The emergence of the metaverse, envisioned as a hyperreal virtual universe
facilitating boundless human interaction, stands to revolutionize our
conception of media, with significant impacts on addiction, creativity,
relationships, and social polarization. This paper aims to dissect the
addictive potential of the metaverse due to its immersive and interactive
features, scrutinize the effects of its recommender systems on creativity and
social polarization, and explore potential consequences stemming from the
metaverse development. We employed a literature review methodology, drawing
parallels from the research on new media platforms and examining the
progression of reality-mimicking features in media from historical perspectives
to understand this transformative digital frontier. The findings suggest that
these immersive and interactive features could potentially exacerbate media
addiction. The designed recommender systems, while aiding personalization and
user engagement, might contribute to social polarization and affect the
diversity of creative output. However, our conclusions are based primarily on
theoretical propositions from studies conducted on existing media platforms and
lack empirical support specific to the metaverse. Therefore, this paper
identifies a critical gap requiring further research, through empirical studies
focused on metaverse use and addiction and exploration of privacy, security,
and ethical implications associated with this burgeoning digital universe. As
the development of the metaverse accelerates, it is incumbent on scholars,
technologists, and policymakers to navigate its multilayered impacts
thoughtfully to balance innovation with societal well-being.

本文旨在剖析元宇宙的沉浸式和互动特性，探讨其对媒体成瘾、创造力、社会极化的影响，同时研究元宇宙发展带来的潜在后果，并提出进一步研究需求，通过实证研究来理解元宇宙使用与成瘾，以及与这个新兴数字世界相关的隐私、安全和伦理问题。

元宇宙中对成瘾性新媒体特性的放大

Amplification of Addictive New Media Features in the Metaverse

Bots are, for many Web and social media users, the source of many dangerous
attacks or the carrier of unwanted messages, such as spam. Nevertheless,
crawlers and software agents are a precious tool for analysts, and they are
continuously executed to collect data or to test distributed applications.
However, no one knows which is the real potential of a bot whose purpose is to
control a community, to manipulate consensus, or to influence user behavior. It
is commonly believed that the better an agent simulates human behavior in a
social network, the more it can succeed to generate an impact in that
community. We contribute to shed light on this issue through an online social
experiment aimed to study to what extent a bot with no trust, no profile, and
no aims to reproduce human behavior, can become popular and influential in a
social media. Results show that a basic social probing activity can be used to
acquire social relevance on the network and that the so-acquired popularity can
be effectively leveraged to drive users in their social connectivity choices.
We also register that our bot activity unveiled hidden social polarization
patterns in the community and triggered an emotional response of individuals
that brings to light subtle privacy hazards perceived by the user base.

通过在线社交实验，发现没有信任、档案和复制用户行为目标的机器人可通过基本的社交探测活动在社交媒体上获得社交相关性，进而有效地引导用户的社交连接选择，并揭示了隐蔽的社交极化模式和用户感知的微妙隐私风险。