IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2020 - 66

SM. Such technology-driven limits could be required via
legislation or could be self-imposed by SM companies. In
several Asian countries a combination of governmental
regulation and company-initiated self-regulation have put
in place tools to monitor and limit play time for online
gamers, in particular for younger users. Chinese Internet
gaming companies set a limit of 3 hours of continuous
play, after which users receive only 50% of the points
earned. Players who continue to play and exceed 5 hours
at a stretch can no longer earn points, and are shown a
warning message every 15 minutes, alerting them that
they have exceeded reasonable time limits for playing [9].
Similar time limits are required in Thailand for use at
night or for underage users (since most Internet access is
via Internet cafes). South Korean legislation to limit usage
for teens encountered resistance on grounds of access
rights for young users. Studies of the impacts of such time
limits have not shown conclusive outcomes, and have
even reported counter-effects, an increased desire to play
for users who have faced time limits.
Most recently, the United Kingdom government has
announced that age verification will be required for
porn sites, to limit exposure for users younger than 18
years old [35]. The compliance with the new law will be
enforced by the British Board of Film Classification
(BBFC). A survey run by BBFC found support for such
age verification among 88% of the parents surveyed. A
third of parents expressed concerns that their children
might become addicted to pornography. What critics
argue is that much of the online pornography is from
unregistered companies that will not comply with the
law. Critics thus expect the new law to have minimal
impact on the availability of pornography to children.
It would be easy for SM websites to limit the time
users spend posting or reading, as well as to introduce
age limits or night/weekend usage limits. Unlike the pornography websites, major SM sites are fewer and easier
to control. Because SM usage depends on establishing
connections and refining profiles over the long run, SM
sites are more likely to be stable, hence easier to regulate. Also, users need to register with actual personal
information, making it somewhat easier to enforce agerelated limits. Moreover, browsing SM requires engagement with content, via commenting, liking or at the very
least scrolling, much more so than when viewing pornography (where content might be displayed on a screen
nobody is watching). By monitoring the level of user
engagement with content, SM sites would be able to
accurately time the actual usage and to enforce time limits, as it is done on Chinese and Korean gaming sites.
Finally, education can make users more aware of the
negative effects of addiction. Stories about lives
destroyed by addiction, statistics of wasted time, and
peer testimonies can all bring awareness and a desire

to fight back the addictive power of SM. There are several apps that can monitor SM or Internet usage. These
apps can enforce time limits (either self-imposed by and
for the user, or by parents or caregivers for dependents).
In extreme cases, users who desire to quit SM can use
apps to delete their accounts, equivalent to becoming a
teetotaler after quitting drinking.
While some users might not even be aware or willing
to admit that they have an SM addiction, other users are
aware and would like to change, but they are unable to
fight their addiction. For this later group, quitting SM
could become easier if cultural norms around SM
change. Tobacco consumption, once popular and mainstream, even allowed in hospitals and churches, is now
banned in most public and many private places. Even
more than the legal ban, a cultural norm of not smoking
has replaced the previous norm for accepting smoking in
much of the world. When a similar ban will be enforced
on the use of SM, people will again sit down with friends
and interact live, rather than via SM. A current trend in
this direction is the Phone Stack: friends going out
together agree to pile up their phones on the dinner
table, with the first one to pick up his or her device
being directed to pay the bill for the entire group [36].
Aside from such user-initiated changes, there are also
natural cycles that purge the SM ecosystem, as with ecosystems in nature. A study from the University of Oxford
predicts that as more Facebook users will die, the number of accounts for the dead will likely exceed the number
of accounts for living users [37]. Generationally, young
users tend to gravitate to newer SM platforms, not the
same ones their parents and grandparents were using. To
be fair, this migration process only shifts the addiction
from one SM platform to another, without reducing the
addictive power of either platform. Still, some of the same
generational shifts might induce younger users to quit SM
altogether rather than only to switch platforms. At least
one longer-term study of addiction, including both substance and behavioral addictions, some online, found that
most subjects suffered only from one type of addiction at
a given time, and that addictive symptoms decreased over
time; the authors concluded that addictions flare up but
are generally transient in nature [38].

No Silver Bullet: Why Social Media Will
Continue to Be Addictive
While there are concerns about the increasing impact of
addictive technologies on society, in particular on young
users, it is likely that systems will continue to be
designed to be increasingly addictive, in spite of legal,
technological and educational countermeasures. There
are three reasons why SM will continue to be designed
to be addictive: product improvement pressures, competitive pressures, and market pull.

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

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MARCH 2020

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2020

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