It’s a sight that verges on both the comical and the tragic: teenagers in a social setting all with their eyes locked on their smart phones. Research is piling up fast that there’s a lot more going on here than kids keeping tabs on their friends’ social activities. In a similar vein, radio, TV and online ads are filled with sales pitches for online gambling. Research in this field is also mounting that a “harmless” bet on a sporting event may not be so harmless.

The common denominator here is addiction. At one time the general public and even many psychologists thought of addiction only in terms of addiction to drugs or alcohol. But advanced neuroimaging technology has allowed scientists to study the brain in relation to various forms of addiction. We now know that people can be addicted to what are typically thought of as pleasurable activities — gambling, sex, shopping and even social media posts — just as surely as they can be addicted to alcohol or drugs.

Addiction essentially involves an intense craving for something. When someone loses control when pursuing that something and then continues to pursue it even when there are negative consequence, we say the person is addicted. Unfortunately, addiction is all too common. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, one in every six adults in America has a substance use disorder. The bad news doesn’t stop there. In a study from earlier this year, 40 percent of Americans ages 18-22 self-reported being addicted to social media.

On the plus side, society in general is beginning to understand that an addiction is not some kind of moral weakness or failure of will — it’s a disease. One aspect of this disease is that it changes the brain’s structure and function. The Harvard Mental Health Letter has valuable insights about the latest research into the brain’s role in addiction. Describing how addiction hijacks the brain, it says “This happens as the brain goes through a series of changes, beginning with recognition of pleasure and ending with a drive toward compulsive behavior.” That mention of pleasure is important to keep in mind, because “The brain registers all pleasures in the same way, whether they originate with a psychoactive drug, a monetary reward, a sexual encounter, or a satisfying meal. In the brain, pleasure has a distinct signature: the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine.”

We’ve discussed the role of dopamine in our daily behavior in previous blogs (see Hormones, The Runner’s High And More). A slow release of dopamine can be a good thing — your brain rewarding you for positive behavior such as vigorous exercise. Unfortunately, there’s no value system attached to the release of your body’s hormones. As the Harvard newsletter points out, “All drugs of abuse, from nicotine to heroin, cause a particularly powerful surge of dopamine… The likelihood that the use of a drug or participation in a rewarding activity will lead to addiction is directly linked to the speed with which it promotes dopamine release, the intensity of that release, and the reliability of that release.”

Thanks to advances in technology, researchers have recently been able to explore what is actually happening in the brain as these surges of dopamine are being released. According to the Harvard newsletter, “Repeated exposure to an addictive substance or behavior causes nerve cells in the nucleus accumbens and the prefrontal cortex (the area of the brain involved in planning and executing tasks) to communicate in a way that couples liking something with wanting it, in turn driving us to go after it. That is, this process motivates us to take action to seek out the source of pleasure. “

Some of the harmful effects of an addiction are a result of the simple fact that we develop a tolerance to addictive substances over time and repeated use. In short, addictive behavior morphs into a compulsion that becomes increasingly difficult to satisfy. As the Harvard newsletter describes it, “The pleasure associated with an addictive drug or behavior subsides — and yet the memory of the desired effect and the need to recreate it (the wanting) persists. It’s as though the normal machinery of motivation is no longer functioning.”

Overcoming addiction is possible. A person who is actually addicted to something probably needs professional help to overcome the addiction. But someone who is in the early stages of becoming addicted can break a cycle of behavior — not simply by trying to abstain but instead by replacing one behavior with another. Focusing on a new behavior, moreover, that provides meaning as well as pleasure is also an effective way to help ensure the new behavior becomes a potentially life-saving habit.