How many times per day do
Given the near-constant ping of notifications on phone screens throughout the day, it may not even seem all that hard to reach that 150-times-a-day average, which, some in the technology field have said, is exactly the point. In an interview with The New York Times, former Instagram software engineer Greg Hochmuth noted, "The same design qualities that make an app enthralling…may also make it difficult for people to put down."
In other words, "That itch to glance at our phone is a natural reaction to apps and websites engineered to get us scrolling as frequently as possible," The Atlantic writes.
So as we spend more and more of our time online, do technology companies have an ethical obligation to redesign their products to make them less addictive, or warn users of possible addiction? We asked John Basl, assistant professor of philosophy in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities, to weigh in.
Tech companies, especially app developers, largely rely on consumers to repeatedly come back to their products. Do you think these companies have an ethical obligation to make their products less addictive? Or an obligation to warn of the collateral damage their products may cause in people's lives?
I think that if it is established that a technology—be it a website, a social network, a video game, or a piece of hardware—has properties that cause addiction, then the company that produces it has an ethical obligation, at least, to warn consumers about these effects.
But while companies might have an ethical obligation to warn consumers about these risks or even to mitigate the risks themselves, it doesn't follow from that alone that we should legally mandate or otherwise coerce compliance with these obligations.
What about an obligation to make technology less addictive?
This, I think, is a bit more complicated.
On the one hand, we often think we should respect the choices of individuals when those choices do not have substantial consequences for others. On the other hand, children have access to these technologies and having such access could have lasting effects. So, here I think a lot hangs on how addictive these technologies are, what expectations companies have or should be expected to have about who will have access to their technologies and at what stage of their development, and many other facts. But, I don't think it is beyond the pale, depending on the answers to those questions, to think that companies might have an ethical obligation to reduce the addictive properties of these technologies.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2016-11-tech-companies-consumers-products-addictive.html#jCp
