Why Facebook is addictive like World of Warcraft

January 8th, 2009

Background

I got my first console computer at age 9 or 10. It was a Nintendo. Since then i’ve been playing computer games almost every week, almost every single day, up to 4 hours a day. Let’s say that since I was 10 years old i’ve played computer games for one hour each day.

17 years * 365 days = 6.205 hours 6.205 hours / 24 hours = 258 days

Imagine all that wasted time while I could have been doing something useful.

But a year ago I stopped.

I was hooked on a game called World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft is a MMORPG* type game where you create some character which (usually) starts at level one, imagine levels as beeing a measurement on how strong you are, the more you pump those weights the stronger you get and to get to the next level you have to get certain amount of experience points (XP). So you go online and usually do some kind of quest, like killing the bad guy in order to get a reward. While killing him and his friends you gain XP, and when you kill the bad guy he drops a reward but only every 10 times, so when you kill him he might give no reward, so you kill him again (yes, he spawns back), and again, and again until you get your reward.

In most of these games you need to socialize (via msn like chat) at one point or the other in order get all those nice rewards and be the biggest and the best, better than the rest. Why? Well to kill Mr. Big Bad Guy you need a group of five to kill him or even up to fourty people. And boy oh boy, imagine all the good rewards you will get.

So MMORP’s are infact just a social network with a twist. The twist being a fictional world and characters, while social networks like Facebook and MySpace are based up on the real world and real people (most of the time).

• Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game

When you mix together sociality and goals you get addiction

Defenition of addiction by Wikipedia

An addiction or dependence is a recurring compulsion by an individual to engage in some specific activity, despite harmful consequences to the individual’s health, mental state or social life.

I know this is a bold statement and its not true in all cases but in regards to MMORPG’s (like World of Warcraft) and Facebook it is and here is why.

Computer games by them selves have been proven to increase dopamine volumes in a persons brain, this is the feel-good chemical. Computer games are all based up on reaching certain goals and when you reach those goals you feel happy with yourself because you accomplished something. Just like when you help a person in real life, you feel good, because you accomplished something (otherwise you wouldn’t do it).

So when your alone playing an offline computer game there is something not right. Your alone. Your the only one playing the game, it’s hard to be the only one. If your the only one walking naked in the street, something is not right but when everyone else is naked you feel alright.

For humans to be really happy we need to socialize, otherwise we get depressed. Add the sociality to the game and the game is on.

Everyone feels fantastic! Their dopamine levels are way up and they have other people to talk to and play with, since everyone else is playing, it’s ok for you to play. Right? Even tho your addicted to your dopamine levels? Of course it’s all right, other people are playing 15 hours a week so you can as well? But when you stop playing you get depressed and you feel down so you play some more to keep that sweet sweet dopamine going and before you know it your up to 40 hours a week. All for a worthless bling bling sword.

In other words, your addicted.

Video Game Addiction

Video games have been proven to lead to a type of addiction by increasing the amount of Dopamine, a pleasure-inducing brain chemical associated with narcotic use, released in the brain. In 1998 at Hammersmith Hospital in London, Dr. Paul Grasby performed a study that showed that playing video games triggers the release of dopamine in the brain. During the study dopamine levels doubled in the subjects’ brain when they played video games, this level of dopamine is equivalent to an injection of amphetamines or Ritalin.10Dr. David Walsh, a long-time expert and founder of the National Institute on Media and the Family, reports of children playing over 43 hours a week of video games.

• Violent Video Games and Our Kids
• Evidence for striatal dopamine release during a video game. Nature. 393:266-268

But what about Facebook?

Facebook is a similar model to MMORPG. The difference, like i said before, is that there is no fictional world around it. It’s based around the real world we live in and real people.

People join Facebook, find their current friends and old ones they haven’t seen for ages and make new ones. But people usually know how to socialize outside these networks so the networks need to have something for users to keep them coming back (other than people). In Facebook’s case it’s applications.

Every programmer can make an application on Facebook. Most applications are some kind of games and they give you a reason to invite your friends, and for inviting your friends you get points (like experience points) and for doing some activity inside the application you get more point. Let’s take an example.

Flirtable

This application is like Hot or Not (where you vote if a person is hot or not) but you get points to participate and if you get the most points you get to the top 10 list on Flirtable. So if you want to get noticed you better get busy. For inviting a friend you get 20 points, for voting for someone else as flirtable or not you get 1 point. For being voted as flirtable by others you get 20 points, but to get shown to others you have to invite friends. Also after you reach a certain score you get a different status like “pimp daddy”. Congratulations, you’ve reached level 2! At the time of writing the person with the highest score has 907.678 points. That’s roughly a million mouse clicks voting for others. Or 45.000 friend invites, or 45.000 votes from others. All for winning a worthless game. The game might not seem worthless at the time you play it but in the end you will realize it’s just a waste of time.

Facebook has over 25.000 apps to play with. That’s a lot.

And finally…

When you start taking time from useful activites (like meeting other people) to fulfill your useless activities and perhaps addictive ones, stop for a moment and think if it’s really worth your time.