Modern Addictions

Modern Addictions

By Jose Mario Nuñez Arroyo
English 4th

In the last years, scientific researches along with psychological studies have changed the perception or meaning of what addiction is, the perspective is now wide open with this social issue. In the past an addicted person was the one who consumed drugs, alcohol or any harmful substance, but now this conception has changed. Currently any activity that produces a compulsive behavior in a person can be considered an addiction. That is why the meaning of addiction “state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to do something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, such as narcotic” has been modified.

Nowadays, there is so much equipment and services that make our lives more comfortable. We can imagine neither work nor spare time without computers or cell phones. Technology has even come to the point of allowing to change in through plastic surgery, whatever do not exercise in or gym hours. In this technological and medical advanced world, we have access to everything we want even things we do not need, Internet, cell phones, TV, IPods, laptops, videogames, work, shopping, social networks, are the new addictions of human beings.

What is really funny is how everything blames technology for being as addictive as we are to everything, but what most people do not understand is that we create our own necessities and turn them into addictions. For example, people who never had a cell phone before think now that they need it and feel cannot live without it. For example, Internet was created to solve company problems and make our lives a little bit easier, but now people spent his time on stupid websites and became addicted to Internet. In conclusion, we make our own necessities and we are the ones who decide to become an addict or not depending on the use we give to it, it is not as many says “Tech fault” we are the human race and the “smartest” living in the world, so we cannot be manipulated by things we create with our hands and for us.