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"A group of current and former contractors who worked for years at the social network's Berlin-based moderation centres has reported witnessing colleagues become "addicted" to graphic content and hoarding ever more extreme examples for a personal collection. They also said others were pushed towards the far right by the amount of hate speech and fake news they read every day."

"Beginning in 2017, I did a project with artist Trevor Paglen to look at how people were being labelled. We found horrifying classificatory terms that were misogynist, racist, ableist, and judgmental in the extreme. Pictures of people were being matched to words like kleptomaniac, alcoholic, bad person, closet queen, call girl, slut, drug addict and far more I cannot say here. ImageNet has now removed many of the obviously problematic people categories - certainly an improvement - however, the problem persists because these training sets still circulate on torrent sites [where files are shared between peers]."

"Nearly 10 million Australians have had their private health data hacked - with sensitive medical records detailing treatments for alcoholism, drug addictions, and pregnancy terminations already posted online - in a cyber-attack believed to have been coordinated from Russia."

"Growth, then, is the animating ideal behind the platforms these companies build, and 'persuasive technology' is the means of achieving this. The research this technology is built on draws on everything from dopamine studies to behavioural psychology and addiction analysis. Features galore have emerged to keep our attention, from the endless scroll to dark patterns, but one is more important than all others, according to Fisher: recommendation algorithms."

"In Skinner's studies, lab rats were subjected alternately to electric shocks and treats to achieve a change in response. On social media, he says, we experience something similar. "I believe I see that people who are subject to operant conditioning online, meaning subjected to pleasant or unpleasant experiences." Approval, disapproval or being ignored, such techniques can be manipulated online as part of what is euphemistically called "engagement" and the creation of addictive patterns for individuals and then - by proxy - eventually whole societies."

"That algorithm can make the app powerfully addictive and fun, but like other social media platforms, it may also be cutting out whole swaths of content that you'll never get to see. I ran an experiment by creating two fresh accounts on TikTok. With these accounts, the only bias they start with is knowing my location - Toronto - which brings up content made near me."

"The governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, has signed sweeping social media legislation requiring explicit parental permissions for anyone under 18 to use platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. He also signed a bill prohibiting social media companies from employing techniques that could cause minors to develop an "addiction" to the platforms."

"And Israeli company Optimove is helping. It normally gathers customer data to create targeted online ads, but as a service to gambling companies it has trained its AI to flag the online players who are most at risk.  It analyzes the behavior patterns characteristic of gambling addicts, which include the hours of the day and night when they place bets, the time they spend on the betting site, and how much they keep on playing to 'chase their losses'."

"We demand a stop to addictive design features - Also known as the social slot machine. Ninety-five percent of teens in the US have or have access to a smartphone, while ninety percent have a desktop or laptop computer and eighty-three percent have a gaming console, a survey from the Pew Research Institute found. The data also found that roughly one in six teens describe their use of two platforms - YouTube and TikTok - as "almost constant.""

"And even without parental anxiety hemming them in: where are teens to go? In the last decade, YMCA data shows that more than 4,500 youth work jobs have been cut and 750 youth centres shut down. According to the Music Venue Trust, two grassroots music venues are closing every week. The nightclub industry is in freefall. Teenagers can't hang around in parks without arousing the suspicion of overprotective adults who have decided these rare recreational spaces belong to their toddlers alone; city squares and skate parks and pedestrian zones that were once public are now being insidiously privatised, monitored via CCTV and policed by private security guards. No wonder then, that teens withdraw to online video game worlds, the last spaces they have left that remain unmediated by their parents or other authority figures - the last places where they are mostly beyond the reach of adult control."

"But we're not entirely to blame if technology is making us less intelligent. After all, it was designed to captivate us totally. Silicon Valley's dirtiest design feature - which is everywhere once you spot it - is the infinite scroll, likened to the "bottomless soup bowl" experiment, in which participants will keep mindlessly eating from a soup bowl if it keeps refilling. An online feed that constantly "refills" manipulates the brain's dopaminergic reward system in a similar way. These powerful dopamine-driven loops of endless "seeking" can become addictive."

"The idea that we need a technological solution for too much technology is, at best, the Internet era's great placebo effect. We feel like we're getting a little better, but that's just part of the same addiction. Because it's their business, tech companies really have no choice but to try to convince us that we're just one more piece of technology away from the solution; but it's like telling us we can use heroin to kick our methadone habit-when we all know deep down that the off switch is the only true killer app. (But who has the attention span to go deep down anymore?)"

""Deeply disturbing" research exposes how easy it is for children to encounter inappropriate content and interact unsupervised with adults on the gaming platform Roblox. It comes as parents shared their serious concerns about children experiencing addiction, seeing traumatising content and being approached by strangers on the hugely popular website and app. Roblox acknowledges that children using the platform may be exposed to harmful content and "bad actors". It says it is working hard to fix this, but that industry-wide collaboration and government intervention are needed."

"That's because Facebook cracks down on my son, the Bach lover, but seems to allow rampant copyright violations on their reels. These endlessly scrolling videos earn billions of dollars for Silicon Valley-because of their addictive interface. But the apps need an equally endless source of video clips. This forces them to recycle copyrighted material. I'm referring to movie clips, extracts from old TV series, sports highlights, comedy routines, bits of talk show interviews, filmed music performances, and other snippets culled from various entertainment sources."

"But, for a growing number of users - and mental health experts - the very positivity of Instagram is precisely the problem. The site encourages its users to present an upbeat, attractive image that others may find at best misleading and at worse harmful. If Facebook demonstrates that everyone is boring and Twitter proves that everyone is awful, Instagram makes you worry that everyone is perfect - except you."

"Just ahead of the first anniversary of its release, Indian law enforcers are accusing the popular game of inciting violence and distracting kids from their studies, even pushing for a large-scale prohibition of the "battle-royal" style shooter. Following numerous complaints by parents, a temporary ban on the mobile app was first announced by police in metropolitan Rajkot, with some other cities multiplayer-game soon following suit. While the current ban only extends until March 30, the police and children's rights watchdog are petitioning New Delhi to ban the game altogether"

"As with any habitual behavior, you might reasonably expect that abstaining would lead to an improved mood and an overall sense of wellbeing. A new study goes a long way toward suggesting the benefits of cutting Facebook out of our lives altogether."