A bill introduced by a U.S. senator on Tuesday aims to curb overuse of social media by prohibiting Snapchat’s Snapstreak feature, which inspires users to send photos on the app at least once every 24 hours.
The provision to ban the streak feature on Snap
Inc’s photo-sharing platform, Snapchat, is a component of Senator Josh Hawley’s
“Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology (SMART) Act” to ban “addictive and
deceptive techniques” by social media corporations, the Missouri Republican said in a statement.
The Snapstreak feature displays the quantity of days a Snapchat
user has continuously sent
photos to a different user.
If a streak goes unattended for
twenty-four hours, it disappears from the user’s app. Some users
are so dedicated to
their streaks that Snapchat features
a form on
its website for
inquiries to recover lost streaks that
may have disappeared mistakenly.
Michael Beckerman, president and chief operating officer of the internet Association, a
trade cluster whose
members include Snap, said corporations like Snap are endowed in promoting “healthy online experiences” which policy proposals “must be evidence-based.”
Critics of the feature say it pushes
users, usually teenagers,
to become addicted to the
app.
Snapchat was among the “most detrimental” social
media networks to young people’s mental
health in a 2017
study by the London-based Royal
Society for Public Health.
The bill would additionally ban infinite scroll and autoplay options, which offer users with an endless supply of
content. Social media platforms would have to embody “natural
stopping points,” Hawley said.
Snapchat’s variety of daily active users rose to 203 million within the second quarter
from 190 million from the prior quarter, Snap said last week. Snap shares
fell 3.2% to close at $16.93 on the New York stock exchange on Tuesday.