Digital Addiction: A Requirements Engineering Perspective

[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 engineering should take it into account. This is in stark contrast to other domains known for traditional addiction (e.g., drugs, gambling, and alcohol) 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 literature 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.