The Cycle of Addiction

Introduce a specific thing or experience as exclusive, inviting or of curiosity.

Offer relief from the drudgery of routine or regime.

Package it to captivate the senses, or that particular personal sensitivity ignored or not aroused for a rather long time.

Allow entry or experimentation at a rather low cost or with seemingly no harm sampling it.

Remind on a regular basis, at cleverly selected times of day aimed at the target market.

When and where the sweetness sets in, reveal there is more.

Begin a process where dopamine like sensations seep in stages, varying doses or more to structure and embed regular usage.

Escalate usage and dependency.

Vary the flavours, choices, upgrades and engagement options.

Make users unavoidably incorporate the service or product into an essential pace and factor of life - without them realising it.

What are examples of such addiction?

It all starts when we are most impressionable.

That drink, that movie, that snack, accesory, toy or that other thing to be seen with - when we are children.

It may come from influencers, an ad, social media or peer pressure.  It propels on ego, a sense of belonging or not to be left out.

It embraces us with comfort, calmness and an apparent safe space - even when they are inherently and truly not.

It provides momentary escape.  It includes binge watching, binge obsession with thrills run by software and repetitive hits.  The reward is more than visual, it can be physical, physiological and pyschological.

It elates the ego, the uniqueness and elevation of one's self.  The product or service makes one feel special, even if in reality it is indeed for the masses. It implies constant and regular usage.

Reflect on examples of fast food, streaming, depreciating vehicles, hyped up supplements, additives, devices, frequent usage points, must have beverages and hidden ingredients. 

Many are convenient diversions or distractions. Some are obvious, many are delusions. 

It affects various ages, straddles across cultures and is truly accessible.

Such are the essense of addictions.  It alters our mindsets that indeed we cannot live without it. 

#yongkevthoughts

Human Addiction

If they are not organically grown, strawberries are said to carry the most residue of pesticides from commercial growing of vegetables and fruits.

Just reflect on smart devices and their software, looking captivating as well with lures and experiences of convenience, interconnectedness and flexibility. What residues of negative connatations and real risks do these gadgets have?

1. Escalating personal addictiveness. How long does it take to check your smart phone after waking up each day?

2. Allowing others to manipulate and control our desires - and we are not even aware of it. Fake news or a source we trust?

3. Feeling pleasure in building up our dependency on others. There is an App for almost everything, especially for things we did not even think we required.

4. Emphasising unplaced trust. Who reads all the terms and conditions, written in a most unpalatable way?

5. Enhancing runaway loss of privacy. Did you notice how many parties want to know your present location?

6. Submitting to structures much larger than nations and governments. 

7. Increasing the risks of putting all the eggs in one basket. The Cloud, the Cloud!

8. Nurturing the Empire of Self-obsession. The Me culture is evident in most Apps.

To unplug is comparable to abstaining from our fav foods. Previous generations were hooked on television, white goods, motor cars and other inventions. So what is new?

The immediate casualty for an individual in this contemporary period is losing the balance in choices amongst screen time, embracing the outdoors and enhancing physical activity. There are pyschological and physiological benefits in putting away the smart screens for longer periods - and yet there are withdrawal symptoms, pleasure to give up from persuasive tech and an isolation from communication issues to deal with.

Our human brains are increasingly engineered to sync with such smart machines to such an extent each of us undergo feelings of real loss in not constantly interacting with them. We feel better when we get likes. We instinctively want to get biofeedback from our exercises - and this facet of behavioural pyschology has been utilised to higher levels of inducing addiction in each of us. We want to instinctively get rewards on a constant basis - the smart machines and Apps know this very well.

The human race is essentially a social animal - and yet so called smart tech escalates isolation, over self importance and encourages social awkwardness. The art of an enjoyable conversation is lost, replaced by the thrills of software graphics and the ability to do things silently without the need to verbalise or spell - think of Emojis.

Previous inventions freed up time to enable gathetrings of the family or tribe.
Smart machines make us so obsessed we run out of time to eat properly or make time to meet up - after all the message has been delivered to other individuals by a click.

We can be observed to be like guinea pigs riding mini wheels to obtain constant bursts of little cubes of food. The volume of content of so many social media vehicles are endless - not that most have any meaningful value. 

The stakes in today's games are higher than ever, due to the startling degrees of lacking transparency, hidden access to your data and the extreme profiling of individuals. Behind it all is business, the need to make profits and to sell you something - that has never changed!

In summary, the actual ability of smart machines, social media moves and Apps software to change your behaviour is the most significant. Most of us do not even realise this is happening to each of us.

Rare is the person who can utilise the largest opportunities to take advantage of this development.

#yongkevthoughts