I wonder if they go at it from that angle ("let's make these kids addicts for money!"), or if they gaslit themselves into something else. It's probably the latter, just like the tech companies did - they looked at just the numbers and analytics, did some tests, saw that if they do X then numbers Y and Z go up, rinse and repeat across decades.

This is why Google no longer has just some unobtrusive text ads to the side. At the time it was great because it wasn't annoying, but then the analytics came in and showed that more prominent and better camouflaged ads had higher conversion and revenue. And people grumbling aside, their revenue multiplied over and over again.

I imagine the latter as well. They have to sleep at night. That is the nature of these unaccountable justification machines.