Digital Addiction

Join the Cyber Policy Center, together with the Program on Democracy and the Internet, on March 14th from 12-1 PM pacific, for Digital Addiction, with Matthew Gentzkow, Landau Professor of Technology and the Economy at Stanford. The session will be moderated by Nate Persily, co director of the Cyber Policy Center.

Many have argued that digital technologies such as smartphones and social media are addictive. Gentzkow and fellow researchers developed an economic model of digital addiction and estimated it using a randomized experiment in order to learn more about temporary incentives, self-control, and habit formation as it relates to social media use. For this session, Gentzkow will talk about the findings of this research as well as his recent paper on the topic.

About the Speaker

Matthew Gentzkow is the Landau Professor of Technology and the Economy at Stanford University. He studies applied microeconomics with a focus on media industries. He received the 2014 John Bates Clark Medal, given by the American Economic Association to the American economist under the age of forty who has made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and a former co-editor of American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. Other awards include the Calvó-Armengol International Prize, the John Von Neumann Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, grants from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes for Health, and Sloan Foundation, and a Faculty Excellence Award for teaching. He studied at Harvard University where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1997, a master’s degree in 2002, and a PhD in 2004.