Tech companies must contribute towards independent research into addictive technology

Tech companies have a duty of care towards their consumers, and while some companies recognise the impacts they are having, no industry should be allowed to mark its own homework, says Ged Killen MP.



Get off your phone! It’s rare that you get through the day now without having that told to you, you telling it to someone else or simply hearing it in other people’s conversations.

Last September the iPhone celebrated its tenth birthday. At the time my first thought was, really, is it just ten years old?

This I think wasn’t a sense of misjudging the passage of time, but instead reflecting on the behavioural, social and cultural impact of the smartphone revolution which began with the iPhone and wondering, could all of these changes have happened in just ten years?

The urge to check your phone when you’re waiting for a friend to arrive, bored, when watching TV or even at dinner, for many (and I include myself in this), is like a new muscle reflex. When you forget your phone and you feel the absence of its weight in your pocket or bag, it feels like a lost limb, rather than simply a missing piece of technology.

To many of us our phones and other items of personal technology mean a lot, they have given us the power to connect to our friends and families and offer unprecedented sight and access to events around the world.

However increasingly this power we thought we had control over appears to have slipped its binds, with consequences even the creators of these technologies could not predict, nor control.

The 2016 US presidential election, Cambridge Analytical scandal and increasing evidence that smartphones, their apps and social media are addictive, causing behavioural changes rather than adapting to demand is highlighting the dark side of these technologies and showing that we may have misplaced our sense of control.

Aza Raskin, a former technology developer for Mozilla, the company which makes the popular internet browser Firefox, has described the way in which apps and interfaces are made as if the tech companies are “taking behavioural cocaine and just sprinkling it all over your interface”, and that “behind every screen on your phone, there are generally like literally a thousand engineers that have worked on this thing to try to make it maximally addicting".

On Tuesday 23 October I will be holding a debate in Parliament on addictive technology. This debate won’t be used to bash tech firms or call for a ban on phones, but instead to add to a growing national discussion about how we live better with the technologies we use every day.

Technology is both a risk and an opportunity, and we must ensure we get more of the latter and less of the former.

In 2007 the gambling industry reached a settlement with the last Labour Government to contribute some of their profits to charities to help provide independent support to correct the negative societal impacts of gambling.

In my debate I will be calling for tech companies to do something similar. In the budget the Government should set up a fund to provide money for independent research into the mental health impacts of tech use, it’s addictive qualities, expert guidance on healthy use for these technologies and for care where things have gone wrong. This fund should be paid for by contributions by the tech companies themselves.

However, credit should be given where it is due. Apple have introduced a screen time function to allow the consumers of their phone to monitor their own use. This is a feature I’ve found useful, even if it makes for uncomfortable reading.

This is a good start and others should follow Apple’s lead.

Tech companies however have a duty of care towards their consumers, and while some companies recognise the impacts they are having, no industry should be allowed to mark its own homework.

Ged Killen is Labour and Co-operative MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton West.