alt Hacker NewsFraming it as addiction is popular now but it removes user agency:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-27053-2
>The present research (N = 1204) explored the implications of overusing the addiction label. In Study 1, a national quota sample of Instagram users (N = 380) overestimated their addiction to the app, and those who perceived themselves as more addicted (but not more habitual) experienced less ability to control their use. We show that the perception of addiction likely arises from popular media’s frequent labeling of social media as addictive (vs. habit forming). Study 2 (N = 824) demonstrated experimentally that framing frequent Instagram use as an addiction has deleterious consequences for user self-efficacy, including reducing perceived control over social media use and increasing self-blame for overuse. In addition, misperceiving excessive social media use as addictive potentially diverts users from effective strategies that could be used to curb overuse habits.
Replies
Parrot “user-agency” all you want. We’ve seen what outsourcing solutions to “user-agency” does.
Over half the population lacks the self stewardship to not eat themselves into being a fat pig. If “user-agency” was any sort of solution, I wouldn’t be paying for the negative externalities of all you fat fucks.
this almost sounds like victim-blaming. regardless of user-agency.... if these companies are intentionally engineering addictive products, they deserve to be regulated or eliminated since they cant be "trusted" to do the right thing, which in this particular case is "not addicting children to brainrot clickbait". How does clickbait addiction in any way serve the betterment of society?
> Framing it as addiction is popular now but it removes user agency:
You can use the same reasoning on smoking too. Or any other drugs.
I am currently trying to get rid of my dependence, almost an addiction on Reddit. And nothing has been working, except blocking Reddit on DNS level in my router for all devices and all browsers equally. And even then I will write "reddit" into address bar several times a day to get no response from browser. Like a gambler pulling a slot machine which is not connected to power.