EU Opens Probe of TikTok Lite, Citing Concerns About Addictive Design Slashdot
Table Of Content
A new round of conversation has been spurred by Jonathan Haidt’s book “The Anxious Generation,” which contends that rising mental health issues in children and adolescents are the result of social media replacing key experiences during formative years of brain development. It’s likely that any law attempting to put guardrails on social media platforms will face legal challenges. This is complex legal and regulatory terrain, but that’s exactly why California lawmakers should keep pushing ahead with SB 976 and similar efforts. The tech industry has been unwilling to voluntarily change its practices to protect children. Hence, it is sensible to look for signs of opiate withdrawal in rats made dependent on sugar or palatable food (199).
What causes digital addiction?
States sue Meta, claiming Instagram, Facebook fueled youth mental health crisis - NPR
States sue Meta, claiming Instagram, Facebook fueled youth mental health crisis.
Posted: Tue, 24 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
To shift to more intangible harms, the problem of wage stagnation has gotten a lot of headlines in recent years as income inequality grows. The excess productivity has gone towards increasing corporate profits and C-suite pay, but workers have been largely shut out of the monetary benefits. Some of the gains in productivity and efficiency, I suspect, are going directly to social media use, in the absence of increased wages.
How Product Developers Keep Our Eyeballs Glued to Their Apps
UI/UX design aims to create interfaces that are both visually appealing and easy to use. For example, an interface that is easy to use might not be very visually appealing, and vice versa. When a user posts a photo and receives a lot of likes, it sends a signal to the algorithm that the content is engaging and should be shown to more people. This, in turn, leads to more likes and comments, which further reinforces the behavior.
Opinion: There’s a clear way to regulate Facebook, TikTok and other social media
"If I'm addicted to, say, World of Warcraft, the minute I start firing up the game ... my brain will look [in a scan] very much like the brain of someone who's addicted to heroin and is preparing the next hit," he says. "During the act of playing the game ... my brain will look very much like that person's brain will look as they're taking heroin, or the brain of someone who is addicted to gambling, as they sit in front of a slot machine and play the game." All in all, reward systems can offer a great deal of credibility and addictiveness to a digital platform.
Drugs of abuse not only release striatal DA but also block or reverse DA reuptake, creating a more potent reinforcement through the euphoric state (158). Some authors have made the argument that there is no concrete evidence of withdrawal from food, especially when compared to drugs like opioids (159) and that calling food addictive risks trivializing more serious addictions (160). Other arguments against FA have suggested “eating addiction” as behavioral rather than substance-related (161). During free-feeding, ACh increased at the end of a meal (72) and during ingestion of a palatable food it reached a maximum after the animal stopped eating (79, 140). This increment disappeared in sham-fed animals that had a gastric fistula opened compared to controls with a closed gastric fistula (141). Bilateral perfusion in the NAc of the indirect ACh agonist, neostigmine, reduced food intake in food-deprived animals (142).
Sugar and obesity
This approach takes into account the user's emotional and physical needs, as well as their cognitive ones. It results in products that are not only easy and enjoyable to use, but also good for our mental and physical health. The algorithms are designed to feed users a steady stream of content they didn’t necessarily ask for that keeps them on the app, which is why the algorithms have been called addictive. That content may be more dangerous or extreme than what the user initially searched for or not age-appropriate. This legislation is driven by a growing understanding that social media apps can be addictive and are dangerous to children’s mental health. The American Psychological Assn. urged again this month that policymakers require that tech companies reduce the risks embedded in the platforms.
There was a lot of conversation about data protection and accessibility before rules came into place that pressured businesses to take privacy and accessibility seriously, and what we’re seeing here with addictive design is no different. Addictive design will almost certainly become regulated and businesses that are slower to adapt will ultimately face more legal and technical challenges. Digital addiction is bad for your mental health and your physical health, but you probably knew that already and frankly are sick of hearing about it, so let’s take a look at how digital addiction actually affects people on a day-to-day basis. One of the hottest trends in UI design right now is animation, and when used correctly, it can make your app irresistible. Think of how YouTube’s “like” button plays a funky animation every time you like a video, which excites the average user and piques their interest. While social proof can be a powerful tool, it’s important to remember that it is just one of many design tricks technology companies use to keep users engaged.
Problem 1: Manipulative algorithms
There are a rash of books out there talking about this issue and many seem to sell quite well. My concern is that the purchasers are not the people who should be paying attention. Younger people don’t appear to read books much and other avenues are needed to encourage them to question their smartphone behaviors. However, all that said, I remain optimistic that the bottom of the pendulum swing is coming soon and then we can start to return to healthier technology use. As I have said often, we are sacrificing our Humanware as we overuse our hardware and software.
While the Commission hasn’t yet confirmed any breaches of the DSA this is the second probe it’s opened on TikTok after announcing an (ongoing) investigation into multiple aspects of its DSA compliance back in February. Since December X has also been under investigation over a range of DSA compliance concerns. Penalties for confirmed violations of the DSA can reach up to 6% of global annual turnover. So ByteDance, TikTok’s parent, could face hefty fines if EU enforcers do end up deciding it has broken the law. The development shows the EU cracking down on a product launch it deems risky where it can show a platform has not followed expected procedure. To be honest, even the name, “hook”, implies catching something against it’s best interest or getting someone to do something automatically.
These areas are responsible for our emotions and are completely related to the upper regions of the brain, which means that the Seeking System, by stimulating the production of dopamine, has a great impact on our daily lives and our choices. Service design can help our organizations innovate customer experience and build brand loyalty — and it’s great for small businesses. He eventually picked up a phone call 45 days later after sleeping roughly an hour each night. It happened to be his mother and she came, collected him, and took him to reSTART, this Internet addiction treatment center.
Internal thoughts or external events or prompts encourage people to undertake an action. They remind them of previously taken actions or inform people of new opportunities for action and engagement. Sign up for our free Newsletter and receive updates about our products and exclusive promotional offers. It is still a very recent movement and there is not enough data to come to a final conclusion, as if it is effectively working or not, but it nevertheless brings up this discussion. Even if it doesn’t show a significant result at the beginning, it illuminates this idea and is a good start for many companies, to be aware of the current difficulties and to try to overcome them in the development of future projects.
It is time to become more conscious about design ethics, and make responsible choices in the practice of digital product design. As UX designers we have to start considering both the psychological and environmental impacts of our work. We need to shift our perspective of design methodologies, time plan, and road map to humane product design principles. Now is the time to create impact and start healing the broken pieces in humanity. “The Anxious Generation” neglects these subtleties when, for example, it discusses a brain system known as the default mode network.
You alone control which dots you see and which you don’t by setting up your notifications for each app. I highly recommend that you check notifications and remove nearly all of them as you will likely not miss out on anything important. On my iPhone, I just went to Settings and then Notifications and checked to see which had the word “off” under their name and which had either sounds or banners or both. Over the time I have pruned it down to just allowing vibrating notifications from my email (which drives my family crazy), messages, phone calls, and calendar. I used to allow any app to notify me thinking that would make me feel that rush of pleasure and instead the presence of those tiny red dots created a rash of anxiety-promoting chemicals that made me constantly on edge.
According to Gearhardt and Brownell (20) “it will be important to look at the widespread subclinical impact of potentially addictive foods through the use of public health approaches” (20). The goal of this paper is to review the human predilection for refined sugars and how they reshape the brain, with its implications for public health policy. Tons of users post on social media platforms with the sole intention of garnering social proof and generating engagement on their content. The psychological validation people get because of the number of likes, comments, and shares on their posts is a pertinent case study on how social media platforms have perfected a formula for generating and maintaining user interest in their products. Platforms looking to create addictive user interfaces may want to leverage the power of human motivation and make smart design choices that make users want to keep scrolling.
This need for belonging is deeply ingrained in human nature and makes us more likely to perform specific actions if we see that others are doing them as well. The mechanism used to facilitate this is what is known as an addictive interface. An addictive interface is a type of user interface that encourages repeated use, often by providing positive reinforcement in the form of likes, comments, and shares.
Comments
Post a Comment