US legislators are eager to ban TikTok. They are missing a bigger question: should they also ban Instagram, Facebook and the network formerly known as Twitter?
The obvious answer is “no”, because although everyone grumbles about social media, we still use these networks, which strongly suggests that deep down we still value them. But what if that’s wrong? What if something about social media networks induces us to use them even though we dislike them?
One obvious parallel is with addictive activities, such as smoking or playing slot machines. A famous study by the economists Jonathan Gruber and Sendhil Mullainathan asked, more than two decades ago, “Do Cigarette Taxes Make Smokers Happier?” and concluded that the answer was “yes”. Strictly speaking, they found cigarette taxes benefit the-kind-of-person-who-is-likely-to-smoke, because the taxes dissuade some of those people from starting, and persuade others to stop.