Executive summary: While traditional EA interventions like anti-malarial bed nets are more cost-effective per life saved, improving digital experiences by reducing addiction and suboptimal engagement in video games and social media could have enormous aggregate benefits, is highly neglected, and could be profitable enough to fund other EA causes.
Key points:
Digital system addiction as a tragedy: Many digital systems, including video games and social media, are designed to maximize profit and engagement, often leading to suboptimal experiences that harm well-being at a massive scale.
Scope of the problem: Billions of people spend significant time on addictive digital platforms, with video gaming alone consuming 1-5 billion hours per day globally. Replacing predatory design with user-optimized alternatives could greatly improve collective well-being.
Tractability and profitability: Developing better mobile games is feasible with moderate investment, has the potential to reach millions of users, and could generate profits that fund other high-impact interventions.
Neglectedness of the intervention: While global health interventions receive significant funding, efforts to improve digital well-being are rare, despite their vast potential reach and impact.
Reevaluating cost-effectiveness: While the direct impact of better games is lower than traditional interventions like bed nets, their scalability, transferability of profits, and cumulative well-being improvements may justify further exploration.
Moral consistency challenge: If EA prioritizes small welfare gains for billions of animals, should similar logic apply to minor human quality-of-life improvements at scale? Ignoring digital well-being may reflect biases rather than principled reasoning.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.
Executive summary: While traditional EA interventions like anti-malarial bed nets are more cost-effective per life saved, improving digital experiences by reducing addiction and suboptimal engagement in video games and social media could have enormous aggregate benefits, is highly neglected, and could be profitable enough to fund other EA causes.
Key points:
Digital system addiction as a tragedy: Many digital systems, including video games and social media, are designed to maximize profit and engagement, often leading to suboptimal experiences that harm well-being at a massive scale.
Scope of the problem: Billions of people spend significant time on addictive digital platforms, with video gaming alone consuming 1-5 billion hours per day globally. Replacing predatory design with user-optimized alternatives could greatly improve collective well-being.
Tractability and profitability: Developing better mobile games is feasible with moderate investment, has the potential to reach millions of users, and could generate profits that fund other high-impact interventions.
Neglectedness of the intervention: While global health interventions receive significant funding, efforts to improve digital well-being are rare, despite their vast potential reach and impact.
Reevaluating cost-effectiveness: While the direct impact of better games is lower than traditional interventions like bed nets, their scalability, transferability of profits, and cumulative well-being improvements may justify further exploration.
Moral consistency challenge: If EA prioritizes small welfare gains for billions of animals, should similar logic apply to minor human quality-of-life improvements at scale? Ignoring digital well-being may reflect biases rather than principled reasoning.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.