Instagram Boss Says 16 Hours of Daily Use Is Not Addiction (bbc.com) 62
Instagram head Adam Mosseri told a Los Angeles courtroom last week that a teenager's 16-hour single-day session on the platform was "problematic use" but not an addiction, a distinction he drew repeatedly during testimony in a landmark trial over social media's harm to minors.
Mosseri, who has led Instagram for eight years, is the first high-profile tech executive to take the stand. He agreed the platform should do everything in its power to protect young users but said how much use was too much was "a personal thing." The lead plaintiff, identified as K.G.M., reported bullying on Instagram more than 300 times; Mosseri said he had not known. An internal Meta survey of 269,000 users found 60% had experienced bullying in the previous week.
Mosseri, who has led Instagram for eight years, is the first high-profile tech executive to take the stand. He agreed the platform should do everything in its power to protect young users but said how much use was too much was "a personal thing." The lead plaintiff, identified as K.G.M., reported bullying on Instagram more than 300 times; Mosseri said he had not known. An internal Meta survey of 269,000 users found 60% had experienced bullying in the previous week.
Sounds like... (Score:5, Funny)
He must've attended that Zuckerberg weekend seminar.
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Mod parent Funny? But sometimes I think it would be nice if Slashdot had a simple upvote option for the masses of unmoderating...
Yes, semi-acknowledge, deny, blame others, and ... (Score:2)
Why even quote someone touting their own product and downplaying possible negative effects?
Reads like problematic profits warped his honesty (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Reads like problematic profits warped his hones (Score:5, Insightful)
No kid should be on social media. Period.
Besides, isn't addiction something diagnosed by a physician ? I would testify in court i would not venture in giving actual medical diagnostics. I would use other words.
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>"No kid should be on social media. Period."
No kid should be on an unrestricted, internet-connected device without supervision. Period.
Social media is just one of many potentially bad things on the internet.
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That would require parents taking responsibility and actually being parents.
I've previously made an analogy about it being akin to parents that would just hand their kids the car keys and tell 'em to have at it. After having recently experienced a neighbor's teenage kid crashing into my parked vehicle, I think they're actually doing that, too.
We're living in some strange times where some parents actually believe every dumb thing their spawn does is somehow the fault of the adult world, and not their failur
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Maybe the same way death needs to be diagnosed by a physician. But, you know, if you see a chap with his head missing, I would take your diagnosis of death at face value MD or not.
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Re: Reads like problematic profits warped his hone (Score:1)
No ONE, kid or not, should be on social media for that long.
IMNSHO, what people call social media these days shouldnâ(TM)t even exist.
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No kid should be on social media. Period.
Your username matches...
Would IRC in the early 2,000s be a form of social media? If so, my life would have taken an entirely different, and negative, direction if you had been involved in the rules.
Should kids be subjected to manipulative algorithms? Absolutely not. Should kids be allowed to speak to other real people without an authority watching closely? Absolutely. Is it dangerous? Absolutely. Can danger be removed from life? Absolutely not. Is removing danger desirable? To a certain extent, yes; but, al
Re:Reads like problematic profits warped his hones (Score:4, Insightful)
No adult should be, either. About the only thing anybody should be doing 16 hours a day is breathing.
Re: Reads like problematic profits warped his hone (Score:5, Funny)
Preferably 24 his a day...
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Um, no breathing for eight hours would result deaths!
Re: Reads like problematic profits warped his hone (Score:1)
ECK-ZACK-TLY!
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And it appears that I cannot help but walk through it.
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No one should be on anything for 16 hours a day unless it's oxygen or a heart-lung machine.
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A sexy woman would be nice. :)
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Sure, but remember: no matter how hot she is, someone somewhere is sick of her shit.
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Re: Reads like problematic profits warped his hone (Score:2)
There'll always be one somewhere, or a first one...
Re: Reads like problematic profits warped his hon (Score:2)
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No person should be on social media for 16 hours a day.
He's only (Score:3)
Not interefering with sleep (Score:3)
As long as the kid can get 8 hours of sleep, it is totally OK if they spend every waking moment on the social media platform he runs..
I wonder - if it was 20 hours a day, would this idiot still think it wasn't an addiction.
Semantics (Score:3)
Does dude know (Score:4, Interesting)
that there are only 24 hours in a day?
Of course it's not an addition... (Score:3)
That's a goal!
- this guy, probably
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Muthahfuckah, if you spend TWO THIRDS of your waking time doing a single thing, YOU'RE ADDICTED!
Doesn't matter if it's sports, working out, gardening, watching TV, stroking your micro-dick, or browsing InstaShit, spending 16 hours per day on one thing is one of THE most obvious signs of addiction I can think of. And I bet this teenager would display genuine withdrawal symptoms if separated from their phone.
Re: Bullshit (Score:2)
Bingo. If the behavior is compulsive to such a degree that it prevents other normal behavior, such as forming normal relationships or even one's own hygiene, then that's addiction. And pretty damn severe addiction in this case.
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If 16 hours is two thirds of your waking time, that addiction is called a meth addiction.
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Lol, you're not wrong. I should have said, "two-thirds of each day...".
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Time alone doesn't prove or disprove addiction, even in a hypothetical extreme case.
indeed, nothing really does. there is no clear cut definition of addiction, it's a subjective judgement depending on the perceived harms of the consequences. to some they seem bloody obvious, to some they're barely perceptible.
but representing the question as something that he can reasonably say "Yes"
dialectic. they were trying to corner him to admit something that is likely true and would harm his interests, but they overdid it in terms that carry maximum severity but cannot be proven, so he weaseled out. rather easily, actually: he threw it back by escalating it to "it's not cli
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so how many hours a day do you spend choking on nafo brain rot? more than this girl on instagram? you could sue them ...
He's right! That doesn't make it better though. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), not addiction. It's the same thing that makes casinos profitable. Addiction involves chemically moving your homeostasis to the point where your "optimal state," your ability to function, requires the thing you're addicted to. You go through physical withdrawal if you stop. Like, you'll need direct hospital care for withdrawal, sometimes. There are even legal medications that you have to taper off of or you're in the hospital.
There are so many things that get called addiction, but it's all OCD. As with any genetic condition, some have it worse than others.
And don't tell me about endorphins. That's part of your natural brain chemistry. As is adrenaline, cortisol, and neurotransmitter imbalances. With OCD, you have a chemical imbalance, but they're not foreign substances. Your genes are predisposed to something that could be good, but could also cause you harm. It's something that can be leveraged by bad actors, but it's already there, waiting to go. It is part of your homeostatic condition already. You'll have to put yourself out of homeostasis to deal with it, which is why in severe cases it's medicated.
When Zuck manages your dopamine hits, he's using psychologists to figure out how to optimize the brain chemistry of people who are predisposed to obsessive behavior for his own ends. He's not a drug dealer using chemists to amp up the speed and intensity of dependency.
Just put away the fucking phone. There will be no significant withdrawal other than an eerie amount of silence. It'll be like turning on a light once you realize how benighted your life has become. If you need an obsession, get obsessed with exercise or something else of actual value to your life. If you have severe OCD and can't do that, get psychiatric care. There are plenty of medications to relieve the imbalance.
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While this may be factually right, the fact that medical doctors now insists that non-chemically induced obsessions are not addictions is not helping the people who suffer from them at all - the only thing it does is allowing GAFAs to absolve themselves of any responsibility. "Lookitme, I've made this app which contains patterns that hundreds of very smart neuromarketers have carefully designed to promote constant engagement and induce craving when not in use, but it's not addiction because there are no che
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designed for addiction (Score:3)
Remove the infinite scroll from your website. You know damn well it is there as a psychological trap to boost your user "engagement"
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Agreed.
The infinite scroll basically turns social media apps into "social media slot machines".
Small, randomized hits of dopamine that users correlate to their own behaviour get them addicted very quickly.
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The future where social medial finally start implementing this:
- Facebook becomes Facepage
- Instagram becomes Instamilligram
- Pinterest becomes Cuperest
- TikTok becomes BeepBeepBeep
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That thing you call a trap, I call a handy and beneficial convenience.
More a compulsion than an addiction (Score:2)
I suspect users aren't trying to achieve a rush from using it, if so it's compulsive behaviour more than an addiction.
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Neuroscientist and fMRIs disagree. They seek, and get, a dopamine rush from "likes" and responses to posts.
breathing (Score:2)
Heck you breath 24 hours a day. You can breathe and Insta at the same time!
Tobacco companies said the same thing, yup (Score:1)
Sounds like (Score:1)
Alcoholic reasoning. Im not addicted! I can quit any time!
Meth dealer says meth isn't addictive /s (Score:2)
Classic high-anchor to force a concession (Score:3)
Looks like the plaintiff's lawyer needed a clean, jury-friendly admission that Instagram use can cross a "not normal / not safe" line while the Instagram CEO needed to keep the headline sentence "Instagram is addictive" out of the record.
So the lawyer ran a classic anchor: lead with "addiction" then cite an extreme data point (max 16 hours in one day) that’s hard to wave away. The CEO takes the least-bad exit: "problematic use" not "clinical addiction" responsible-sounding aimed at blocking the soundbite / policy frame.
The lawyer still wins in-court: "problematic" is enough to pivot to the real questions: what guardrails existed, what did you know, and what did you do when they failed, without ever getting the CEO to say "addiction"
And the twist is the CEO may lose anyway outside court: the nuance won't stick; the public will remember "16 hours" next to "not addictive" which reads like minimization.
Ask Instatwat face this (Score:2)
Do you intentionally design your products to captivate attention so you can advertise more?
No we don't? Why then do you report on ad impressions to your customers? Why is it so evidently good at captivating attention, e.g. for 16 hours? Did you just get lucky?
Yes we do? How is captivation achieved, what psychological process is involved do you think?
No kidding (Score:2)
I am not... (Score:2)
addicted to freecell, I can quit any time...
Can he stop any time? (Score:2)
I think the defining thing about addiction is, if you are able to stop and if it has disadvantages for you to continue doing it. The second point may be doubted by the Instagram boss but nobody else, but the first point is an important question to define if it is addiction. It's problematic either way, but still one needs to sue using the right definitions (and proving them).
This Addiction (Score:1)
Yes, companies optimize for engagement. So what? (Score:1)
If a teen spends 16 hours on Instagram, that's a problem. But calling it "Instagram's addiction" is a neat way to dodge the obvious: people need to learn self control.
We've had TV addicts, internet addicts, game addicts, now "IG addicts" ? Same story, new screen. Blaming the platform is like blaming McDonald's because you can't stop eating fries.
Life is full of engineered temptations. The fix isn't endless lawsuits and nanny rails. It's parenting, boundaries, and teaching kids how to manage their own time.
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