This
article is a take on why our generation as a whole shows more addictive
behavior than generations in the past.
Do
you
agree that addiction is more prevalent today? Is our society accepting
more types of addictions than in the past? If so is this because there
is a negative view towards the
advanced technology that people are becoming "addicted" to? Is
addiction no longer considered a medical illness but instead a term used
more lightly? Is our society obsessed with the idea of addiction?
Is
there a
correlation between the amount of media we our exposed to and our more
addictive behaviors? Are there just more things to become addicted to
now than in the past (cellphones,
Facebook, twitter, video games, iPods exc)?
I believe that there are just as many people addicted to smoking, drugs, sex, alcohol and gambling today as there were back in the 70's. I don't think it would be fair to say that younger generations have a more addictive behavior. The reason for more types of addictions is simply because of innovation.
ReplyDeleteI feel that the word "addiction" has definitely taken on a different meaning. Most people view addiction as something that people want very badly, or as a compulsion to do a certain activity, rather than actually classifying it as a medical illness.
Would you consider the change to the meaning of addiction a good or bad thing? Should there be two different terms to distinguish from a medical addiction and other addictions?
ReplyDeleteI do agree that addictions are more prevalent today. With an increase in technology there are many more possibilities for addiction. If it wasn't for the technology and the internet then gaming, social media, video games, and the internet would not be on that list today. Our society is accepting more types of addictions than in the past, but they don't have the same meaning as they once did. I think that the change to the meaning of addiction is a bad thing because one that is a medical addiction might not be taken as seriously. And I do think that there is a correlation to the amount of media we are exposed to and to our behavior because of our increased use we create a dependency on it
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with Amanda in that addictions are more prevalent today. I also think that the increase of different types of technologies that we have has a huge effect on the amount of things that people become addicted to. Mostly, I think that the social tolerance of addiction in modern society is due to the fact that many celebrities have addictions to not only things that we would consider "normal addictions" (drugs, alcohol) but some also have addictions to things such as Facebook or Twitter. Because social media is a big part of today's culture, many celebrities use it daily and people in society tend to follow what celebrities do, and end up using social media daily. Soon, those people will eventually use social media enough to develop an addiction.
ReplyDeleteI think that people today are more addicted than before because there are now more things to be addicted too. We have the internet and more drugs. I think the main reason though is that people are a lot more tolerant today than they were when, say, our parents were going up. This leads to a wider acceptability of people with addictions than back then, we even have television shows about peoples addictions! It might even be borderline ridiculous now because we have so many different names for addictions and so many different types of addictions.
ReplyDeleteIf we define addiction as kind of overdoing, we will immediately find that not everything overdone can be considered as an object of addiction. So we probably just have prejudice against such things as alcohol.
ReplyDeleteTheoretically,children who stay out very late to play with their friends are addicts. But why we don't think so in general? Because outside activity itself is not a harmful thing? Then,coffee is not bad as well as long as you don't drink it too much, how can we take it as addiction? That's unfair.
Technological innovation creates lots of dangerous things for us, i think this is the reason why it seems that more and more people tend to be addicted,people never turn worse..
I do not think that more people are addicted to various things. I believe the article, with no scientific proof, is only demonstrating the old people principle that successive generations get worse and worse in general, allowing crotchety old men to say things like "those dang kids!" and "in my day, we..."
ReplyDeleteI believe that today we have a greater variety of things that we claim are addictions, but many of them are not addictions at all in the sense that drinking or drugs are addictions, and so instead of having more people with addictions, we simply have a broader definition of addiction today, thereby making it seem like we have more people with addictions.
The other thing to consider is that we have proof today that many behaviors such as smoking that were considered commonplace in the past are actually addictive and very harmful to our health, and so we have a decrease in addictions to cigarettes and alcohol.
I feel the amount of addiction today was the same 30 or 40 years ago. Only its now becoming a talked about issue due to that fact that there is more of a variety of things people can become addicted to. It isn't fair to put it all on today's youth when the amount of addiction has not change, only the types of addictions have.
ReplyDeleteI agree that a lot of these addictions that are such a problem today weren't as big of a problem in the past. I feel like the biggest influence is media and advertising. Television commercials and magazine ads make some of these addictions look "cool", and some people feel better about themselves when they get into these habits. Also, they see their idols doing these things in shows and movies so they feel like it isn't a problem.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Laken, I do believe that certain addictions weren't a big problem in the past but the media influences and advertisements are what causes increased addictions.
ReplyDelete