Everyone is talking about “digital addiction” and social media bans. Yet current debates often individualise the problem as a matter of self-control (“digital detox”) or focus on singular design tricks such as infinite scrolling and push notifications, while overlooking the political-economic logics of digital platforms. 

This workshop connects addiction-fuelling design with the discussion on digital dependencies to shift attention from individual pathology towards intensified user–platform relations across social, emotional, cognitive, and behavioural dimensions of everyday life.

Participants will relate their day-to-day digital experiences to lesser-known addictive design practices across platforms, and, in groups of walkthrough interpretation, map these onto user dependency strategies to reveal how they serve platform interests of data extraction, monetisation, and behavioural governance. Together we will develop analytical tools that support participants in recognising and contesting addictive design, turning self-blame into resistance against structural platform power.