A Deadly Wandering

In May of 2007, the governor of Washington signs a ban on texting while driving, the first in the country. Legislators across the US confront this problem as well. Lobbyists for the big cell phone companies formulate arguments to assert that being on a cell phone while driving isn’t any more dangerous than other activities like eating.

The very conservative Utah state legislature is not likely to pass laws curtailing personal freedoms.

There is a debate in the psychology community about how similar technology addictions are to drug addictions. Dr. David Greenfield, a drug addict in recovery, maintains that “what’s happening today with technology […] is comparable to what happened in the seventies with drugs” (193). To an extent, Richtel claims, it’s a semantic argument, because “addiction” has such a broad definition.

Experiments have shown that playing video games increases the level of dopamine in the brain. To Dr. Greenfield, this is critical: Each small click of a device triggers a small dopamine rush, a reward, and is in that sense not unlike a “narcotic” (196).

Lending more credence to Dr. Greenfield’s theory, a 2012 study showed that men being treated for compulsive internet use showed “disfunctions in dopaminergic brain systems” (197) consistent with those of substance abusers.