{"id":66132,"date":"2026-07-11T06:59:46","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T04:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/?p=66132"},"modified":"2026-07-13T18:35:59","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T16:35:59","slug":"social-media-the-european-commission-and-its-curious-idea-of-what-is-addictive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2026\/07\/11\/social-media-the-european-commission-and-its-curious-idea-of-what-is-addictive\/","title":{"rendered":"Social media, the European Commission, and its curious idea of \u200b\u200bwhat is addictive"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read \"The Lord of the Rings\" one winter when I was in my second year of high school, more than 30 years ago. The book captivated me very quickly.<\/p>\n

Who watches over whom in a democracy, and what does Pedro S\u00e1nchez want with his 'HODIO'?<\/a><\/rel>
\nA minister in Pedro S\u00e1nchez's government calls for \u201cban Twitter\u201d, like in Russia, Iran and North Korea<\/a><\/rel><\/p>\n

I enjoyed the book so much that I spent many hours reading it, and time flew by<\/strong>. It's in three volumes, so that captivating story seemed endless. I was reminded of that reading experience when I learned of the accusations made yesterday by the European Commission against Facebook and Instagram for having an \"addictive design\"<\/a>: \"The investigation focuses on features such as infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications<\/strong>, and the platforms' highly personalised recommender systems.\"<\/em><\/p>\n

It just so happens that I'm a web designer, and these accusations strike me as utter nonsense<\/strong>. Basically, the European Commission is trying to make these social networks assume responsibility for the use of their content, a responsibility that belongs to the adults who use these networks<\/strong> and, in the case of minors, to their parents. This isn't the first time we've seen this attitude from the European Commission: Brussels has a morbid tendency to infantilize users of new technologies, making them irresponsible for their decisions<\/strong> and aspiring to impose purely absurd rules based on this stupid idea of \u200b\u200bresponsibility.<\/p>\n

I don't want to imagine what would have happened if the European Commission had existed when the book was invented<\/strong>, a reading format that allows you to consume its contents for hours on end, turning pages over and over, without having an official nearby telling you when to stop reading<\/strong>. I've never spent as much time reading a social media feed as I have continuously reading a book. Are they also going to accuse book printers of profiting from addictive formats?<\/strong> And those who speak of books could also speak of other forms of communication. I can turn on the television or radio and watch or listen to them all day long without stopping.<\/strong> Does the European Commission plan to impose a daily time limit on audiovisual media broadcasts to prevent addictive behavior?<\/p>\n

It must be said that the media and social networks are not the only ones that could be accused of promoting addictions according to the European Commission's criteria. In Europe, we have politicians, including those on the Commission, who support giving subsidies to people who come from abroad so they don't have to work<\/strong>, a practice that ends up creating a pull factor whose consequences in terms of migration have already created a major problem. Isn't that generating addictive behaviors?<\/strong> Isn't giving away train tickets to young people at the expense of the rest of the taxpayers? The only addictions that don't seem to bother our politicians are precisely the ones they promote.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Personally, I would advise parents to limit the amount of time their children spend on social media, just as it would be advisable to limit the time they spend watching television or on any other form of entertainment. Everything should be in moderation, but that moderation comes from education and experience<\/strong>, as well as the advice of our families.<\/p>\n

For far too long we have had politicians who insist on replacing the role of parents and substituting our individual responsibility with all sorts of prohibitions<\/strong>. It's no consolation to think that some will do this in good faith, considering that the result, whatever the intention, is to replace our freedom with a legislative diarrhea that invades even the smallest corners of our existence<\/strong>, giving rise to something more like an authoritarian regime than a free society.<\/p>\n

---<\/p>\n

Photo: Paul Hanaoka<\/a>.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I read \u00abThe Lord of the Rings\u00bb one winter when I was in my second year of high school, more than 30 years ago. The book captivated me very quickly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10395],"tags":[15256,747,3815],"class_list":["post-66132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-media","tag-european-comission","tag-facebook","tag-instagram"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-29 06:13:03","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}