> An internal memo found that 12-year-olds were three times as likely as 32-year-olds to stay on Facebook for the long term, despite the platform nominally requiring users to be at least 13; the memo concluded that Facebook “should consider investing more heavily in bringing in larger volumes of tweens”.

I assume this is about dark patterns but can’t confirm as I’m faced with a cookie wall where I can select from “Manage” and “Accept All”.

Sure, making instagram as addictive as possible seems bad but I disagree with the framing a bit. Dark patterns get users to do things they don't want, that's why they get super annoyed at the design or the process or the outcome. Addictive apps are a different thing to me.

I don't think it's that compelling to say "obviously no one wants to be on Instagram and they're getting manipulated into it." ...yeah they do! The question is can you make a compelling case that spending time on it is harmful.

While I agree with the premise, I do wonder how you can write a law that would stop the behavior we want to stop without hurting beneficial features or allowing the law to be too easily bypassed.

How do you describe in a legal way the difference between a useful feature people want and an addictive feature they don’t want?

The Irony is that in order to read this entry I had to pass a cookie wall, which gave me only ‘Accept all’ and ‘Manage’. Then I couldn’t read it, because I had no subscription.

Step by step I am slowly backing away from any technology that I dont like, sometimes going to ridiculous lengths to bypass certain imposed aysmmetric requirements, up to and including abandonment. Nothing in my house beeps. My only online subscription is for web space. At this point it has become fun, as I have stoped reacting, and am experimenting and planning ahead, while figureing out ways to increase my income, while reduceing my personal spend

I'm no defender of engagement algorithms and social media (including upvote based algos and this site too)....but this is a ridiculous argument.

Social media is not making you behave in ways you don't want. On the contrary, it's giving you EXACTLY what you want. People want to doomscroll social media instead of engage reality, because the real world requires action, effort and social risk...doomscrolling is pure passive consumption.

If we're going to give people autonomy and freedom to choose how they spend their time, at some point we have to draw the line and hold people accountable for their own actions. Or we have to acknowledge we'd rather stay in a permanent state of adolescence and give full control of our lives to big brother.

This constant push by the urban monoculture to turn everything into an "addiction" and turn everyone into a "victim" is a terrible set of ideas to put in peoples heads and is equally as toxic as anything they claim smartphone apps are trivially doing with UI design.

Apps are not physically addictive like cigarettes or alcohol and never have been.

And I know what the rebuttal is... "They use psychological tricks designed by evil geniuses!" Sure. So do my kids when they want something.

But if you're going to argue social media preys on reward systems in the brain, this is also true about everything that humans do. Reward systems in the brain govern every single action we take, so everything we do can turned into a victimization by some addictive outside force.