Addiction considered harmful?

So it’s become clear that there exists a class of applications whose purpose is to be addictive. Their profit model is advertisements, and the number of advertisements the user sees is a function of how much the user uses the application. So perhaps “addiction” isn’t really the best word: it implies to me that it is difficult to quit a substance, but not necessarily that the amount of time spent using the substance increases. I want to particularly focus on the goal of maximizing the time spent using, for which “addiction” is a good enough term.

I raised this in conversation the other day and compared it to cigarette companies’ raising of the nicotine content of their products. This difference was pointed out to me: cigarettes cause lung cancer. The assumption here is that it isn’t addictiveness per se that is the problem so much as the harm caused by the product. If cigarettes weren’t addictive, it would still be wrong to encourage people to use them, because they are harmful to the health. That they are made more addictive is just a detail in the larger plot to get people to ingest toxins for profit.

What, then, is the harm caused by these addictive computer products? People have tried to get radicalization to stick, in the sense that the product proposes content to people that encourages violence or prejudice; people have tried to accuse them of encouraging suicide, self-harm, or depression; people have argued that using the computer more destroys traditional sociality (“smartphone zombiism”). None of these accusations have stuck, but they are plausible at first glance.

The response that these are not harms that everyone experience can be countered by pointing out that not everyone who smokes gets sick from it, either; yet we have no compunctions about discouraging smoking by propaganda and legislation.