Social media is becoming a large part of our lives, especially in keeping in touch with friends and family, or for entertainment. It’s a virtual bridge from something as simple as sending a birthday wish to your friend to a marketing ploy to get more users for a huge corporation. However, even though it may appear to be innocent, scrolling and swiping could conceal a more sinister reality. Platforms like TikTok or X (Twitter) are constantly updating their algorithms to get you hooked for as long as possible.
One of the biggest parts of social media is the system of “replies,” which are the retweets, thumbs-ups, responses, or hearts. A feature like this can be very addicting because it speaks to your brain’s reward system and makes you addicted to the feedback. Even Leah Pearlman, one of the creators of the Facebook like button, in an interview, said she had become addicted to the amount of likes she got: “When I need validation – I go to check Facebook. . . .I’m feeling lonely, ‘Let me check my phone.’. . . .I’m feeling insecure, ‘Let me check my phone.'” Features like this are a red flag. People who work in social media companies always share their concerns on social media for children and even themselves, as Pearlman continues to share that she has tried and failed to stop after she left the company.
Likes aren’t only one of the parts of social media that keep users on their app. Many apps like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok have popularized the idea of short video scrolling. It isn’t a coincidence that they are addictive and never-ending. Jocelyn Solis-Moreira, a freelance health and science journalist, explains about how infinite scrolling is the key to keep users on their app, writing, “you might start in one video only for the page to continuously load a never-ending stream of content. Absent-mindedly scrolling through content might seem like an innocent activity and a great excuse to waste time.”
Absent-minded scrolling content is also engineered just for you. Algorithms are developed from your interests, and how you react to content is all taken into account. Tiktok’s algorithm “[starts] from interests you express as a new user and [adjusts] for things you indicate you’re not interested in,” and “interactions such as the videos you like or share, accounts you follow, comments you post, and content you create, your language preference, country setting, and device type” all play a factor in what appears on your “For You” feed. Sometimes information like “whether a user finishes watching a longer video from beginning to end” is seen. All of the data the companies collect is important to help research on ways to keep you interested.
Endless scrolling content that is specially catered to your interests is what companies want you to do. Keeping you on their platform by interacting with posts, commenting, liking, and sharing is what makes them survive. One more minute is a chance to push you toward advertisements that make them money. Many of their tactics are not known and are continuing to evolve. Social media addiction is not just as simple as looking at what you are interested in. Social media is always carefully manipulated to feed into and take advantage of the human mind.
