Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Well, yeah.

Mobile apps and their business models are designed for maximum addict^H^H^H^H^H^Hengagement. Journalists have written stories about social media and gaming companies hiring psychologists to better understand how to make their apps more engaging to people, even.

Unfortunately, it seems that state, federal or country-level governments have no interest in reeling this in. In fact, they actively enable this behavior by using ex-Twitter et. al. for official communications!

It's even worse than that, too; many businesses _only_ advertise or maintain business hours on social media platforms, so people that refuse to use these services are, effectively, digital dinosaurs.

I don't think things like checking your phone (usually social media) at a stoplight or a long stretch of road while you're driving becoming become more-or-less socially acceptable was what the iPhone team had envisioned when creating the phone, but here we are.

To be fair, though, this would have been just as much of a problem in 1994 as it is now if we had the technology back then. TV addiction was all the rage back then.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: