WHAT IS ENTERTAINMENT ADDICTION ?

Entertainment addiction refers to an unhealthy reliance on activities like binge-watching TV shows, excessive gaming, or spending long hours on social media. This can lead to negative consequences such as neglecting responsibilities, strained relationships, and even impacts on mental health.

Let’s face it, our world today is saturated by media and it can be both a good and a bad thing:

● Good: it allows us to connect with people who aren’t physically nearby, to have access to all kinds of information, and to enjoy experiences that we might otherwise never have.
● Bad: it can suck up our time, steal our joy, expose us to things we don’t want in our life and take us away from the people and real-life experiences that are there right in front of us.

Entertainment addictions are no different in the sense that they are very efficient at triggering the release of dopamine into our brains. It is a monoamine neurotransmitter . Imagine you have a team of little messengers inside your brain, and one of them is dopamine.It is the thing that is behind our emotion ‘happiness’. In addition to the vast choices already available, more movies, YouTube videos, TV shows, games, gossip, blogs, web articles, etc., simply add to the nausea in our lives. With laptops, smartphones, iPads, wearable devices, and so on keeping us connected, we have almost constant access to a never-ending stream of entertainment. Entertainment to help us escape from everyday life.

TOO MUCH OF ANYTHING IS GOOD FOR NOTHING

Entertainment can be a delightful part of life .

So how can you tell whether you’re just a movie buff that loves watching movies or whether you have an addiction? How do you tell if you’re just really passionate about gaming or if you have a gaming addiction? How much time on the internet is too much time? And when does social media crossover that boundary into the realm of addiction? To help provide answers, we turn to a definition of addiction.A iction is a condition that results when a person ingests a substance or engages in an activity that can be pleasurable but the continued use/act of which becomes compulsive and interferes with ordinary life responsibilities, such as work, relationships, or health.

Teens are lured into the realm of social media and posting pictures to gain likes and shares ultimately affects their self-esteem. Their confidence shall start to depend on the other person's opinion of them. Their happiness will be weighed on the comments. Talking about comments, the internet is a harsh place to seek confidence or confide . Commenting on the weight of a person , takes a toll on them leading to starvation . Becoming skinny will be their ultimate goal, leading to an eating disorder called anorexia . The sad reality of revenge porn or deep fake affects the children's innocence . One becoming the victim and the other molding into a villian . Porn addiction results in hookup culture and hypersexuality leading to STDs and unwanted teen pregnancies .

We all know a friend in our group who loves clubbing and smoking up and dropping acid and doing coke lines, working like a dog on these for bitcoins and finance only to deteriorate oneself. Now we have our favorite movies or series on the tip of our fingers , as if the world is our oyster. But you know what we do , when we have our oysters we switch on those OTT releases and eat our food like a mad man . We do not realize or even try to know what it tastes like because we forget to chew them properly . What does this lead to , obesity?

WHAT IS THE ROOT CAUSE?

Most commonly it is usually triggered by emotional stress. We get lonely, angry, frustrated, weary. We feel ‘weighed down’, helpless, and weak.What we want, in that moment, is to escape. To escape our day-to-day problems. Distance ourselves from the pain and find pleasure and an emotional high elsewhere. We want to escape our reality.

Canadian author Douglous Coupland once said ,” Before machines the only entertainment people had was relationships with loved ones.”

LEAVING THE REAL WORLD

This concept is known as “escapism.” While escapism isn’t always a bad thing — sometimes it’s good to take a little break from your troubles to refresh and recharge. Escapism only becomes a problem when we begin to replace reality with whatever we’re escaping to.How does it affect us and our true realities? In more ways than you might think. For instance, it begins to interfere with our work, relationships, hobbies, and many other aspects of our life.

This is because we’ve somehow learned escaping into the world of movies, video games, social media, or the latest celebrity gossip helps us detach from the world around us. The problem is we start to let it consume our time and energy. Sound familiar to the description of an addiction? It allows us to avoid pain in our lives. Even if it’s only temporary. It allows us to imagine we’re someone other than ourselves with a better life. One that we can’t experience in reality.

Whether it be on the Playstation, XBOX, PC, tablet, or phone. Even though gaming requires the gamer to exert a certain level of thinking, the gaming world we immerse ourselves in is still far removed from our own. And to many, it’s preferable. There are so many things you can do in a game that you couldn’t — or wouldn’t — do in reality.

Another example is with internet browsing. How often have you gotten sucked into a click-bait hole while surfing the web that has led you into hours upon hours of browsing? Whether it’s news and politics, fanfiction, popular blogs, interesting trivia, or celebrity gossip, there’s always more. Once again, it takes the focus off of ourselves and transports us elsewhere. Celebrity gossip can be a particularly potent form. We see the posts appear on our instagram and buzzfeed, “10 celebrities you didn’t know were gay”, “23 awkward child stars who grew up hot” or “7 things you didn’t know about the Kardashians.” It’s continuous, and for hours it can keep us scrolling, clicking, watching.

BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE

Take a look at your life. Take a look at your goals. Take a look at how you spend your time. What are you missing out on? Are you ultimately happy with your life? Or are you frustrated by your seeming inability to stop these unfavorable and unproductive behaviors? I know detoxing from this addiction will not be easy . You shall go through the five stages of grief - denial , anger , bargaining , depression and acceptance . Here are some alternative productive improvements you can do while you reach the acceptance phase .

●Read a non -fiction book (make it goal to ead one book every 2 weeks)

●Walk or jog in the morning or in the evening , lift weights, do squats- sometimes while watching a how-to-do video .

● Listen to an educational podcast while showering

● Cook or do something that brings happiness to you to show your appreciation for it or for them , rather than them taking you out to eat or them doing something to make you happy.

● Write letters when you feel bored and post it

●Clean your wardrobe , analyze your monthly budget , clean your room .

Remember, a life without endless, time-consuming entertainment is possible. But, first, you have to make the choice, set your priorities, and commit to those choices.