Should Addictive Tech Come With a Health Warning?

holy_calamity writes "Academics researching how technology addiction affects businesses and employees say 'habit-forming' gadgets like Blackberries should be dispensed along with warnings about the effect they can have on your life. 'We don't want to be in a situation in a few years similar to that with fast food or tobacco today. We need to pay attention to how people react to potentially habit-forming technologies.'"

Comments

Absolutely Not

[milsoRgen]

Any behavior comes with a risk of psychological addiction. To stipulate a health warning on devices is absolutely ludacris.

Re:Absolutely Not

[Midnight Thunder]

Any behavior comes with a risk of psychological addiction. To stipulate a health warning on devices is absolutely ludacris.

Exactly. Just imagine someone getting addicted to reading warning labels and the having to write a warning label that reads:

    "This device can be considered addictive, get a life*.

      *Reading warning labels is considered addictive, don't read.

Re:Absolutely Not

[t33jster]

No kidding! What would such a warning label look like?

Surgeon General's Warning: The likelihood of a psychological addiction to this device is approximately equal to your own tendency to become psychologically addicted to stuff.

I work in a place where they hand out blackberries like they're candy on Halloween. IMHO, people don't get 'addicted' to their blackberries, they become addicted to making it look like they're doing something important. Either way it's pathetic, and no warning label will fix it.

Re:Absolutely Not

[Anonymous Coward]

> ludacris.

...is the stage name of a rapper. You meant ludicrous, "so absurd as to cause laughter".

(I'm psychologically addicted to hanging out at the local peeve ranch; that's one of my pet peeves.)

Re:Absolutely Not

[cuantar]

Oh no! Help us, Nanny State! We need you to save us from our pathetic lack of willpower, responsibility, and maturity!

Re:Absolutely Not

[lgw]

I know! How about we let adults choos for themselves whether to indulge in self-destructive behavior if it makes them happy. We could just decide that freedom was more important than safety. It's a revolutionary idea.

Or, I dunno, we could arrest and imprison someone for their own safety if they decide not to wear a seatbelt, or a not to wear a motorcycle helmet, or eat to much fast food, or whatever else someone doesn't like today. Think of the children! Freedom is scary, and we'll save a couple bucks on health insurace -- its win-win!

Re:Absolutely Not

[Kral_Blbec]

For most situations I would agree, however with seat belts there is a factor in which your decision effects others around you. If your own decision will kill you and only you (ie motorcycle helmet) then its your choice to take the risk. But if you are in a crash without a seatbelt then you may be thrown out of the car. This presents a danger to others by 1) having another obstacle in the road. You may be thrown into oncoming traffic and cause a secondary collision. 2)losing control of a vehicle that you may have been able to control had you remained in the seat, and thus cause a secondary collision.

The obiligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Why didn't someone warn me about slashdot?

Everything fun has addictive properties....

[WGFCrafty]

As long as doing something (gaming, gambling, alcohol, drugs) potentiates the production of dopamine, then it has the potential to cause addiction.

Doing things you enjoy are fun, usually when you're having fun dopamine levels rise significantly in your brain.

Dopamine is commonly associated with the pleasure system of the brain, providing feelings of enjoyment and reinforcement to motivate a person proactively to perform certain activities.

Re:Everything fun has addictive properties....

[CSMatt]

Then the solution is clear: make life miserable for everyone, all the time.

Re:You have it all twisted

[darkfire5252]

Sigh. I get tired of people using the McDonalds coffee lawsuit as an example. Yes, there are lots of frivolous law suits and suing these days, but this case wasn't one of them. A quick google for "mcdonalds coffee sue" turns up a page with the actual facts as the first result. From http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0122-11.htm :

• 79 year old Stella Liebeck suffered third degree burns on her groin and inner thighs while trying to add sugar to her coffee at a McDonalds drive through. Third degree burns are the most serious kind of burn.
• There were at least 700 previous cases of scalding coffee incidents at McDonalds before Liebeck's case. [Cases implying actual civil claims, not complaints]
• Lawyers found that McDonalds makes its coffee 30-50 degrees hotter than other restaurants, about 190 degrees. The Shriner Burn Institute had previously warned McDonalds not to serve coffee above 130 degrees. Doctors testified that it only takes 2-7 seconds to cause a third degree burn at 190 degrees.
• The jury came back with a decision- $160,000 for compensatory damages. But because McDonalds was guilty of "willful, reckless, malicious or wanton conduct" punitive damages were also applied. The jury set the award at $2.7 million, but the judge cut it in half.
• McDonald's coffee is now sold at the same temperature as most other restaurants.

So, the woman sued because she suffered severe burns. The jury awarded damages based on the damage she suffered, and then awarded punitive damages because it was clear that McDonalds knewe there was a problem, had seen the consequences of this problem and been warned before, and still did not take the relatively simple corrective measure that would prevent severe burns from their product.

Company knowingly does potentially harmful act. Act harms woman. Woman sues company. Company is penalized and corrects their behavior. Isn't that exactly how the system is supposed to work?