Screen Time: Society Costs vs Revenues of Transnational Corporations

The article presents the periodization of the theory of behavioral design and the theory of time. The direction of the modern stage of development of behavioral design is digital technologies of persuasion, the tools of which are used to influence the behavior of users of social networks, video hosting and other digital goods. Social media accounts for half of the screen time. The business model of multinational technology corporations in the use of screen time is to advertise, collect and sell user data, which can also be accompanied by the formation of a shadow market. Digital persuasion technologies are addictive and provide an increase in the time users spend on social networks. When assessing the use of unproductive screen time, the lost value of time must be taken into account. Social losses of unproductive use of digital goods are significant and tend to grow in a pandemic, turning into revenue for companies. In the absence of public and state regulation of the use of digital technologies of persuasion in digital goods and their uncontrolled use, children and youth are the most vulnerable category. Within the framework of the evolutionary development of synergetics, the source of which is disequilibrium, instability, irreversibility and nonlinearity of time, it is necessary to pay attention to the mechanism of self-organization of users.