alt Hacker NewsI don't agree with this. Addictive, unless we're talking about a chemical substance or something like that, is a subjective thing. At some point, books, movies, comics, etc, etc might have been considered addictive.
Social networks in general should be banned for underage people, that's the thing. And the social network itself should be liable for verifying the age its users, like a nightclub is liable for people who enter it. No bullshit operating system age verification, that's, trust me, totally intended to protect kids and not to spy on you.
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Addictiveness is measured by ∆FosB gene expression. The 'addictiveness' of a substance or activity is qualified by how much ∆FosB is expressed. It's decidedly not just a completely subjective thing. Books, movies, comics, etc. can all still be measured on this scale. Everything is addictive in some capacity, generally.
The reason why it is done this way is that “social media” is much harder to delineate and also not what is generally considered harmful.
Addiction at least is quite straightforward to differentiate from otherwise engaging things by whether it causes significant harmful effects. E.g. per Wikipedia "Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder characterized by a persistent and intense urge to use a drug or engage in a behavior that produces an immediate psychological reward, despite substantial harm and other negative consequences."
Addictive would be then something that (for a substantial portion of population) has a tendency to cause addiction.
>At some point, books, movies, comics, etc, etc might have been considered addictive
The difference compared to a book is that a book is not personalized for each individual reader, so the example is not a good one IMHO.
> Addictive, unless we're talking about a chemical substance or something like that, is a subjective thing.
What makes you say that? It's well known that the addictive patterns in these apps trigger dopamine the same way drugs do. In a sense, dopamine is the "chemical substance" central to the addiction. Heroine and algorithms are just different ways to get it.
https://med.stanford.edu/news/insights/2021/10/addictive-pot...