Addiction fiction: Dopamine is not why kids love TikTok

Nowadays, it seems we can be addicted to anything – not just alcohol and drugs, but pornography, random Internet browsing, video games, and smartphones. Academic research papers have investigated a wide range of other behaviors including gambling, but also “dance addiction,” “fishing addiction,” “milk tea addiction,” and “cat addiction.” One cheeky paper used the standard medical criteria to show young people are “addicted” to their real-life friends.

While this trend involves many factors...