The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
Addiction to Constitutionally Protected Activity: Speech, Press, and Religion
I have a forthcoming article with this title in an Emory Law Journal symposium issue, so I thought I'd serialize it here; there's plenty of time to improve it, so I'd love to hear people's feedback.
The background is, of course, the calls to regulate social media platforms and video games on the theory that they are unduly addictive. You'll see I'm skeptical about that. I start by arguing that similar arguments could be made as to religious practice, but that we should reject such regulations of "addictive" religious practice as violating religious freedom. I then argue that, analogously, we should reject regulations of "addictive" communicative products as violating the Free Speech and Free Press Clauses.
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Introduction
Most behavior that is potentially addictive to some people is also pleasant and largely harmless to others. Gambling is a classic example: It seriously harms some people, but provides fairly inexpensive pleasure to others. Indeed, this is true even for some physiologically addictive substances, such as alcohol and likely some other drugs. There are many alcoholics, but many more nonaddicted social drinkers who genuinely enjoy moderate drinking.
Of course, for many behaviors, this effect just requires legislatures to ask a familiar regulatory tradeoff question: When should the freedom of some (even of many) be restricted to prevent harm to others? Different legislatures may answer this question differently as to different activities.
But when the behavior is also constitutionally protected, the problem becomes more difficult: Restricting the constitutional rights of some in order to prevent harms—especially self-inflicted harms—to others generally requires much more justification. This short essay will delve deeper into this question, focusing especially on free exercise rights and free speech/free press rights.
I. Religion
A. Adults
- Religious practices as addictive
Many of the arguments that label certain interactions with speech products as "addiction" would apply much the same way to religious practices (whether or not the arguments' supporters would seek to so apply them). Yet I take it—and I will defend this in more detail below—that few of us would accept such arguments as a basis for restricting such religious behavior.
a. Harm
To begin with, religious practice, like supposedly addictive speech, can lead to economic loss and physical and mental harm. Some people may join religious groups that pressure them to donate substantial sums—perhaps as recurring 10% tithes,[1] or as occasional larger contributions[2]—with the pressure coming from the threat of social ostracism or eternal damnation, or from the promise of community or eternal salvation. That is presumably more serious pressure for most people than the pressure to make more in-game purchases.
Some people may adopt religious beliefs that are bad for their physical health, for instance if the beliefs counsel in favor of faith healing rather than modern medical treatment.[3] Some people may adopt religious beliefs that are bad for their mental health, for instance if the beliefs make them feel guilty because of their sexual preferences or desires.
Some may be drawn to practices that damage their relationships with family members or cause them to "neglecting personal and family commitments."[4] Certain religious practices expressly call on people to set aside "family commitments," for instance by joining monastic orders[5] or by choosing to break off relationship with family members who are seen as sinful or unbelieving.[6]
Some religious people may take life paths that are hard for them to leave, for instance if a woman joins a religious community that frowns on women's educational or professional advancement, and therefore faces a much reduced set of life options if she were to leave the community.[7] Likewise, if they choose to have children—which the religious group may pressure them into doing, or into doing earlier or more often that they might like—they may find themselves locked in to the community, for fear of losing their relationship with the children if they lose their relationship with the community.[8] And some may indeed exhibit psychological withdrawal symptoms, such as "experiencing distress when unable to engage in religious activities."[9]
b. Nonrational decisions and emotional vulnerability
What's more, people may join religions not because of rational choice—much religious belief, after all, stems from nonrational causes—but in large part because of techniques used by religious leaders. Those techniques might not be the result of recent intense market research,[10] but they have been carefully honed over centuries or millennia of institutional experience.
The techniques may appeal to people's most basic fears and hopes. The techniques may rely on social pressure to which the target is highly vulnerable, perhaps because of loneliness, sadness, physical illness, mental illness, or consciousness of impending death. Indeed, one might characterize them, borrowing a term from an article that urges regulation of addictive social media and gaming technologies, as "exploit[ing] weaknesses in human psychology."[11]
c. Fostering intrusive urges and compulsions through techniques of reinforcement and habit formation
The religions' techniques may operate gradually, by getting people slowly lured into a community and a belief system that they may eventually find emotionally hard to leave, even if they feel some desire to leave. The techniques may thus be labeled "addictive," in the sense of being "techniques that foster persistent, intrusive urges"[12]—here, urges to pray, to follow religious leaders' teachings, to feel guilt over perceived sin, and the like[13]—and that "foster compulsion"[14] to engage in various religious behavior.
The techniques might likewise be described as "contribut[ing] to behavioral addiction through 'operant conditioning' techniques such as intermittent reinforcement and variable reward."[15] To quote an article describing addiction as to speech, "operant conditioning research has long focused on content-neutral techniques for fostering compulsion, techniques like . . . pushing repeated, daily interactions."[16] Praying three (Judaism[17]) or five (Islam[18]) times a day, or saying blessings (Judaism[19]) or grace (Christianity[20]) before each meal would presumably qualify.[21]
Likewise, the techniques will usually operate through positive feedback. If a "like" button on social media makes people "kind of addicted to the feedback,"[22] one might equally say that the positive reinforcement that formerly lonely people get from a new religious community would make them "kind of addicted to the feedback" as well.
Those techniques may end up especially influencing a small subgroup of people who are especially deeply committed to the religion, or especially committed to the religion's message of contribution and self-sacrifice. If "most revenue from micropayments" in video games "is highly concentrated among a small group of apparent addicts who individually spend thousands of dollars on in-app purchases,"[23] I expect one can also find that the contributions to many religious groups are highly concentrated among a small group of people who individually donate thousands of dollars—sometimes millions of dollars—to the group.
Indeed, it's striking just how applicable so many of the discussions of alleged addiction to speech are to religion. Consider, for instance, this passage
But gaming companies often have a collateral interest in addicting nonpaying players as well. First, a player who keeps playing might pay later on; a player who walks away will not. Second, many mobile games contain a social dimension that is enhanced by widespread participation. . . . Nonpaying players who participate in these activities enhance the games' allure for the whales and potentially promote the games to others.[24]
Change a few words (gaming to religion, players to congregants, and the like), and you have something a cynic may easily say about religious institutions. Indeed, this could be seen as an accurate description of how religious institutions operate even by a noncynic who views the institutions' seeking of contributions as a laudable tool for doing good deeds.
Likewise, religions seek to form habits of religiosity, another item that is sometimes given as a hallmark of "addictive" speech products. Consider one passage about the supposedly addictive nature of certain social media platforms or video games,
"The ultimate goal of a habit-forming product," [Nir Eyal, author of Hooked: How to Build Habit Forming Products] writes, "is to solve the user's pain by creating an association so that the user identifies the company's product or service as the source of relief." The ideal is "unprompted user engagement, bringing users back repeatedly, without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging."[25]
Or another: "Simple habit formation may do the job, as the user comes to rely on a phone app as a quick cure for boredom."[26] Those skeptical about religion—or about particular religions—can equally suggest that religion promotes itself "by creating an association so that the [congregant] identifies the [religion's practices] as the source of relief" for the congregants' "pain" (such as the pain of loneliness, lack of felt meaning, or fear of death): "By its very nature, religious addiction, as with other addictions, allows the addict to escape from painful realities and/or feelings."[27] Indeed, some go so far as to say that "religion is the opium of the masses."[28]
d. Reliance on people's neutrotransmitter system
The religious leaders' practices likely also rely on people's neurotransmitter system, for instance by using—even if based on ancient experience rather than modern medical knowledge—the tendency of some religious practices to release dopamine,[29] which is also the chemical involved in drug addiction.[30] Religious practice has also been shown to engage the same reward circuits in the brain as drug use.[31]
This should be unsurprising: Many of the things that most affect us emotionally involve neurotransmitters.[32] It may be very hard (or even impossible) to distinguish purely "mental" behavior, such as decisions about religion, from the "physical" parts of our body: The brain, after all, is itself a physical organ that operates using electrical and chemical processes.
e. The presence of "addictive" features in mainstream religions
Nor are these just the properties of small and fringe religious groups sometimes derided as "cults." The behaviors and appeals that I described above have long been practiced within some of the largest and best-established religious groups. Indeed, it may well be that the religious groups that have most thrived have thrived in part because of these very sorts of practices.
[Tomorrow: Religious Practices as Legally and Constitutionally Protected.]
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[1] See, e.g., Tithing, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/eng/manual/gospel-topics/tithing (last visited Sept. 10, 2025).
[2] Or they may join groups—such as monastic orders—that promise salvation in a future life, peace in the current life, or both but require that they take a vow of poverty. This need not mean that they are expected to give away all their money to the group, but they may be expected to give away all their money to family or to charitable causes, which will make it much harder for them to return to their old lives if they choose to leave the monastic life.
[3] See, e.g., Shawn Francis Peters, "Does the Science Kill a Patient Here and There?": Christian Science, Healing, and the Law, in When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children, and the Law 89 (online ed., 2008) (describing Christian Scientists' belief that sickness is an illusion curable through embracing Christ's teachings, and surveying cases where reliance on faith healing rather than medical care led to preventable deaths).
[4] E.g., Religious Addiction: Definition, Symptoms, Causes, Effects, And Treatment, Valley Spring Recovery Center (Oct. 5, 2024), https://valleyspringrecovery.com/addiction/behavioral/religious/.
[5] See infra notes 39–40.
[6] The Book of Matthew, after all, characterizes Jesus as saying, "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of his own household." Matthew 10:34-35. Naturally not all Christians take that seriously, but some do; and some may more generally be pushed into rifts with family members over theological disagreements that some religiously minded people may see as deeply important. See, e.g., Bryan Fischer, Jesus Came to Divide Families, AFA [American Family Ass'n] The Stand, Aug. 14, 2019 ("Quite simply, Jesus is saying that He is the dividing line in every family. Those who are unreservedly dedicated to following Him are on one side, those who reject His offer of salvation and the call to take up His cross are on the other. There is a chasm between them that can grow by the day until it becomes impossible to cross."). See also, e.g., Paul v. Watchtower Bible & Tract Soc. of New York, 819 F.2d 875, 877, 883 (9th Cir. 1987) (discussing Jehovah's Witnesses' practice of "shunning" people, including family members, who have been excommunicated, and holding that the practice is protected by the First Amendment).
[7] See, e.g., Ginia Bellafante, In Brooklyn, Stifling Higher Learning Among Hasidic Women, N.Y. Times, Sept. 2, 2016; Susan Henking, Religion vs. Girls' Education, Religion Dispatches (July 2, 2009), https://religiondispatches.org/religion-vs-girls-education/.
[8] See, e.g., Larissa MacFarquhar, When One Parent Leaves a Hasidic Community, What Happens to the Kids?, New Yorker, Nov. 30, 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/07/when-one-parent-leaves-a-hasidic-community-what-happens-to-the-kids (documenting the struggles of Hasidic parents to maintain a relationship with their children after leaving their faith, including one mother isolated after her children were pressured to choose the community over her); Samantha Raphelson, When Leaving Your Religion Means Losing Your Children, NPR, June 14, 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/06/14/619997099/when-leaving-your-religion-means-losing-your-children (reporting on an ultra-Orthodox mother who nearly lost custody when she removed them from Hasidic life, after a lower court had enforced a religious-upbringing agreement later overturned on appeal).
[9] Religious Addiction, supra note 4. For examples of claims of such distress, see, e.g., Muniz v. McCall, no. 23-cv-4224 (DEH) (VF), 2024 WL 3522680, at *2 (S.D.N.Y. 2024) ("Because of the denial of his orisha beads [part of his religious practice], Plaintiff has suffered emotional and psychological harm and feels spiritually disconnected from his religious practice. He has also lost weight, has had trouble sleeping, and cannot concentrate"); Ackerman v. Washington, 16 F.4th 170, 177 (6th Cir. 2021) ("Shaykin explained that when he can't eat meat and dairy as required [by Jewish law] he is 'empty of everything.'"); Complaint at ¶ 72, Pawochawog-Mequinosh v. R.I. Dep't of Corr., No. 1:24-cv-00036-WES-PAS (D.R.I. Jan. 24, 2024) ("Defendants' denial of Wolf's requests to obtain and wear an Apache headband has caused Wolf severe and daily distress, as he is unable to express his religious traditions and beliefs as he sincerely understands them.").
[10] Kyle Langvardt, Regulating Habit-Forming Technology, 88 Fordham L. Rev. 129, 143–44 (2019).
[11] Id. at 142.
[12] Matthew Lawrence, Public Health Law's Digital Frontier: Addictive Design, Section 230, and the Freedom of Speech, 4 J. Free Speech L. 299, 309 (2024).
[13] See, e.g., Cheryl Zerbe Taylor, Religious Addiction: Obsession with Spirituality, 50 Pastoral Psychol. 291 (2002). Cf. also Robert N. Minor, When Religion Is an Addiction (2007); Leo Booth, When God Becomes a Drug: Breaking the Chains of Religious Addiction and Abuse 2 (1991); Stephen Arterburn & Jack Felton, Toxic Faith: Understanding and Overcoming Religious Addiction (1991).
[14] See Lawrence, supra note 12, at 301.
[15] Id. at 303.
[16] Id.
[17] See, e.g., Nissan Mindel, The Three Daily Prayers, Chabad.org, https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/682091/jewish/The-Three-Daily-Prayers.htm.
[18] See, e.g., Azhar Goraya, Why Muslims Pray 5 Times a Day, Rev. of Religions, Feb. 26, 2020, https://www.reviewofreligions.org/20026/why-muslims-pray-5-times-a-day/.
[19] See, e.g., Food Blessings (Brachot), Chabad.org, https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/278538/jewish/Food-Blessings-Brachot.htm.
[20] See, e.g., Angelo Stagnaro, How to Develop a Daily Prayer Routine, Nat'l Catholic Reg., July 24, 2020, https://www.ncregister.com/blog/how-to-develop-a-daily-prayer-routine (discussing both grace and other prayers).
[21] Variable reward likewise appears to be a regular feature of religious experience: Much religious practice is regularized, such as daily prayer, weekly attendance at communal services, and the like. But religious experience varies, with religious believers reporting occasional experiences of especially intense connection with the divine or transcendent, or with one's religious community. Cf., e.g., How You Can Use Behavioral Design to Create Any Habit You Want with Nir Eyal, Science of Success, Oct. 26, 2017, https://www.successpodcast.com/show-notes/2017/10/26/how-you-can-use-behavioral-design-to-create-any-habit-you-want-with-nir-eyal ("My book is mostly around technology products, but the same exact rules by the way apply to all sorts of things. If you think about spectator sports, if you think about what makes books and movies interesting, why we watch the nightly news, why we subscribe to a particular religion. They all have hooks embedded in them. They all have these elements of variability.").
[22] Langvardt, supra note 10, at 142 (quoting Leah Pearlman, inventor of the "Like" button).
[23] Id. at 140.
[24] Id. at 142.
[25] Id.
[26] Id. at 143.
[27] Taylor, supra note 13, at 292.
[28] Karl Marx, Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, quoted in Mike King, Secularism: The Hidden Origins of Disbelief 145 (2007).
[29] See, e.g., Paul M. Butler et al., Disease-Associated Differences in Religious Cognition in Patients with Parkinson's Disease, 33 Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology 917 (2011) (finding that Parkinson's disease patients exhibit diminished religiosity and hypothesizing that the link is due to dopamine loss); Ed Ergenzinger, Faith, God, and Dopamine, WebMD (May 30, 2025), https://www.webmd.com/bipolar-disorder/20250530/faith-god-and-dopamine (providing a first-person account linking religious delusions during bipolar manic episodes to dopamine production).
[30] See, e.g., How an Addicted Brain Works, Yale Medicine (May 25, 2022), https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/how-an-addicted-brain-works (explaining how addictive substances operate by flooding the brain's reward pathway with dopamine).
[31] See, e.g., Michael A. Ferguson et al., Reward, Salience, and Attentional Networks Are Activated by Religious Experience in Devout Mormons, 13 Social Neuroscience 104 (2018) (reporting fMRI study of devout Mormons showing religious experience is correlated with activation of the nucleus accumbens and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, reward regions also implicated in drug use); Patrick McNamara, The Motivational Origins of Religious Practices, 37 Zygon 143 (2002) (arguing that religious practice is linked to activation of the frontal lobes, also associated with addiction).
[32] See, e.g., Fushun Wang et al., Editorial: Neurotransmitters and Emotions, 11 Frontiers in Psychol. 21 (2020).
