Abstract
Social media companies commonly design their platforms in a way that renders them addictive. Some governments have declared internet addiction a major public health concern, and the World Health Organization has characterized excessive internet use as a growing problem. Our article shows why scholars, policy makers, and the managers of social media companies should treat social media addiction as a serious moral problem. While the benefits of social media are not negligible, we argue that social media addiction raises unique ethical concerns not raised by other, more familiar addictive products, such as alcohol and cigarettes. In particular, we argue that addicting users to social media is impermissible because it unjustifiably harms users in a way that is both demeaning and objectionably exploitative. Importantly, the attention-economy business model of social media companies strongly incentivizes them to perpetrate this wrongdoing.
Highlights
ON THE NATURE OF INTERNET ADDICTIONClinicians and scholars began claiming in the late 1990s that excessive internet use was a growing problem that should be recognized as an addiction (Griffiths, 1998; Thompson, 1996; Young, 1998b)
Social media companies commonly design their platforms in a way that renders them addictive
We argue that in light of the kinds of harms associated with internet addictions, it is wrong to use social media platforms to addict users, and these harms are not justified by the benefits those technologies produce
Summary
Clinicians and scholars began claiming in the late 1990s that excessive internet use was a growing problem that should be recognized as an addiction (Griffiths, 1998; Thompson, 1996; Young, 1998b). While the specific mechanisms social media companies use in designing their platforms in ways that have rendered them addictive have changed over time, three of these design elements are common and worth pointing out: first, the use of intermittent variable rewards (or what is sometimes called the slot machine effect) (Griffiths, 2018; Harris, 2019; Williams, 2018; Wu, 2016); second, design features that take advantage of our desires for social validation and social reciprocity; and third, platform designs that erode natural stopping cues..
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