Every social media user has a problem with social media, whether they’re conscious or not. It might be Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Youtube… we all have one.

For me, it was Instagram. I think I’ve always been aware that it was taking too much time away from me, but I’ve always dismissed it as something essentially harmless to see what my friends are up to. There’s good in the bad after all. Occasionally it will spark a nice conversation with a long-lost friend. Sometimes it will make things happen. But most of the time, it will make you look at frog memes for longer than you need.

I’m not here to judge. Everyone has their reason for using social media, and many make a living out of it. Instead, I want to talk about my disappointing efforts to curb my social media usage, which ended with me deactivating Instagram for good.

Attempt #1: making it harder

First, I tried to make accessing the app more difficult, by removing it from my phone’s homepage. Whereas before the icon was just there, in all its juiciness, I now had to scroll all the way to the last page to see it. My usage seemed to drop initially, only to come back up once my brain adapted to the change, in about a week.

Attempt #2: making it boring

I tried a different approach. And that was making the content on my feed so uninteresting that whatever conditioning I had established in my brain would eventually fade away. I unfollowed every slightly entertaining page and frequent posters.

Now, this was a really good idea, if it wasn’t for the fact that when you scroll through the whole feed, Instagram will “suggest” more content (thank you Instagram). There’s no way to turn off this feature. Right, I should have known. There’s no end to the endless scroll.

Where your feed ends, a new feed of suggested content starts

Attempt #3: using time limits

Discouraged, I turned to the built-in time limit feature that Instagram offers, and the Screen Time limit that Apple introduced with iOS 12.

I ditched Instagram’s time limit almost immediately, as it’s actually just a gentle reminder that you spent a certain amount of time on it. In fact, it is so gentle that you won’t do anything about it. Screen Time, on the other hand, will show a blank screen, with an option to ignore the limit, either for 15 minutes or for the rest of the day. It will also hide all notifications from the app after you’ve reached your limit.

After a few weeks, a weird pattern started to occur in my usage. Not only I was ignoring the limit all the time, but I was actually spending even more time on Instagram. And then I realized I knew what was happening.

The power of variable reward

Entrepreneur and behavioural economist Nir Eyal, mostly known for writing the book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, calls this the variable reward, one of the most common and powerful dark design patterns.

The variable reward is the conditioning that takes place when by performing an action, you get a reward of varying appeal. A classic example is slot machines, but this pattern is implemented in almost all modern social media apps. The science behind it is that our brains have a spike of dopamine (the neurotransmitter of pleasure) when they're expecting a reward. Variability of the reward multiplies this effect and inhibits areas of the brain associated with judgment. This also explains why it’s so hard not to ignore the limit.

The variable reward is what makes the endless scroll so addictive, and what keeps you endlessly swiping through stories. Every post, every story is another chance to be delighted, or triggered, or annoyed. The thrill of seeing what’s next is what keeps you going.

In my case, Screen Time’s blank screen was an additional layer of unpredictability. With time, my brain learned that behind the blank screen there might have been a new follower, a direct message, or “interesting” posts. Hence it reinforced my addiction rather than curbing it.

Nir Eyal’s Hook Model applied to my case

Nir Eyal formulated the so-called Hook Model, made of four steps.

1. Trigger: it can be external or internal. Typical external triggers are notifications. Typical internal triggers are negative emotions, like FOMO or loneliness. The trigger will prompt you to take action to solve your problem (opening Instagram in my case).
2. Action: the action required to solve the problem. Two things can alter the outcome of this step: the difficulty of performing the action, and the psychological motivation to do it. All of my attempts tried to affect those two variables.
3. Variable reward: what is gained by performing the action. In my case, screen time limits increased the stake of variable rewards, hence making the hook more powerful.
4. Investment: an investment from the user, in terms of time, work, money, or emotions, that makes it more likely that they will come back. In the case of Instagram, every content you create is a sort of investment.

Lastly, not getting notifications intensified the negative emotions that triggered the hook itself, starting the circle over again.

I ended up deactivating Instagram last week. It’s probably not forever, and I don’t want to give the impression that I‘ve figured it all out.

As a designer, I know I can’t ignore social media, because I’ll have to design for a generation that is born with them. Social media is also where trends are born, and where public opinion manifests itself. And last but not least, as a product designer, I might have to work on products that make use of these very patterns I described, although I’ll try to avoid it as best as I can.

Hopefully, as more people become aware of the impact of these patterns, big tech companies will have to take a step back in order to save their brand reputation. Only time will tell. For now, I’m unplugging.

The UX Collective donates US$1 for each article published on our platform. This story contributed to World-Class Designer School: a college-level, tuition-free design school focused on preparing young and talented African designers for the local and international digital product market. Build the design community you believe in.