting with Facebook, is what Facebook wants you to do. UM 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. UM and a trigger all come together. So the triggers, 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, there's 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 a 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 habitual. Yeah. Well, the Facebook in particular, like it's no accident that the UM what's it called not the alert but the notification is in red. Um. That's a color that they found draws like a more immediate reaction in response. That's what stop sign is red um. That's why I read like is read. That's why the Facebook alerts are read, so I'm read when I'm mad. Uh. This other guy, UM, what's his first name something Harris. Uh. 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. Uh, 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. He actually spent time under studying under B. J. Fogg, and he's kind of gone the opposite way. Um, he's saying, Hey, we actually, um 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 interesting the use of technology in their lives. So basically there's I mean, some of it comes up in this article by ed to UM, like doing things like setting alarms and when the alarm goes off, your computers off, you just turn it off UM, or just allotting certain parts of the day to UM using your computer, your phone. But I mean it may have worked in two thousand seven, 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 time. It's totally neglected, like all LinkedIn accounts. I know some people are super into it. I think 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 because I'm not on it. I get them all the time. But when LinkedIn launched UM, 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 just say like, well look at my wheel. It's lame. I can't have people see him a wheel like that. Yeah, I connect, connect connect to people. Yeah, like fog 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, and or even represented in terms of popularity. I'm quite sure that they studied that extensively and found that it actually like a reduction in Facebook. So they they 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 would be like this is so and so they're super popular and he says he's a hero, You're a zero. Uh and then sadly, I'm not on Snapchat at all. But m dude, the US Snapchat is one of the most difficult things you could ever try to do. Well, they said in here. They said that Facebook's um behavioral design makes like it's cute compared to what Snapchat is doing. Yeah, like Facebook, if you send someone um 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 rick as 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, yeah, or you see it as they've you know, like they saw this thing three days ago. That's responded. That motivates the behavior. Yes, that's 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. It's app chat and other apps in the future. Right this uh, this, it's I think an Atlantic article that that that pulls from. Um. They were saying that there's reports of people who are on the snapchat streaks of like X number of consecutive days. They don't want to break their streak, so if they know they're going to be away from their device or whatever, they'll give their password and log into a friend to have them snapchat the other friends, 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. Some some teenagers are snapchatting each other because so that they can get emojis? Is that really that wrong? And that's the legitimate response, and that is I mean, and that is At the same time, though, I really feel like there's um, 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. We'll 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, like so let's put in the AutoPlay feature. Uh, And they call it hair is called it the bottomless bowl, that infinite stream that you get sucked into because they found there was a study where people eat sev more soup out of a self refilling bowl, a regular bowl without even realizing they've eaten more. I want to see that bowl. They just can't too. 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 um is you get sucked in before you know it, and then a half hour has gone by, like you rationalize yourself, like, you know, I can just go check um I sent her for in request or a message. Just it'll take two seconds. Let me just check and see if they responded. Twenty five minutes later, they found is twenty five 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 checked Twitter than I was when I was checking Twitter while I was researching this article. Just nothing to do with thing, anything. Randomly, I'd just go open up Twitter and look nothing, no change, nothing worth seeing. It's it is bizarre the habits you can form from it. So what do you do? Chuck if you want out besides having to completely faster unplug or whatever. Well, like you were talking about the if you are if you I should say, if you are a bona fide computer addict. Oh, I mean you can go through a legit twelve step program like you go through rehab. There are people out there doing that. 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 I was talking about. Like this wrestler, you're gaming fourteen hours a day. Your life is suffering in some ways, in many ways, like there's just no way getting around it. No, there's not. Because again, like you're not getting exercise, you're not eating right, you're creating um uh, blood clots in your legs, you're you're not hanging out with the people who are you're physically around with. Of course there's problems. Um you could also Uh, this one was good. I thought you can put the computer in the high traffic area of the house, That is a good one. Instead of being up there in your bedroom in the closet looking like a guy from reefer madness. Yeah, sit out in the open where someone might distract you into a human interaction, right, or being will to keep tabs on, Like, Uh, you've been at the computer for six hours, now, what's your problem. Yeah, I'm working, 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 wear I mean I don't have time to do that. What six hours at the at the six and eight hours of of funning. Oh yeah, when we do our research and our work online. But like I can't play Fallout for eight hours. You know, I have responsibilities. But the fewer responsibilities you have, I guess, the more prone you are. I think there was Yeah, if you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth, your toast when it comes to gaming. Yeah, that's true. Um. It says here that study people who are more anxious and socially insecure appreciate the easy ways to communicate via the social meds. But on the other hand, people who are more organized and ambitious were at a decreased risk of tech related addiction. Uh. And we just use it, you know, use it for the things they need it for. I'd say that characterizes me. Yeah, it's the tool aside from checking Twitter. What else? Man you got anything else? I got one more thing. I just saw this good um artic. Well, it was an article as a research paper Internet Addiction colon, A brief summary of research and practice from Hillary Cash Lazette, Ray and Stealing Alexander Winkler. Um. And I just read the summation. But it's interesting they said, from our practical perspective, the different types of I a D. That's the Internet addiction disorder. Uh, they fit into one category due to various uh, internet specific commonalities. So you talk about porn addiction or gaming and addiction, or any of these various addictions except probably social media in some ways because anonymity and riskless interaction or two of them. Uh. And then commonalities and the underlying behavior which is avoidant sphere pleasure and entertainment. And then the overlapping systems I'm sorry, 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, that's what we need, which I mean, of course, it's coming like this is probably the premier addiction of the twenty one century. The thing is, we seem to be looking at it is less and less of an addiction and more and more of normal life. So I don't know, maybe there will be less study of it. I'm just gonna encourage people to you don't have to go out and and give up everything, but just try to spend a little more time talking to people. Yeah, it's just go to somebody and say, hey, make conversation with me just a little bit here and there, just and that always. Or let's get a conversation going pet pepper and into your life here and there and see if it does not provide reward. Yeah. Another good one that I've found at least makes you COGNI is in 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, and you're gonna get tackled for waving it around in public. I've tried to do some of this lately to 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. Yeah, it's definitely changed. And it's like, white, what do you want? What are you talking to me? If you want to talk to somebody who wasn't around, you had to go to a pay phone back in your day. They still have those. I see him from time to time. Their neat It's like being in a living museum. Uh well, I don't think either one of us have anything else. Instead, we're going to suggest that you go on the house stuff works dot com. Type in a search bar computer addiction if you want to know more about this. Um, there's plenty of others if you can look up to. Uh. And since I said search bar in there somewhere, it's time for a listener mail. Uh yeah, And hey, sorry if it was a little soap boxy on that one. I didn't want to get to soap boxy. But I kind of miss folks talking to folks. You know, we'll talk to you. He just tapped me on the shoulder. All right, I'm gonna call this uh syntax um beef. Hey guys, small issue I had with the syntax episode and discussing the colonial American reaction to levies like the sugar tax, you dismissed the purpose of the taxes making the king richer. It is a common misconception that the taxes were imposed on the colonies arbitrarily, and this was certainly the patriot narrative used to support independence go Pats, 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. Revisionist history nowadays tends to focus on the without representation part of the no tax should 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, dropping ignored in the revolutionary narrative. Did this be email come from the UK? No? Oklahoma? Okay, okay, right so close. I love the show. Keep up a good work, guy, Sincerely, Thomas from Oklahoma. Thanks a lot, Thomas, 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 drawn by the King England. No, I saw Schoolhouse Rock. That 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 John Show Them Clark. 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 Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email to stuff Podcasts at how stuff Works dot com and has always hang out with us at her home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com