Walk down the street and you will see people walking with their eyes glued to their phones. Get on a bus, sit down at a park bench, or even join a family dinner table and you’ll be met with a similar sight. We are living in the age of technology addiction.

The average American spends an astonishing 5.4 hours a day on their phone.

On average, users spend approximately 45 minutes a day on Tiktok, 38 minutes a day on Facebook, 28 minutes a day on Instagram, and 24 minutes a day on YouTube.

The obvious question that arises is why?

What is causing the majority of the population to spend hours and hours on their phones and tablets? What makes social media, and other popular news, entertainment, and shopping apps so addictive?

Some attribute it to engaging content. They claim that funny videos, entertaining posts, and captivating news stories are the cause. Yet although content does play a role in explaining the obsession with technology that is so pervasive today, this explanation merely scratches the surface of something much deeper and darker.

The societal addiction to our devices can be explained by examining a potent formula created and employed by Big Tech. This lethal strategy works through the combination of an addiction-inducing user interface pattern with a hyper-intelligent and insidious algorithmic concept, resulting in apps that keep users hooked.

How it works:

The key component to this addictive formula is the infinite scroll.

The infinite scroll is a user interface pattern employed by many Big Tech companies where users are shown a steady stream of content that continuously loads as they scroll.

This UI can take on many forms, ranging from vertical endless scrolling to swiping through a limitless carousel. Common examples include the never-ending feed shown on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, the infinite stream of video clips on Tiktok, and the limitless movie selection on Netflix. The common denominator underlying the various manifestations of this design is that the content being presented to the user is endless.

While the infinite scroll may at first seem like a design that will enhance the user experience, it is actually quite harmful. The seemingly innocuous pattern operates by preying on the human desire for intermittent variable rewards.

Intermittent variable rewards, also known as intermittent reinforcement, is the idea that randomly rewarding a person for a specific behavior makes them much more likely to repeat this behavior.

For example, if someone has a pile of boxes and they are told that some of the boxes contain cash, they will open box after box until they get to the end of the pile. Why? Because even though they don’t know if the box that they are about to open will contain cash or not, they are aware of the possibility that it will. This possibility is what drives the person to repeat the behavior of opening a box.

This same phenomenon can be found within the infinite scroll UI. A user will open an app and begin to scroll through the content, knowing that there is a chance they will get the reward of seeing something engaging or entertaining. This results in the design pattern essentially functioning like a slot machine, causing the user to keep on scrolling, continuously awaiting the next hit of delightful content.

Moreover, since the content displayed never ends, users are not aware of just how much time they are wasting on these apps. This inhibits a potential deterrent to exiting the app and makes the scrolling even more addictive.

The infinite scroll is powerfully addictive on its own, yet when combined with its partner in crime, the ranking algorithm, the draw it creates is multiplied tenfold.

The ranking algorithm is an algorithm employed by many Big Tech companies including popular social media apps, news platforms, and streaming services.

It functions by tracking the user’s every preference via the manner in which they interact and engage with content. It then shows the user content that is similar to other content that they have previously liked, saved, shared, or interacted with in some other meaningful way.

When such an algorithm is incorporated into an app that uses the infinite scroll design, users quickly discover that they are bound to see content, be it images, news articles, videos, or movies, that they really like when they scroll. This serves as the bait that draws users to open these apps in the first place. It also makes the slot machine aspect so much stronger. The ‘prize’ that the user may win when swiping or scrolling is now significantly more attractive, and their odds of discovering a ‘prize’ they enjoy are higher as well. This not only entices users to use such an app but also makes the users stay on the app for a longer period of time.

Furthermore, similar to how a casino with significantly higher winning odds is extremely enticing not only to an addict but even to a person who normally might be reluctant to gamble, the combination of the infinite scroll and ranking algorithm in an app entices people who are less interested in using the app. Once they have been lured, the app then engages them in the manipulative content cycle, continuously showing them content they like, and using their engagement with that content to randomly display more and more compelling content, thus ensnaring them into a compulsive trap.

Conclusion:

When combined, the infinite scroll UI and the ranking algorithm create an experience that is potently appealing and addictive. In order to mitigate this effect, it is necessary to minimize one or both of these aforementioned factors. By recognizing and understanding these problematic design strategies, we can begin to work towards putting a stop to their usage and the accompanying harmful effects.