Read A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention Online
Authors: Matt Richtel
“It’s in a sense a narcotic.”
After a while, he says, the mere presence of the device begins to offer the promise of tiny hits, and bigger ones. It’s what Dr. Greenfield calls “the anticipatory link.”
It’s a bit the way a smoker feels a little thrill when opening the pack, or lighting up, knowing the nicotine hit is coming. “You see the computer, it’s one trigger, then you sit at the keyboard, it’s another, you push the key, you get a result, then you get the big result. There’s a cascade of dopamine. It’s the big kahuna.”
This is, in essence, interactivity. Touch the key, get a response; touch the screen, get a burst of information, or a reward. That’s not inherently bad. But the way Dr. Greenfield sees it, people feed the need, click after click. And then, when the rush of excitement fades, he says, people feel rotten. “So they go try to get more.”
A DIFFERENT STUDY, REPORTED
in a 2012 paper in the
Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology
, found a connection between Internet use (rather than video game playing) and dopamine.
The researchers used PET scans to examine the brains of five men, around the age of twenty, seeking treatment for Internet addiction (use of the Internet more than eight hours per day) from the Peking University Shenzhen Hospital. The men experienced reduction in the dopamine transporter, a protein, as compared to a control group of nine men who were not compulsive Internet users. What’s significant about the dopamine transporter, among other things, is that it also gets altered in people with chronic substance abuse. In other words: Some of the same pathways and results seen in the abuse of substances is happening in the brain of heavy Internet users.
The paper concluded: “These findings suggest that [Internet addiction] is associated with dysfunctions in the dopaminergic brain systems and are consistent with previous reports in various types of addictions either with or without substances.”
It is worth noting the significance of the phrasing “
various types of addictions either with or without substances
.” That word choice is crucial because, while there is interesting emerging science around Internet addiction, there is a predicate question being asked by many scientists: Can behaviors be addictive, or just substances? (At the center of the debate is a behavior like gambling; is it classically addictive, or does it belong in some other category of compulsion?)
Researchers point to a number of surveys of Internet users that suggest, at least, that their behavior can fairly be defined as “addictive.” The 2012 paper from Yale (“Are Internet Use and Video-game-playing Addictive Behaviors?”) summarized the findings of surveys and questionnaires. The surveys found a range of prevalence of “Internet addiction” among young people and adults across the globe. For instance, a 2011 survey of students in the United States found a 4 percent prevalence; a 2008 survey of elementary and high school students in Hong Kong found a 19.1 percent prevalence; others showed 10.7 percent among students in South Korea and 18.3 percent among college students in the United Kingdom.
There was a similar range in surveys exploring excessive video game use, or problematic video gaming (PVG).
The paper also found interesting evidence that people who identify as Internet addicts also tend to have personality traits, or psychological conditions consistent with substance abuse and “pathological gambling.” These so-called comorbidities—meaning the conditions co-occur with Internet addiction—include “attention-deficit hyperactivity, mood, anxiety and personality disorders.”
The paper says that, as with substance abusers, studies of people with Internet addiction have found “increased novelty seeking, low reward dependence, impulsivity, high risk taking, low self-esteem and disadvantageous decision making.”
What that implies, but does not prove, is that some individuals could be more susceptible to Internet addiction, just as some people are more susceptible to pathological gambling or substance abuse.
The paper also explores the neurological studies, including one that suggests the release of dopamine by players of a computer-based racing game is similar to that produced by amphetamines and crystal meth. The Yale paper strikingly concluded: “Taken together, these findings suggest that (Internet addiction) is associated with dopaminergic neural systems in a fashion similar to substance-related addictions.”
WHEN IT COMES TO
the lure of technology and the way it stimulates people, there’s one more comparison that researchers widely cite. It’s not to drugs but to gambling, specifically, to slot machines. And the parallel stems from a concept that is quite counterintuitive: the Internet, smartphones, and other devices are addictive because they often deliver us worthless information.
Say what?
An American author named Frank Scoblete once wrote that slot machines “sit there like young courtesans, promising pleasures undreamed of, your deepest desires fulfilled, all lusts satiated.”
In fact, what makes slot machines so powerful, at least in part, is that they so often leave the player unsatisfied. And, even more to the point: The players never know when they will get a payoff, a feeling of satisfaction, a fulfilled desire. In a nutshell, slot machines work on a principal called variable or intermittent reinforcement. Take, for instance, several classic studies with animal models. A baboon, say, is shown that if it pushes a lever then some food will drop through a dispenser. But the animal doesn’t know which push of the lever will be the one that will deliver the food.
“The baboon will press the lever at a very steady rate. ‘Is the food there yet, is the food there yet?’ Each press is like a question,” explains Dan Bernstein, a professor of psychology at the University of Kansas, where he has an office down the hall from Dr. Atchley.
It may not be a comfortable comparison for some. But the image of a baboon pulling a lever for food is not all that dissimilar from a person obsessively pecking at their phone waiting for the next email to appear.
And it can almost be assumed that much of the stuff that comes into our devices is not particularly useful. It is, in a word, spam. A 2012 report from Symantec, a company that builds software to block computer viruses, found that around 67 percent of email is spam. The big number probably comes as no surprise and, doubtless, much of those unwanted missives are blocked. But even if only a fraction get through to the end user, it puts a fine point on just how hard it is to know what you’re going to get when the computer—or phone—pings with incoming information. Classic variable reinforcement.
And, setting aside the question of raw spam, the plain fact is that some information is simply more interesting than others. Some texts, calls, email, and Facebook status updates are really informative or entertaining. But you can’t really discern who or what quality information is coming your way without diverting attention. Every time a text comes in, “You don’t know what it’s going to be, who it’s from, and, hence, how valuable it is,” says Dr. Greenfield. “What’s happening, in essence, is that you’re constantly scanning your texts and email because every once in a while you are going to get a good one and you can’t predict when that is.
“The Internet is replete with novelty and variability,” he contends. “That’s why Facebook is so popular. It’s the fact that it’s dynamic, and novel, and constantly changing.”
I
N MID-JUNE 2007, REGGIE
was at the Missionary Training Center in Provo. It was a place filled with excitement and some nerves; young adults amassed, in shirts and ties, taking in long hours in the classroom, preparing for a two-year voyage of maturity and zeal, the culmination for many of a lifelong dream, but also two years away from family. No cell phones. No visits home, no TV or radio. The focal point was the gospel. Full stop.
Everyone got a name tag, on which the most prominent words were
CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS
. Then there was your own name, slightly smaller, denoting that this was not about the individual, but the larger quest.
ELDER SHAW
.
Reggie was thrilled when he put it on. Then more good news. The district president named him district leader, in charge of leading ten other kids in activities. He wasn’t sure why but assumed it was because he’d been to the center before, albeit briefly, and because he was a little older. On the very first day, he lead his group into the cafeteria for lunch and sagely directed them to the shortest line.
He said his group members just loved it. They had no idea he’d been there before. They were impressed. “I remember knowing the kids in my district loved being with me.”
At night, it was four to a room, sharing two bunk beds. Reggie was sleeping great. Peaceful.
A week in, he was sitting in class when there was a knock on the door just before lunch. A man who helped run the program poked in his head. “I need to speak with Elder Shaw, please.”
Reggie felt a surge of panic, “a pit in my stomach.”
In the hallway, the man told Reggie there was a phone call for him. “It’s a lawyer named Mr. Bunderson.”
They took an agonizing walk to the main office. Reggie well knew he wasn’t supposed to use the phone, and that it must be important if he was being asked to take a call, and, no less, from his lawyer.
“Hello,” Reggie said.
“Hi, Reggie,” Bunderson began, and immediately headed off the terror. “Everything is still going well.”
Reggie just listened.
“I’m calling because I need you to sign some papers. They’re called power-of-attorney.”
Bunderson explained that he needed the papers “just in case” he would need to deal with something while Reggie was away on his upcoming mission. “If we did this, we won’t need to call you every time I need something,” Bunderson said.
Reggie felt more than a sense of relief. It was as if Bunderson was saying:
Go on, nothing’s really happening, and I don’t much expect it to
. That’s what Reggie heard, at least.
“After the conversation, that’s when I felt safe.”
TONY BAIRD WAS STRUGGLING.
Finally, he was in a position to truly confront the issues in the Shaw accident. Yes, of course, the accident was a tragedy. But accidents happen. What were the facts? What was the law? And what was the responsibility of a responsible prosecutor?
It was not uncommon for Baird to answer someone who asked about his job, “By the stroke of my pen, I can ruin a life.
“Just because you can do something as a prosecutor, doesn’t mean you should do something,” he says. “Plenty of things go wrong in society. There are plenty of things that are troubling to society, but you have to take your power seriously.”
As Singleton began to amass evidence, and Baird saw that a potential case was coalescing, he let these thoughts percolate. He had a good familiarity with the driving laws, the reckless driving laws, the negligent homicide laws. And in the previous few years, he’d had cause to make hard decisions about how to use his prosecutorial powers in difficult cases. In one case, about six years earlier, Baird had prosecuted a twenty-one-year-old man who had been driving a small Toyota pickup through Logan Canyon, along a narrow, sometimes dangerous road. Earlier in the day, the man had told friends that his brakes were bad, Baird said. He was driving eighty miles an hour when he drove head-on into a family, killing the mother and grandmother.
The driver’s grandfather had recently retired as a district court judge, which gave the accident an extra public layer. In the jury trial, Baird argued that the defendant drove recklessly even after knowing his brakes were bad. The conduct, no question in Baird’s mind, rose to the level of “criminal negligence.” In Utah, as generally elsewhere, the meaning of that standard is that the defendant shows a “gross deviation” from the standard of care.
The person
should
have known that their conduct was wrong and didn’t just deviate from what was right, but substantially deviated. Acted in veritable defiance of law and common sense. The standard says that, whether or not you are aware of the risks, “you should have been aware,” Baird explained. (By contrast, a greater standard, and tougher charge, is “reckless” behavior. Here, a person actually is aware and disregards the proper behavior.)
In the case of the driver with the bad brakes, Baird succeeded in securing a conviction of two counts of negligent homicide. The charge is a misdemeanor, but a serious one. The driver got ninety days in jail and a black mark for the rest of his life, in addition to the weight of his deadly actions.
Then, four years later, Baird prosecuted another trial that provided an insight into Baird’s thinking as he considered the Shaw case. The second case concerned a man in his twenties who was driving a truck with his wife in the passenger seat down Blacksmith Fork Canyon, a steep, windy road. The night before, they’d been camping with friends, had stayed up late, the evidence showed, and were driving back in a hurry to get to work. The driver lost control, and drove off the side of the road, slamming into a tree before coming to rest in a river. The man survived. The wife’s head was crushed by the tree, and she died.
On its face, it was an accident, but there was a twist, one that really bugged Baird. The evidence showed that the driver had smoked marijuana the night before, even though the toxicology report didn’t prove that the man was under the influence.
Still, Baird was piqued. “He was willing to jump in the car, with supposedly the person you love more than anyone on earth, and drive too fast after a night of partying,” he says, looking back. The case, on some level, was one that involved character.
What sort of person would behave this way?
Baird thought.
And the case involved some cultural issues, the frowning upon of drug use, the lack of appreciation, thought Baird, for how it can impact the brain and behavior, even after it’s mostly out of your system.