The New Addiction

Which programmers know and exploit to our detriment

Photo by Mina Rad on Unsplash

It really is true! We do get addicted to the endorphins generated by our kind friends on Social Media.

In contrast to most people, I hardly do Social Media at all. Yet several times a day, every day, I go onto Medium’s Notification page. Besides writing, I don’t do much of anything else, as I am retired and living alone.

And my heart swells (that is, my brain reacts to the dopamine hit) with every positive comment that each one of you makes on my stories.

If a friend is having a bad day and is late responding to my latest article — or if his or her response is less positive than I had hoped — I feel let down. There is only one explanation for why such a trivial thing should affect me so much: this is a classic definition of addiction!

And if an old fart like me can be addicted to his laptop, every tech-savvy younger person must be as reliant on his smartphone as a heroine user on his needle.

We read articles on this all the time. But each of us needs to recognize it in ourself before we will do something about it.

Since I am not likely to change my habits, my solution is to add other activities to my day which will give me time off from the addictive behavior — physical things like walking and exercising. Not because I think they will make me look like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bruce Lee (as I imagined when I was younger), but simply to keep from living in a fantasy world!

There is another prong to my remedy, and it is psychological. I must keep reminding myself that these comments are made by human beings who have more problems than responding to my writing. Yes, my friends are sincere in their compliments, but they have taken time out of their busy lives to write them. They have dozens of other priorities that are much more important.

Hell, lots of their comments aren’t even spelled correctly! That should give me a clue as to how rushed and distracted they were when they made them. Sometimes I get picky about little details which they don’t even know they said — which is really stupid.

I should just say thank you, instead of analyzing their comment as though it was the subject of my Master’s thesis.

See how hyper-focused I can get on your responses? Addiction, for sure!

I hope this Public Service Announcement may help more people besides myself.