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Social Media Addiction Is a Real Disease, U.K. Lawmakers Say

And Facebook and Google Must Be Taxed for It – Fortune: “For the last few years, some psychologists have been warning of the dangers of social media addiction—a phenomenon that whistleblowers from within tech industry say has been deliberately fostered by companies such as Facebook and Google. Now, lawmakers in the U.K. say social media addiction should be formally classified as a disease, and the companies behind the platforms should pay a 0.5% tax on their profits in order to help fix the problem. A cross-party group of parliamentarians on Monday published their report following an inquiry into “managing the impact of social media on young people’s mental health and wellbeing,” which ran from April 2018 to January this year. “Our Inquiry shows that there are aspects of social media which are positive—particularly for bringing together people with similar interests, reducing loneliness and helping communities stay in touch,” wrote Chris Elmore and William Wragg, the lawmakers who led the inquiry.

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