Steemit is addicting. This is a fact that many of you have discovered for yourself and have written about at length. However, I noticed something really positive about this new addiction. I feel compelled to write in a way that I haven’t in the past. I’m a neuroscience graduate student, so for me, writing is a really important skill. It forces one to hone their thinking into logical, coherent arguments or narratives, and it is essential for communicating ideas effectively. I’ve often attempted to practice my writing, knowing how important it is, but somehow, I always ended up finding excuses to do other things. Now, I’m excusing myself from other activities so that I have time to write here.

Because you get feedback so immediately through upvotes, it is easy to tell how you’re doing. Despite @isaac.asimov comparing me to Michael Crichton, I’m a bad writer, and I have pitiful blogging rewards on some of my best articles to prove it.

I’m interested in a lot of things and especially neuroscience, but I’m still learning how to turn that body of knowledge and those interests into posts that are beneficial to the community. I’m trying something new today by connecting neuroscience right to steemit.

My hope is that through the quick and frequent feedback, and the addictive writing practice, I will find my niche here in the not-so-distant future. I think that having that niche is the critical component to being successful here. Because of the curation rewards, if your posts are consistently successful, whales will follow you and whale-bots will start automatically upvoting your content. I imagine that this can have a snowball effect. Just look at the midas touch of @gavvet or the super power couple @edgeland and @complexring . These whale-bots have pros and cons for the community. Since it’s a reality right now, I don’t think it hurts my writing to strive to appeal to them because that translates to me appealing to the whole community.

THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT

Once you find your niche, if you want to keep posting about other things, it would be best to start new accounts to do that, although you’re unable to do that right now. You could benefit your curation rewards by consolidating your steempower into one account, but I don’t think that you will benefit as a blogger with multiple interests by having one account. If you can never build more than one account, make sure to refine your content and only post what you think is your best.

Why is Steemit Addicting?

Because it follows the recipe for obsession. Of all of the game features that have been identified by researchers to lead to high levels of engagement and addiction, steemit fulfills most: interaction, multi-user competitiveness and cooperation, rewards, reputation rankings, and the secret formula for repetitive behavior, the “ludic loop”. In fact, all steemit really needs to be the ULTIMATE ADDICTION PLATFORM is improved aesthetics for the interface and an upgradable avatar that levels up with steem power.

Research on ludic loops started in studies of how slot machines can become so addictive. A ludic loop is basically any kind of short, pleasurable feedback loop. One of the draws of successful ludic loops (like slot machines) is the repetitive switching between certainty and uncertainty. Once the uncertainty resolves to certainty, that loop is finished. Sometimes that resolution comes with a reward. Sometimes that reward is high. Sound familiar?

This reinforcement schedule has been known to create compulsive behaviors since the famous behaviorist, B.F. Skinner, was experimenting in the 1950s.

On top of that, a growing sense of mastery is very motivating. Some games, like the famously addictive Candy Crush, engineer an illusion of skill built into the game itself. On steemit, the skill is real (generating awesome content), but there are still random factors influencing the rewards.

On the neuroscience side of things, our love of ludic loops is usually ascribed to the dopaminergic system, which often comes up when you hear about addiction, rewards, and pleasure. There is some evidence that gaming can influence dopamine in the brain, but much more research is needed to resolve what that actually implies. For instance, increased dopamine could be related to learning in general. More recent approaches are modeling addiction to games by looking at differences in connectivity patterns throughout the brain, which is more complex and more likely to produce insights about the brain’s functioning. The truth is that gaming research is still in its infancy, even though some of its core principles are decades old.

The HUGE Potential of Such an Addicting Technology

I’ve recently been thinking about how the steemit platform is a perfect technology for rewarding any positive behaviors. The most obvious application is in encouraging writing itself. I’d love to hear stories from any teachers who assign students to submit essays here. Can you imagine the difference in motivation and quality between turning in an assignment to class or putting it up here and possibly making some cash?! I’m sure that this would have benefited me. First, my motivation would have increased substantially, and secondly, you would have another source of feedback outside of a single teacher to improve your own writing.

Really, the steemit system could be extended to all sorts of rewarding applications. I recently saw an idea for steem.fit by @jpdimensions , where people would be incentivized to be active through steemit rewards. I’ve personally been thinking a lot about how to create really good cognitive training video games, and I think that the steemit reward system could be used as a great way to reward achievement of cognitive training goals.

I’d love to hear your other ideas of how the addicting aspects of steemit could be used to encourage positive behaviors. I can’t wait to see all the cool things that come out of this community.