Non-addictive Information Systems

Abstract

Addiction in the context of information technology gained increased public interest within the last years. Only recently, companies like Apple, Google, and Instagram announced to fight smartphone addiction and integrated matching features in their systems. However, if and how these features really help is still an open question. At present, there is only a very rudimentary understanding of IT-triggered disorders and addictions in information systems. Even in clinical research, there is no consensus on the nature of these addictions yet. Nevertheless, the omnipresence of information technology in our daily lives and its unpredictable effects on our moods require this problem to be addressed in a profound manner. This paper links findings from psychology and neuroscience to the information systems terminology and derives the Four-Component Model for Nonaddictive Information Systems (4-NAIS). The 4-NAIS allows locating how information technology interacts with the reinforcement cycle of addictions and provides a deeper understanding of where interventions and design decisions may really help tackle IT-triggered disorders.

The Good, the Bad, and the Missing: Topic Modeling Analysis of User Feedback on Digital Wellbeing Features

“…It is important to keep in mind that the artifacts (smartphone, computer) do not cause the addiction, they just enable addictive behavior [3,5]. Smartphone features associated with addictive behavior include speed, accessibility, convenience, design, efficiency, and portability [1], as well as notifications, feature-rich IT, interruptions, hedonic features, and changing content [10]. According to [14], IT addiction could be overcome when the user is helped by behavioral interventions, which have been found to help users decrease their smartphone usage [15].…”

“…Digital wellbeing apps contain features such as self-monitoring, blocks, and gamification, which interact with users toward decreased smartphone usage in distinct ways. While previous research sought to uncover the features and their effectiveness [7], little is known about the features' effects on users [8], especially the adverse effects associated with their use [9,10]. Thus, we propose the research questions: What are users' opinions about digital wellbeing apps?…”

Citizen Science in Information Systems Research

“…However, many societal challenges are related to information systems today and may open opportunities for citizen science projects. To give just some examples: addiction to information systems, flexibility in energy consumption, sustainability, and crisis management (Huber et al 2020;Irwin 1995;Kloker 2020;McCormick 2012).…”

“…However, many societal challenges are related to information systems today and may open opportunities for citizen science projects. To give just some examples: addiction to information systems, flexibility in energy consumption, sustainability, and crisis management (Huber et al 2020 ; Irwin 1995 ; Kloker 2020 ; McCormick 2012 ). Facing a fast-growing degree of digitalization everywhere, we would like to invite you to make up your minds and think about how to frame research questions in a way that is relevant for society and has impact on it.…”

Being (more) Human in a Digitized World

“…Each of these themes appear to be two-edged swords of the digitized world: while we observe increasing social harmony through the use of SVAS (Lee 2020), we also fear the erosion of emotion by excessive use of human-likeness in digital assistants (Porro et al); VUIs and mobile payment systems demand local usefulness in order to be better utilized (Kendall et al 2020;Pal et al 2020) but at the same time these technologies are often replicated and mim icked across geographi es wi th li ttle or no contexualization; the non-users of digital mobile payment systems seem to choose inconvenience over fear of financial loss (Pal et al 2020). Yet all is not doom and gloom; digital social entrepreneurs create ICT platforms to innovatively resolve complementary institutional voids (Parthiban et al 2020) despite our awareness of the possible addiction that digital tools can impose (Kloker 2020), a cultural ratchet effect seems to operate such that social contagion, norms of conformity and creative affordances (Kendall et al 2020;Pal et al 2020) seem to ensure that we continue to be increasingly dependent on information technology as individuals. Although we are not any wiser in resolving these dualities, but the mere fact that we are now able to visualize the dualities themselves, we believe, is one step forward.…”