Infinite scroll, rising costs
On psychedelic drugs, chocolate cake, and the addictive nature of social media tools
The European Commission has come out swinging against Facebook’s approach to what gets euphemistically called “user engagement”, declaring “preliminarily” that parent company Meta is “in breach of the Digital Services Act for the addictive design of Instagram and Facebook“. It’s a weighty accusation, considering the potentially pain-inducing levels of financial penalties involved: Up to 6% of Meta’s annual turnover worldwide in fines. Considering that “turnover” in Europe means the same as “gross revenues” in the US, that’s a massive potential bill. Meta’s revenues were $200 billion last year.
■ Most societies impose restrictions on at least some addictive goods and services. Narcotic and psychedelic drugs, alcohol, and tobacco are all familiar examples. The societal interest in restrictions is based largely on the social costs of addiction. People who are “under the influence” and operating with diminished self-control frequently cause harm to others via their addictions.
■ In Meta’s case, what it’s doing with Facebook and Instagram is a pretty transparent invitation to addictive behavior. The EC’s argument holds that “infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, and the platforms’ highly personalised recommender systems” serve to “fuel the user’s urge to keep scrolling”.
■ Meta protests that it is “Giving parents more insights into the topics shaping their teen’s algorithm”, but that really says nothing about addictive potential. The European Council’s move to break out the big regulatory guns may be aggressive, but it’s not necessarily fundamentally wrong.
■ Perhaps the best defense against any behavioral addiction is in having something more desirable to do. In turn, this means that there have to be diminishing returns to each experience. The 100th consecutive slice of chocolate cake cannot be as enticing as the 1st. It seems plainly evident that tools like infinite scrolling and autoplay are meant to keep the appeal of that 100th slice of digital cake as close as possible to the first.
■ This is already a social problem and will be long into the future because it takes exposure for people to find desirable alternatives. Few people are going to decide out of the blue that they’d rather build model trains or collect stamps than keep on scrolling through Instagram.
■ But diminishing returns are inevitable, and no matter how addictive programmers manage to make social media, most people will sooner or later find that there’s an emptiness to the experience -- and aspect of feeling unfulfilled for all the time spent, because human fulfillment isn’t created by endless consumption, but rather by a sense of being needed and genuinely socially-connected. No infinite scroll can supply that.