Browsing by Subject "behavioral addiction"

Goals. Previous studies have demonstrated, that social networking site addiction shares similarities with other addictions in terms of symptoms, but not a lot of research exists on the neurobiology of social networking site addiction. The aim of this thesis is to find out, whether social networking site addiction should be thought of as a similar kind of addiction to other, more well-established addictions. This question is a part of a more general discussion on whether behavioral addictions are comparable disorders to substance-related addictions. Methods. For this critical review a search using Google Scholar and PubMed was conducted. The search terms used were social networking site addiction, SNS addiction, neuroimaging, neural correlates and neural mechanisms. The search yielded only two articles focusing on the exact subject, although more research on closely related topics, such as internet addiction and Facebook addiction was found. Results and conclusions. Based on the evidence presented in this thesis it is not possible to conclude, whether social networking site addiction should be considered an addiction or not. There seem to be some similarities but also some dissimilarities in the neural correlates of social networking site addiction compared to other addictions. It should also be noted that the neurobiological perspective might be necessary but not sufficient for determining if a behavior should be classified as a disorder or not.