By Daron Soussani | Staff Writer
Let’s be real for a minute: At one point, we’ve all decided to take a ten minute break following an intense study session or productive task to scroll through social media. The “ten minutes” we initially planned to give ourselves seems to always turn into a two hour long break. And before you ask, the answer is “no”. It’s not you; social media is designed to be addicting. Why? Well, it’s simple: addiction is money. The more screen time you spend on a social media platform, the more money is generated and pumped into it. The next question to answer is the “how”. How do they make these platforms so addicting?
I present to you the slot machine effect:
Believe it or not, slot machines and social media platforms share much more in common than you might think. First, the eyes are most sensitive to warm colors like red, orange, and yellow. These colors are already heavily incorporated in gambling and social media intentionally. For proof, take a look at the old and the new icons of various apps from Instagram, YouTube, to Google, and you can immediately spot the signature flashing colors characteristic of slot machines as they are more frequently used today.
Secondly, the “infinite scrolling” experience and the “pull to refresh” action found in multiple apps act as a slot machine lever, producing the same addicting effect. When new content is automatically generated, there is no dead end. Its effect results in the following: the continuous occurrence of the hypothetical situation I mentioned earlier. Also, the “pull to refresh” feature is a conscious design choice, which provides an illusion of control over the process of generating newly released content, which ultimately gives an odd feeling of relief and excitement when content is generated at your own pace.
Finally, when looking at the final intention of both social media and slot machines, it is practically the same. You spend money in the casino to sit down in front of three turning circles, in hopes of hitting some jackpot and getting money back. Similarly, we spend our time on phones to sit down in front of a brightly lit screen, in hopes of finding new content and having a laugh. But both have a unifying sole purpose, and that is to entertain: to take you away from the stresses of the real world, whether it being financial problems, or simply exams and studies (which is weird because you would make your problems worse, in both cases, if you dump your money in the casino and waste your time on a screen).
Let’s face it, they don’t really care about us…
You would think that targeted advertising and specialized content reserved for your consumption is a good thing. It keeps you entertained, you can easily find products you like, and you won’t get bored. But that’s the problem: you will never get bored. If an application is designed to always entertain you, then time will fly. But, at what cost?
The cost of your time spent on an unproductive activity is directly proportional to the profit of these giant media corporations. They don’t care if their product is good for you, or if the content is educational or not; the more time you spend on their platforms, the more liquid fills their bottles.
You might think of me as a “boomer” or someone who just “doesn’t get the trend”. But this is more of a serious topic than we give credit for. We focus so much on trying to avoid things that will cause us harm, like drugs. But the truth is, the very thing you hold in your back pocket 24/7 is in itself a time wasting, braincell killing, and dopamine stimulating drug.
Why isn’t anyone taking initiative? Why isn’t anyone speaking up? Probably the same reason the government kept quiet on the dangers of cigarette smoking for almost a century: Lobbying and money.