Design Triggers for Excessive Online Video Clip Watching

Addiction in the context of information technology gained increased public interest within the last years. Only recently, companies like Apple, Google, or Instagram announced to fight “Smartphone Addiction” and integrated respective features in their systems. However, if and how such features help is still an open question. Right now, there is only a very rudimentary understanding of addictions in information systems and “IT-triggered disorders''. Even in clinical research, there is no consensus on the nature of such addictions yet. This work researches how design adaptations interfere with “Excessive Online Video Clip Watching”. We base our assumptions on the reinforcement cycle of disorder development and the Four-Component Model for Non-addictive Information Systems (4-NAIS). A study with 186 participants is performed, indicating that bridging findings from Psychology and Neurosciences to Information Systems is necessary to design information systems that are capable of tackling the problem of “IT-triggered disorders”.