Digital Addiction: a Requirements Engineering Perspective.

Abstract

[Context and motivation] Digital Addiction, (hereafter referred to as DA), has become a serious issue that has a diversity of socio-economic side effects. [Question/problem] In spite of its high importance, DA got little recognition or guidance as to how software en- gineering should take it into account. This is in stark contrast to other domains known for traditional addiction (e.g., drugs, gambling, and al- cohol) in which there are clear rules and policies on how to manufacture, market and sell the products. [Principal ideas/results] In this position paper, we suggest that software engineering in general and requirements engineering in particular need to consider DA as a first class concept in developing software systems. [Contribution] As an early step in this area, we conduct an empirical investigation of DA by reviewing the liter- ature and analysing web discussion forums on the topic and use that to design a mind-map of its main causes. We also provide a basic model to articulate the DA problem from requirements perspective and elaborate research challenges for a future work.