Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

Audio-visual stimuli from screens and speakers has never been shown to be able to have the same effects as a dopaminergic drug which is to say, completely turning up incentive salience regardless of reward or lack of it. That is why drugs are dangerous.

Technology can only be habit forming (in some contexts, maybe) if it continues to be rewarding in some way. Psychological dependence, maybe, but never addiction, and not even physiological dependence. Addictive drugs do not have to be rewarding or pleasurable. They just hijack wanting.

They are not the same and definitely should not be legislated the same. Enjoying something that is actually fun is not the same as wanting something because it chemically turned on wanting.

You are using the word “medical” to emphasize your point incorrectly- behavioral addictions are included in the modern medical concept of addiction, and the idea that they should be considered categorically separate from substances is an outdated concept. The DSM-5 for example has a diagnostic criteria for gambling addiction.

There are mountains of papers, books and all sorts of evidence that drugs that directly act as agonists for populations of dopaminergic neurons the VTA that mediate incentive salience (methamphetamine, cocaine, etc) are incredibly addictive (wanting, not liking, not reward. reward prediction). This is very different than an experience that is naturally rewarding like sex (liking, and maybe wanting later remembering the liking). Anticipation of sex may activate VTA dopaminergic populations but the reward of sexual activity itself does not. And certainly not things like viewing audio-visual media on screens.

I use medical to emphasize that when you try to reason about these things without fine grained understanding you come to false general conclusions.

I do agree that with drugs that just activate reward directly (like opioids with glutamergic populations in the shell of the nucleus accumbens) can rapidly become addictive. But these too are different than expriences that happen to activate reward through sensation. For example, sexual activity is a behavior that activates reward yet very few people become addicted to it.