Technology Addiction: an Exploratory Study of the Negative Impact of Technology on Consumer Welfare

The purpose of this article is to bring the technology addiction (TA) discussion into the realm of consumer research and to sensitize researchers, policy makers and practitioners to the idea that TA poses a real threat to consumer welfare. The extant literature on consumer pathological use of various technologies is reviewed to support the necessity of adopting technology in general as a unit of analysis. Evidence from a qualitative study suggests that TA is a behavioral addiction and that the object of addiction is not the technology itself but rather the cumulative experience it affords.