Stuck to our phones
On Instagram, radio's Time Spent Listening, and the development of self-control in an age of application addiction
A California jury has decided against Google and Facebook’s parent company in a case that sought damages for a young woman who claimed that her use of YouTube and Instagram led to depression and anxiety that have harmed her into adulthood. The jury wants her to emerge from the case with $3 million in compensatory damages and $3 million in punitive damages.
■ Without passing judgment on the merits of the case, the situation does put a spotlight on a problem deserving of some big-picture consideration. It is basically self-evident that many online services are optimized (if not expressly designed from their very first line of code) to reward addictive behavior. Television and radio programming have long sought to maximize time spent viewing or listening; what’s available on a computer or smartphone screen is different only in intensity and measurability, really.
■ Adults should have self-control. But self-control isn’t natural; it is learned, trained, and practiced. Children don’t naturally have it (not usually and not in large measure, at least), so to develop it, they need to receive that training before adulthood.
■ Meanwhile, adults who do not have it need to develop the desire to have it before they can learn it. Human nature likes to gorge on sweet foods and binge on entertainment and generally just laze about. Most of the good things truly worth having come from accessing self-control and putting it to focused use.
■ But if adults aren’t doing enough to form that self-control in young people -- especially while some people are reaping big financial rewards for trying to circumvent it and start long-term addictions -- then society is headed for a whole lot of trouble. Whatever the truth and the merits of a particular court decision, the bigger story is not just one about a few apps. It’s much more about what feedback loops and habits of the mind are being chosen and rewarded, and how dangerous it is to wait passively until it is too late to start forming the right ones.
