Digital Addiction

Many have argued that digital technologies such as smartphones and social media are addictive. We develop an economic model of digital addiction and estimate it using a randomized experiment. Temporary incentives to reduce social media use have persistent effects , sug-gesting social media are habit forming. Allowing people to set lim-its on their future screen time substantially reduces use , suggesting self-control problems. Additional evidence suggests people are inattentive to habit formation and partially unaware of self-control problems. Looking at these facts through the lens of our model sug-gests that self-control problems cause 31 percent of social media use.

Automated summary

There have been many arguments about the addictive nature of digital technologies. By developing an economic model and conducting an experiment, we find that social media use has habit forming characteristics and self-control problems.