Читать книгу Overcoming Internet Addiction For Dummies - David N. Greenfield - Страница 81

Why would a video game be more addictive when played on a computer or gaming platform connected to the Internet? In a word or two: variability and interactivity. The Internet allows people to play games with other people, and this, along with speed, variation, privacy, and ease of access, makes it entirely new. Digital devices, when connected to the Internet, make content much more personally accessible — to a point where the line between normal and excessive use can easily become blurred.

All forms of content consumed on the Internet are amplified and intensified. This is true whether we’re talking about shopping, investing in stocks, gambling, video gaming, and most certainly pornography. Even searching for information becomes a new experience I call infotainment. Who would have thought that surfing YouTube, Reddit, Wikipedia, or a variety of apps or websites could be fun? But the interactivity, speed, perceived anonymity, and ease of access put simple information on steroids. The variability of finding what you want and not knowing when you will get it gamifies the process, and at the same time you’re getting intermittent hits of dopamine when you find something you like, and even higher hits when you think that maybe you found or will find something you will like.