My daughter was a creative genius, and then we bought her an iPhone
This thread exercising various mental gymnastics to find other causes for her behavior honestly reminds me of a bunch of climate change deniers arguing why human activity has nothing to do with atmospheric heating.<p>Being cautious with assuming causations is usually a good idea - but it falls flat when we <i>know</i> the causal chains that are at work.<p>In the case of climate change, we know for a fact that humanity is releasing ever-growing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere and we also know the physical chain reactions this CO2 will trigger. Predicting climate change in broad strokes is not statistical guesswork, it&#x27;s just applying physics.<p>Likewise, we know apps are addictive because they are actively being designed that way. Maximizing user retention and engagement is what app developers <i>do</i>. It&#x27;s how they make money and it&#x27;s one of the core metrics that investors use to estimate the value of an app.<p>So you have someone showing signs of addiction after using a device that was specifically designed to be addictive. Occam&#x27;s razor really doesn&#x27;t give a lot of room for alternative hypotheses here.