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\nAddictive shopping habits can have a destructive financial impact, experts say<\/p>\n
The Head of Addiction Services at St John of God Hospital has warned that shopping, video gaming and gambling are part of a surge in behavioural addiction in Ireland, and that the problem is “all predicated on the smartphone”.<\/p>\n
While most people will not get into difficulty engaging in these activities, a “significant minority”, will present with addictive compulsive features, Professor Colin O’Gara said.<\/p>\n
Prof O’Gara said in these cases, a person will persist with the addiction despite adverse consequences occurring.<\/p>\n
Behavioural addictions involve compulsive engagement in a behaviour or activity and are different from substance addictions, which involve dependence on a chemical substance such as alcohol and\/or drugs.<\/p>\n
Speaking on RT\u00c9’s Morning Ireland, Prof O’Gara said that with video gaming some children use games “in a very harmful fashion” which can lead to them no longer taking part in sports or other activities.<\/p>\n
“The harm can be when we see these people as adults, where there’s very much decline of other activities.<\/p>\n
“So, kids will not take part in, for instance, sports; adults will not perform at their work in a way that they should, or relationship difficulties as we see with all addictions,” he said.<\/p>\n
\nAddictive shopping habits can have a destructive financial impact, experts say<\/p>\n
Prof O’Gara said the issues “are all predicated on the smartphone. Gambling, gaming, pornography addiction as well”, adding that “shopping addiction is also a big problem”.<\/p>\n
“We might joke about somebody being addicted to shopping, but that has a very destructive financial impact and wider impact on the person and those close to them.”<\/p>\n
Prof O’Gara said the rise in addiction is primarily down to the increasing use of devices.<\/p>\n
“I’m very worried about how kids are in particular [affected], but also adults.<\/p>\n
“We keep talking about kids as if they’re the only people,” he said, but “adults as well, we’re all scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.”<\/p>\n
He added: “This is definitely an issue that wasn’t there before … and it’s not going away. There’s no question about that.”<\/p>\n
The reasons behind behavioural addictions and how they can be curbed will be discussed at the 35th St John of God Research Conference in Dublin.<\/p>\n
It will hear that 69% of people are increasingly worried that technology is hindering children’s communications skills, with 37% believing it is negatively affecting their home life.<\/p>\n
Among those aged between 15 and 29, research suggests that around seven out of ten people are likely to check their social media while struggling to sleep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Head of Addiction Services at St John of God Hospital has warned that shopping, video gaming and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[49,48,84,393,394],"class_list":{"0":"post-276139","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}