Are Computers Psychotropic Substances

There's nothing new about digital addiction or information addiction. Still, millions suffer from those disorders; even I am not free from them. Maybe it's time to switch tactics, to define computers as psychotropic substances. The California Rules of Court defines such substances as:

Psychotropic medication means medications that affect the central nervous system to treat psychiatric disorders or illnesses.

While this definition only includes medications, it's clear that such interactions with a computer also trigger the core components of psychotropic substances. Let's make some observations:

Devices. Fancy interfaces make things addictive. Vibrant colors, popping vibrations, smooth Animation, and constant notifications relentlessly demand our attention. Try out accessibility features such as Color Filters (grayscale), Reduce Motion, and Disable Vibration, not to mention Screen Time, Notification Summary, and Do Not Disturb modes, to control your device's addictive nature.

Services. This is called designing dependencies. Services use several psychological strategies to increase their revenues. Examples include likes/comments, viral contents, infinite scrollings, autoplays, and personalized feeds. Potential's "Attention Setting" Proposal suggests potential solutions to these problems for the platform operators. The phone is so accessible and the program can't be modified, making you use the service the way the service provider wants you to. If you use these services on your computer, actively use extension programs to control invasive addiction manipulations.

Hanlon's Razor. Hanlon's Razor applies to digital addiction. There are some people intentionally designing services to be addictive, but they are only looking for a myopic solution to increase service retentions and revenue; not with some grand malice to encroach on human thinking. They're just stupid. Even Facebook .