Should Tech Have Nutrition Facts?

Now that Mark Zuckerberg’s hearing has come to a conclusion, tech leaders and influencers are all making the right observation: Facebook is just one tiny piece of the problem.

The harm or good that Facebook has brought society is difficult to measure. Both positive and negative externalities of a system that involves billions of people, the ability to influence regime change, and a large slice of the world economy is more than complex. But what about the harm to a single individual? If products like Facebook cause reductions in physical health, mental health, and life satisfaction, shouldn’t companies be responsible for highlighting these risks before we download?

Shouldn’t tech products have their own set of “Nutrition Facts”?

Units of measurement called HALYs (Health Adjusted Life Years) are used in public health to provide us with information on the burden of a disease. That way we can compare the cost-effectiveness of different health interventions and make more educated decisions.

Movements like Effective Altruism and organizations like 80,000 hours use these metrics, along with WELBYs (Wellbeing Adjusted Life Year) to better understand where we should spend our time and resources to create the most good in the world.

Imagine having companies measure the wellbeing their products bring and publicizing this information on the landing page and app storefront of their products. It’s not all inclusive, but it’s a start.

And this approach could be used with additional methods to measure negative externalities, confidence ratings, and data security.

Blocking products whose effects are so often based on the individuals that use them is unethical and limiting, but not allowing consumers to make informed decisions is just as malicious.

We have information that gives us control over the food we put into our body, the movies we choose to see, the contraceptives we use. The average American spends more than 10 hours a day on screen time. We need to extend informative decision making to products that take up close to half our lives.

Silicon Valley prides itself in being data driven, but the only real metrics VCs, investors, and business owners are paying attention to are recurring revenues and user engagement. So in other words: how much money can we make per user and how can we get them to spend more time within our app. These changes would influence corporate behavior, forcing companies to slow down and repeatedly ask how their product affects the world and their users.

With this type of data on our products, B Corps would have more meaningful measurements of a company’s benefit to society, governments could make better decisions on tax incentives, and impact driven employees could contribute to causes they care about based on more than just reach and revenue.

We’re continuing to integrate technology into our lives more and more everyday. We need to be able to make better decisions upfront about what we consume and use. Finding quantitative ways to measure and publicize the effects of products on individuals is one place to start. I don’t know what the final solution to a more informed marketplace will be, but at least we’ve added something to the drawing board.