Fully grown ADULTS fall prey to skinnerboxes (aka: Slot Machines) all the time. Its basic human psychology (heck: the skinnerbox is effective on virtually all Birds and Mammals). Its extremely fundamental to the function of the modern biological brain.
Its literally a "brain hack". This isn't some "willpower away" sort of training. This is literally how your brain, and your children's brain works. As well as how your dog's brain, and the bird's brains and the cats brains, and deer brains.
The only winning move is to not play. Its literally hopeless if you get sucked into a skinner box. You can't beat the biological functions of what your brain is designed to do.
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I don't think there's "long term damage" to be suffered here. Human brains, just like the brains of any mammal (or bird), are prone to operant conditioning. If you RANDOMLY give a reward when a subject (be it human, mammal, or bird) pushes a button, the subject will continue to push the button over and over again.
Its just biology.
EDIT: And random-rewards are far stronger than consistent rewards. If a reward is consistent, then when it "stops", the subject believes that the pattern is over. But if the reward was Random, then the subject will continue pushing the button even long after the pattern has stopped or been modified.
It's not as fatalistic as you suggest: that randomly offered rewards always lead to complete zombie slave status in 100% of subjects, there's no way out, and the situation is hopeless.
Studies have found propensities not absolutes across all subjects and species.
For example, river otters are notoriously difficult to train using operant conditioning because they are extremely curious, but also bore easily. Getting them to repeat a behavior indefinitely using a reward is extremely difficult if not impossible.
Likewise not all humans can be controlled as robot slaves incapable of escape as easily as the fatalistic determination description provided suggests.
People can learn to recognize scams and avoid them. Maybe there are some people who simply never learn. Maybe. Probably not though.
Addictions can be hard to overcome for many. But they are generally recoverable.
I don't think this is "addiction". Its clearly operant conditioning. You aren't going to suffer physical ailments like an Alcoholic or Heroin-abuser (or heck: even a coffee-drinker) would if you "stop pushing the button"
I'm pretty sure that our concepts of "addiction" (including "willpower") are mostly pseudo-science. While psychologists are carefully studying the issues, the mass media needs to keep making movies and stories, and those stories do NOT reflect upon reality very well. Even well-researched stories, like Inside Out, or Finding Nemo (Dory's character is a very well researched example of memory loss) may end up obsolete as research moves forward. (IIRC: Inside Out was initially based on some psychology research. But the research already dramatically changed by the time Inside Out was out of production, and it was too late to change the story at that point).
The sad truth is: most of the psychology the layman knows is wrong. Its "story" psychology, created for drama and storytelling. Not "real" psychology, which actually predicts human behavior.
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In any case, I believe that lootboxes are a clear, and simple, example of operant conditioning. We know how to "deprogram" operant conditioning. You either:
1. Remove the reward entirely -- Without a reward, and people will stop. It may take 10,000 cycles, but eventually all subjects stop when the reward is fully taken out of the picture. Its surprising how long subjects will continue their behavior in the absence of a reward, but it will eventually stop.
2. Introduce punishments -- Shock the user, or cause other forms of pain. If the punishment is greater than the reward, the subject will eventually stop.
As far as I know, those are the two ways to stop a conditioned behavior. Social pressure may probably serve as #2, but in my experience, it puts a lot of strain on the social relationships (ex: subject may just start lying instead of telling the truth about their behavior). In effect, using social pressure to stop #2 may only cause the subject to become more trained in the act of lying.
I suggest reading "Glow Kids" [1], and then telling how different is digital addiction from any other form of physical/chemical addiction.
While there are many healthy kids and highly functioning adults who grew up with electronics and playing games (myself included), the fact is that these last 10 years have been a landmine for kids and adults alike in terms of dark patterns and psychological manipulation at scale.
I would love if we as a society would use the word "compulsion" for things that are not physical addictions, but I feel like that battle was lost some time ago, so I gave up.
I'm currently reading The Dream Machine and it's my impression from that book that Skinner's work was largely discredited (or at least his results were greatly exaggerated).
I think a core tenant of his work was that there is no mental state at all and that everything is just conditioning.
And this mechanism might be more palatable if it got applied both ways: I get a game and then we roll the dice [144] to see if I have to pay full price or just with some junk I have lying around in the house. Same odds as that legendary(?) skin.
Not sure what you mean by "You can't beat the biological functions of what your brain is designed to do" ?? I have played slot machines many times and picked up and walked away when I won a decent amount or when I hit my allocated budget for the night. I find it fun (at least for a little while), but it's hardly overpowering.
Slot machines, in the USA, are regulated to minimize the skinnerbox effect. So while a Slot Machine is actually the classic skinnerbox, in many ways it isn't.
At least, that's what the various casino engineers tell me.
EDIT: In particular: it costs money to pull the lever in a Slot Machine. So you have a penalty every time you pull the lever. Even with this penalty, many people pull that level compulsively, hoping for the slight chance to win.
Fully grown ADULTS fall prey to skinnerboxes (aka: Slot Machines) all the time. Its basic human psychology (heck: the skinnerbox is effective on virtually all Birds and Mammals). Its extremely fundamental to the function of the modern biological brain.
Its literally a "brain hack". This isn't some "willpower away" sort of training. This is literally how your brain, and your children's brain works. As well as how your dog's brain, and the bird's brains and the cats brains, and deer brains.
The only winning move is to not play. Its literally hopeless if you get sucked into a skinner box. You can't beat the biological functions of what your brain is designed to do.
--------
I don't think there's "long term damage" to be suffered here. Human brains, just like the brains of any mammal (or bird), are prone to operant conditioning. If you RANDOMLY give a reward when a subject (be it human, mammal, or bird) pushes a button, the subject will continue to push the button over and over again.
Its just biology.
EDIT: And random-rewards are far stronger than consistent rewards. If a reward is consistent, then when it "stops", the subject believes that the pattern is over. But if the reward was Random, then the subject will continue pushing the button even long after the pattern has stopped or been modified.