Reward System

Leila Tremblay, Lea Poulin

Presented to Mr. K
Due October 25, 2022
 Introduction
Your research goes here. You can refer to previous class work as well. In your last paragraph,
make sure to state your research question and why drives your interest. What problem is there to
solve, and what do we already know?
In your last paragraph, make sure to include your research question, your hypothesis, and your
variables.
Addiction is a common struggle for many people. It is a physical or psychological dependence

applied to substances abused or behavior disorders. The most common is alcohol, drugs, and sex.

In Canada there is 21% about 6 million people (about twice the population of Arkansas) that will

struggle with this reality of addiction. Addiction works with something called the reward

pathway. This reward pathway is connected to the part of the brain that is in control of control,

behavior, and memory. When you take a substance or what you are addicted to it makes your

neurons release dopamine. Dopamine is a neuromodulator molecule that allows a person to feel

pleasure, satisfaction, and motivation.

Technology is necessary for modern society. It informs us and entertains us. It is often used for

amusement and research. You can do anything anywhere at any moment and technology will

give you instant results. There are remarkably diverse types of technology, for example

communication, electrical, energy, manufacturing, medical and transportation. Technology is

well promoted in our society. We are exposed to it every minute of everyday life. Companies

promote technology usage and dependance to buy. Which makes it hard to not use it or get

emotionally addicted. In these modern days technologies have become an addiction around

youth. They wake up in the morning use Technology, in transportations, at school, for homework

and connection with others. Everything they do at school is posted online or even notes and
assignments. Pandemic has created another level of dependance and is creating a grave problem

with sleep, eating, interaction and concentration.

However, technology is dangerous especially when mixed with addiction. This is dangerous

because technology is everywhere and is essential. This makes leaving technology verry hard.

And when you have an addiction, to heal from it you have to leave it alone and get yourself out

of these situations but because it is everywhere and in a lot of jobs/schools. In this paper we will

be talking about how young people are addicted to technology and how much time they spend on

it. We will also give data collected in the saint lambert international high school about the

average time the students spend on their phones per week.

Method
List your materials, your participants, and your procedure. Organize this nicely, for example:
Materials
1. Pencil
2. Question sheets
3. Smartphones
4. Students
5. Computer
6. Time screen app
7. Excels
8. Papers

The independent variable is the age of students.

The dependent variable was the app to see the time.

The control variable is technologies devices

Participants
The participants for our research are teenagers (12-18), we sampled from our school. We chose

to ask two classes of an average of 70 people answered between group of (13-17 years old). The

school is Saint-Lambert, and many people are answering the server in between sec 1 to sec 5.

The questions we asked were

1) Their age
2) Grade
3) Names
4) The time they had spent on their device the week before.

Procedure
The procedure is we ask people from different grades about their age, name, hours screen by

week and the most used app. This gives better data studied. We even add our own screen time to

the experience. The procedure is to understand are student having heathy screen time while

trying to understand the reward system of the brain.

Data
Include your data here. I do not need your raw data; organize it please.
The bottom numbers are they hours , number on top are student involve and this data is by age
groups.
 Analysis

In the data we can see that a lot of teenagers spend between 20 to 30 hours per week on average

on electronics. This confirmed our hypostasis of teenagers spending more time on average on
electronics the older they get. Due to the factors of school and last parents’ supervision. Since

teenager are ask to complete work online, it’s let them have a free way with distraction and lack

of focus. This let them to do something online that benefit their reward systems as social medias

and games. This experiment might have been more legitimate and concrete if people that would

have given more precise data about how much time they spend to look at the exact amount of

time they spend on their computer and consoles. This makes our data more targeted on

screentime with smartphones. This made the data that we collected a bit off because it is based

on assumptions and the entered facts of our raw information’s. We could have isolated the

participants and helped them not be influenced by the other participants. This experiment gives

us enough raw data and information from scientist report from previous research about this large

question to answer what we were looking far.

The independent variable; is the age of students.

The depended variable was the app to see the time.

The control variable is technologies devices

Conclusion
Restate your conclusion and propose a scientifically accurate solution. What are the next steps?
The analysis data shows and reveals the problematic smartphone uses high current in young

teenagers and even adults. The population is compared in age groups that suggest the reward

systems being one of the many reasons technological usages. The sensitivity of brain

development makes them vulnerable to abuse in this area of entertainment. The reward systems

take in facts between the good and bad social reward and for the community surrender them with

this current need of accessed to social media and fast information's. Our data has shown that
teenagers have no control and abuse which causes problems in school, lack of sleep and people

take advantage to bully or even share confidential information that is not private once published

online. Our conclusion is that these reward systems negatively impact the growth in adolescents

and replace what is important. This cause a lot of stress added on the teen and cause usage

development problem in society and which is shown after pandemic we relied on Technologies

like crazy. We do everything on computers or phones. The app most used by teenagers is TikTok

which is an app that is known for being a target to be addictive for teenager and even adults. It

targets advertising and many reward systems. It is used with short videos with catchy music's

that is played repeatedly. The colors in the videos are the new YouTube. A student in the age

group of 17 years old used TikTok for 10hrs. In another study “proportions of problematic user

among teenager are 20%”-Xinmei Deng. Addiction is a common struggle for many people. It is a

physical or psychological dependence applied to substances abused or behavior disorders. The

most common is alcohol, drugs, and sex. In Canada there is 21% about 6 million people (about

twice the population of Arkansas) that will struggle with this reality of addiction. Smartphones

and technologies usage are becoming one of the main sources to this day. Technology is well

promoted in our society. We are exposed to it every minute of everyday life. Companies

promote technology usage and dependance to buy. In conclusion to this experiment and case

study, we should be careful even if technology is a useful tool, it’s important to understand the

gravity of this problem is affecting kids with social experience, brain growth, anxiety of social

media expectations on youths and the danger of people image. It creates a generation of people

that don’t think by themself and get information without research of good sources. all those

issues on a small object that lights our brain and replaces what’s important for us.
 Works Cited

Marianne. “Effective Reward Systems for Kids and Teens with ADHD.” Homeschooling with
Dyslexia, 3 Sept. 2022, https://homeschoolingwithdyslexia.com/eward-systems-kids-and-
teens-adhd/#:~:text=Here%20are%20a%20few%20examples%20of%20reward
%20systems,with%20an%20extra%2010%20minutes%20of%20screen%20time.

Wood, Charlie. “How Smartphones Hijack the Brain.” BrainFacts.org, 24 Sept. 2022,

https://www.brainfacts.org/neuroscience-in-society/tech-and-the-brain/2021/how-smartphones-
hijack-the-brain-010821.

Deng, Xinmei, et al. “Differences in Reward Sensitivity between High and Low Problematic
Smartphone Use Adolescents: An ERP Study.” International Journal of Environmental
Research and Public Health, MDPI, 13 Sept. 2021,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8470587/.