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"The real answer to solving technology addiction is the answer to sustainably solving most problems: innovation spurred by capitalism." I find that when capita

• mrfredward 8y ago
  >If some plucky startup solves tech addiction, it will be in a way that makes you a more effective worker or consumer. Well, that might not be ideal, but it might be better than the alternatives. My last employer paid me a dollar for every day that I tracked a workout meeting certain criteria and synced it with the insurers app. Employers save on insurance by having healthy employees, so they pass on the incentive. Not exactly utopian, and there are privacy concerns, but overall it was positive, even if the motivation behind it wasn't really because they care. But now try to think of an alternative. No one else has the incentive to do it, except government. And if government did it, it would probably end up being a complicated tax deduction only taken by wealthy people who hire accountants or would involve some Orwellian government-backed tracking app. I'm not really afraid of capitalism doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. The beauty of capitalism is how often self-interested people are incentivized to work for mutual benefits. If the free-market actually has incentives to fix smart-phone addiction, that's great. If the incentives aren't strong enough, then we'll probably end up with a government solution involving GDPR type clumsiness, but that might be the best we can do.