I can still remember the day that my dad started teaching me how to play craps, one of the most popular table games at a casino. I was probably about 7 or 8 years old, and my dad had a little miniature plastic craps table that he had spread out over his bed, and I can remember him showing me what each part of the craps table meant and what were the best bets to make. At the time, it didn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary: my dad had already taught me and my brother several different poker games. However, as a man in my mid-30s, I can now acknowledge the peculiarity of teaching your early elementary age son what a “pass line” is.
Knowing that fact about me and my family might make it a little less surprising that multiple times my father has given me and my siblings casino money as a Christmas present (and there’s a casino less than 5 minutes from my parents’ house). On our most recent Christmas trip, my older sister and I each had $100 in Christmas money to spend at the casino. My sister is a major penny pincher: the idea of losing money to something as pointless as a casino is painful to her. So, while she ended up just pocketing her $100, I couldn’t walk out of the casino without taking a risk, so I walked over to the roulette table and put $100 down on red. The ball rolled around and around before finally settling on “red 25” and I walked out of the casino $100 up.
I can still remember my thinking going from “Nice! I have $200 that I didn’t have 30 minutes ago,” to “But maybe I should see if I could turn it into $400. I mean, black is probably due.” What makes gambling so addictive is the fact that you don’t know what’s going to happen the next time. It could be really exciting; it could not. You’ve just got to take another hit, spin or pull to find out.
Gambling can become addictive because of what we call “intermittent reinforcement,” which is when we don’t get a reward (or punishment) every single time that we do an activity. Sometimes you win; sometimes you lose. Think of slot machines for a second. Each time you pull the lever (or push the button on today’s slots), there’s the chance that you could win the jackpot. But you also could win a couple hundred bucks, or maybe just $10, or you might lose your money. Since the result isn’t the same, you are being conditioned to want to keep trying, as your brain thinks that maybe the next big win is just around the corner.
Why talk about this in a column on mental health?
Well, because just like gambling can be addictive because of reinforcement, so too can social media. Have you ever found your kid (or yourself) frozen to TikTok for hours on end? Well, it’s because of intermittent reinforcement. Each time your brain sees a video or image that you like, it releases a tiny hit of dopamine, a feel-good chemical in your brain. But the video is probably over in about 30 seconds, and your brain wants more dopamine, so you swipe to the next video. Each video holds the promise of something funny or incredible, just like each pull of the slot machine holds the promise of winning the jackpot. One teenager told me that they used TikTok to calm themselves down because it was “soothing.”
The problems with this are obvious. First, you can’t just pull out TikTok to calm yourself down whenever you want. Second, anytime we resort to a specific behavior to cope with negative emotions, we have to be aware of the potential for addiction. So, what can you do as a parent to manage your kids’ social media use (or perhaps your own)?
Start with limiting the amount of time on the app. Adolescent brains aren’t fully formed, so they need guidance to manage their time. Give them a limited amount of time on the app so they can learn to shut it down.
Second, talk with them about how much of scrolling through social media is looking for that next dopamine hit, but also highlight how many of the videos aren’t actually all that entertaining or funny. Often, we don’t even take the time to think about the countless “boring” videos that we watched to get to the really good ones.
And third, don’t be afraid to be the parent and enforce restrictions. While kids will definitely not like it, they need your leadership and guidance, as they often will choose the path of least resistance if allowed!
Mischa McCray is a licensed professional counselor and licensed marriage and family therapist in Greenwood. He can be reached at mmccray@wpcgreenwood.org.
