Which technological and business developments push users towards problematic use?

Always-available content (flat-rate subscriptions, autoplay), the free-to-play model financed by ads and microtransactions, loot boxes in the grey zone between gaming and gambling, "addiction by design" (immersion, near wins, intermittent reinforcement, big data, dark patterns) and the attention economy, where more time on the app means more money.

• Flat rates, YouTube Kids, autoplay: there is no natural end point; the next episode or video starts by itself.
• Free-to-play: the game costs nothing; revenue comes from advertising or paid extras. With microtransactions (small in-game purchases), spending is spread into many small amounts that are hard to track. In the EU Kids Online surveys, 12% of children and young people say they have already spent too much money on online games or in-app purchases.
• Loot boxes, paid boxes with random content, sit in the grey zone between gaming and gambling. Several European countries (e.g. the Netherlands and Spain) have declared them gambling and moved to ban them; Switzerland is moving more slowly.
• "Addiction by design": products are engineered to hold users through immersion, near wins (almost winning, which spurs another try), intermittent reinforcement (rewards at unpredictable intervals, the slot-machine schedule that is hardest to stop), big data (tailoring to each user) and dark patterns.
• Attention economy: the longer someone stays on the device or in the app, the more money flows, so time-on-app is the business goal.
• The growing popularity of e-sports, sponsored by large companies, normalises intensive gaming further.

The ethical point: these are design and business decisions, so responsibility lies partly with the companies, not only with the user's self-control.

Go deeper:

• Wikipedia: Near-miss effect — why almost winning keeps people playing.
• Wikipedia: Attention economy — attention as the scarce resource platforms compete for.
• NAS-CPA: position paper on microtransactions in video games — Swiss recommendations to authorities and politics (German PDF).