Senator Hawley Must Toughen Up His Social Media Addiction Bill
In July, 2019, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) introduced a bill to address social media addiction. This bill, titled the Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology Act (SMART Act), proposes to address social media addiction by holding social media companies responsible. It would require social media companies --- including messaging apps and YouTube --- to make their platforms less addictive and more difficult to overuse.
The SMART Act holds great promise as an instrument for addressing social media addiction. However, the provision in the bill that could have the greatest impact has deficiencies that render it ineffectual.
This provision, found in Section 4(a)(2) of the bill, would require social media companies to impose a 30-minute daily time limit on users. However, users could override this daily limit by changing a setting. The daily limit would automatically reset on the first of each month.
One deficiency of this provision is that the daily time limit applies separately to each distinct social media platform, rather than cumulatively to all platforms combined. This is problematic because most people --- especially children --- use numerous social media platforms each day. This means that a teen who uses multiple social media, messaging, and video chat apps, as well as YouTube and basic texting, would still end up spending hours each day using social media applications.
Another deficiency is that users can override the time limit by simply changing a setting. The implication of this override feature seems to be that the effort required to change a setting each month will deter large numbers of users from overriding the daily time limit. This is plain silly --- addicted users who can’t self-limit their social media use, and who spend hours daily using social media, obviously will find the labor of changing a setting each month to be negligible.
The implied promise of Section 4(a)(2) is to rescue people from their addiction by imposing hard time limits on them. To fulfill this promise Section 4(a)(2) must be revised in two ways. First, a daily time limit should apply cumulatively to all social media platforms combined, rather than to each platform separately. This could be enforced through AI code embedded in each social media platform, or, in device operating systems. Second, it should be unlawful for social media companies to allow users to override the time limit.
Social media addiction is causing a massive loss in national productivity, and it’s squandering the human potential of our young. Research conducted by my organization has revealed that people of all age groups are very frustrated by this. It’s therefore very encouraging to see a US legislator finally take a stand against tech addiction. However, symbolic legislation is unwelcome; social media addiction is a serious, entrenched problem, and to address it we need uncompromising legislation. Senator Hawley must take Section 4(a)(2) up a notch if he truly intends to mitigate social media addiction.
