The Growth of Internet Addiction in US Population

The Growth of Internet Addiction in US Population
The growth in internet use over the past few decades has resulted in a phenomenon referred to as technology addiction. Even though some studies in the United States population indicate no significant correlation between age and technology addiction, it can be argued that younger individuals are more prone to this problem (Das et al., 2017). As a health issue, observers have also established that the government is ineffective in developing the necessary policies and legislation. The focus of this paper is to assess the current laws and policies on technology addiction in the Us population and to recommend policies that need to be in place to assist in curbing technology addiction.
No official law has been passed in the United States to address the problem of technology addiction. However, a lawmaker, Sen. Josh Hawley, recently proposed a bill to ban addictive social media features. The bill was called the Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology (SMART). Today, major technology companies have been under immense pressure and criticism for developing applications and features designed to hook the users. Such features have been targeted by the Smart bill, which would ban such features as YouTube videos loading automatically and the Snapstreak feature on Snapchat, which requires users to share photos at least once in 24 hours to maintain the streak (Clukey, 2019). The primary goal of the SMART bill is to discourage users from continuous engagement with social media products. Additionally, the bill proposes new features comprising a user-friendly interface, including time limits for each application per day. As such, users would only be limited to approximately 30 minutes per app daily.
It is difficult to assess this legislation's efficacy without other legislations for comparison and with the bill not yet passed and implemented. However, it can be argued that addiction to technology is indicated by the amount of time spent on digital devices and the internet. Therefore, limiting time on the internet seems to be a positive step towards achieving the objectives of SMART. Besides the SMART bill, the United States has no other policy or legislation addressing technology addiction. Other countries have made better progress, including allocating resources to curb technology addiction. For example, South Korea, Japan, and China have developed policies that oversee government-sponsored counselling centers and hospitals for technology addiction (Booth, 2017). Addiction problems are often subjected to treatment, other interventions, and prevention programs. Overall, the SMART bill by Sen. Hawley can be regarded as a preventive law that ensures that Americans are not subjected to the technology addiction crisis. Therefore, the central gap in the current policies and regulations is that there lacks a legal or policy framework that governs technology addiction.
The legisla...