Restaurants try to make food you will remember and want again. Authors try to write books you can't stop reading. It's silly to imagine that any type of media would do anything other than seek to gain your interest and attention. It's our job to have personal hygiene and to control our information diet. This postmodern social construction perspective that tries to blame everyone for our problems is a lame approach to the problem.
I see where you are coming from, but this is different because:
1. The restaurant isn't lacing your food with cocaine
2. The author is incentivizing reading, which is generally a good thing
You are right, it is our job to control our information diet but when the ability to control is diminished through the consumption, then we have a problem which doesn't fit into the model of "get your shit together".
There's also a social responsibility you inherit when you start selling products that have harmful side-effects. Auto manufacturers have to comply with emission testing, drug makers have to prove efficacy, air conditioning manufacturers have to adhere to air quality standards etc. What do social media companies have to do? Very little if anything, and that's the problem. We've yet to find a counter-balance that works and protects the consumer, so we're in this era where we're trying to find out what we can do, but the landscape is changing so fast that we're trying to hit a moving target.
> 1. The restaurant isn't lacing your food with cocaine
Cocaine creates a much larger chemical change in the brain and can kill you in high doses so it’s not really comparable.
> 2. The author is incentivizing reading, which is generally a good thing
Says who? Why is reading inherently a good thing?
And all of those things are regulated because they have what most consider to be objectively bad effects on the body (with metrics based on cellular harm).
If you genuinely want to understand what we're talking about here, I suggest you read up on how certain behavior discharge dopamine on cue, how that builds tolerance and addiction. Then perhaps you understand the difference between this subject and the examples you gave.
I agree. People are on social media more because other alternatives for entertainment have dwindled in affordability, quality, abundance, etc. Perhaps the problem that should be addressed are the lack of quality alternatives rather than the industry tactics of a particular form of entertainment.
This is a reductionist take on the problem. If I knowingly spike your drink with habit forming chemicals, and I don't tell you about it, am I in the wrong?
