Should Addictive Tech Come With a Health Warning?

holy_calamity writes "Academics researching how technology addiction affects businesses and employees say 'habit-forming' gadgets like Blackberries should be dispensed along with warnings about the effect they can have on your life. 'We don't want to be in a situation in a few years similar to that with fast food or tobacco today. We need to pay attention to how people react to potentially habit-forming technologies.'"

Comments

Everything fun has addictive properties....

[WGFCrafty]

As long as doing something (gaming, gambling, alcohol, drugs) potentiates the production of dopamine, then it has the potential to cause addiction.

Doing things you enjoy are fun, usually when you're having fun dopamine levels rise significantly in your brain.

Dopamine is commonly associated with the pleasure system of the brain, providing feelings of enjoyment and reinforcement to motivate a person proactively to perform certain activities.

Re:Absolutely Not

[t33jster]

No kidding! What would such a warning label look like?

Surgeon General's Warning: The likelihood of a psychological addiction to this device is approximately equal to your own tendency to become psychologically addicted to stuff.

I work in a place where they hand out blackberries like they're candy on Halloween. IMHO, people don't get 'addicted' to their blackberries, they become addicted to making it look like they're doing something important. Either way it's pathetic, and no warning label will fix it.