Digital Addiction

Is digital addiction a result of your habit formation?

14 mins
What is it about?

Economics

Journal

There are now 3.8B social media users and an average person spends more than 2 hours on social media. Americans check their smartphones 50 to 80 times each day. A natural interpretation of these facts is that digital technologies provide tremendous consumer surplus. This is commonly said to cause addiction in the same way that smoking or drugs do. So, this brings up questions like - Should people take steps to limit the amount of time they and their children spend on their smartphones and social media? What is the best way to design digital self-control tools? How can companies that make video games, social media, and smartphones best align their products with consumer welfare?