but phone is not comparable to heroin. gaming or social media could be addicting. if sugar is addicting, do we ban shops? because shops sell sugary stuff (similar to phone providing the addictive thing)
When we identify something as addictive enough to be problematic, the government finds a suitable way to interrupt, slow, or even ban it, depending on what people are receptive to.
Again, some countries do stuff like that. They put regulations on what addictive content games can have, like loot boxes. China has attempted to restrict how many hours citizens can play games (though there’s a lot of resistance to it).
Social media is even trickier because it’s so vaguely defined, and doesn’t involve payment to begin with. What’s the concept - “Please pay a 5c tax to view one page of posts”? Even so, government committees have taken social media companies to task for their algorithms promoting divisive content before.
but phone is not comparable to heroin. gaming or social media could be addicting. if sugar is addicting, do we ban shops? because shops sell sugary stuff (similar to phone providing the addictive thing)
We actually sorta tax sugary drinks, yeah.
When we identify something as addictive enough to be problematic, the government finds a suitable way to interrupt, slow, or even ban it, depending on what people are receptive to.
This is normal.
so tax social media and gaming, not the shop
Again, some countries do stuff like that. They put regulations on what addictive content games can have, like loot boxes. China has attempted to restrict how many hours citizens can play games (though there’s a lot of resistance to it).
Social media is even trickier because it’s so vaguely defined, and doesn’t involve payment to begin with. What’s the concept - “Please pay a 5c tax to view one page of posts”? Even so, government committees have taken social media companies to task for their algorithms promoting divisive content before.