The “Technology Addiction” theory has not yet gained a foothold, The world’s first legal proposal to require Internet companies to restrict the use of technology to make users addicted is released.
In late July, Josh Hawley, a US influential member of the tech community, presented a question about A bill that restricts Internet companies from using psychology, brain science, etc. to make users addicted.
The Act, called the Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology Act (SMART Act), is the first legal proposal in the world to require Internet companies to restrict access to Internet addiction technology.
The bill believes that the business model of many Internet companies, especially social media companies, must allow them to gain as much attention as possible from users; in order to achieve this, some Internet companies will use psychology and brain science. The result is to design their products and services. These practices will affect the freedom of users to use the product, which is to make users addicted.
In these commonly used Internet products, these designs that draw users’ attention and time like black holes are common.
Unlimited drop-down, unable to pause excessive information loading, autoplay, user honours chapters… These four features are directly named in the bill.
If the bill is passed, the functionality of these products will gradually disappear.
In addition, the bill also puts forward some requirements for Internet companies, including:
- Users need to have permission to set their own time on the platform;
- Automatically set a 30-minute usage time limit (users can adjust or turn off restrictions);
- Provide users with detailed product usage time reports;
…
Josh Holly is a 39-year-old member of the US state of Missouri. Prior to this, he had proposed multiple programs including data tracking, data privacy for children, data transactions, and so on. “怼” an executive of an Internet company.
This bill has attracted a lot of attention, support and opposition.
Although the time for people to use various types of Internet products, mobile phones and other smart hardware is growing, in the academic field, the research on “social media addiction” is still in its infancy.
The behavioral addiction of using Internet products and electronic products has been proposed by the psychiatric community, but it has not received enough attention.
Some people think that long-term use of social media by teenagers increases the probability of suffering from depression. Some studies have suggested that the current situation of “social media addiction” and “tech addiction” is Exaggerated.
Some scholars refer to this situation of excessive use of Internet products as “behavioral addiction.” Adam Alter, a well-known scholar at Princeton Psychology, in his study of behavioral addiction, lists six components of behavioral addiction:
- Seductive goals
- Unable to withstand unpredictable positive feedback
- The feeling of progressive improvement
- More and more difficult tasks
- Necessity to resolve but not resolved yet
- Strong social connections
There was a company in Silicon Valley called Dopamine Labs that had two products that were related to behavioral addiction caused by mobile apps.
A “Boundless Mind”, which sells API services to App, helps app products optimize their interactions through neuroscience theory and artificial intelligence technology. The slogan is “Use Dopamine to make your app addictive.” In the promotion page of this product, we also found the trace of the Appbank’s App page.
The other is an app that helps people quit mobile addiction, called “Space,” also using neuroscience theory and artificial intelligence technology, which is said to “allow you to take control back in the gap between breaths.”
However, at present, whether it is to apply these designs to the ultimate headline products, or to the unread red dots in social tools such as WeChat, or Weibo, Instagram, like, mainstream In Internet products, there are basically functions and designs that encourage users to invest more time and attention.