Why the infinite scroll is so addictive
A lesson from behavioral psychology.
I‘ve been off most social media for a couple years. There’s a number of reasons why I deleted Instagram, Twitter, and the like, but the main reason is I would spend far too much time passively scrolling through my feed and never actively posting any of my own content.
So, I cured this addiction to scrolling by deleting these apps, right?
Well, not exactly.
While I don’t have social media on my phone apart from Pinterest, I often find myself on my laptop scrolling through recommended feeds on YouTube and Netflix for minutes on end, only to give up and not watch anything because nothing seems interesting. Several times I’ve even reached the bottom of my YouTube recommended feed, which you might not think is possible (nor did I until it happened).
Social media apps are designed to be addictive. They are designed to keep our eyes on our screens because the more time and attention we give to these platforms, the more profit the companies behind them generate through advertising. So, developers intentionally create features to be addictive—such as likes, notifications, and the refresh option—that all keep us coming back to their apps.
But I don’t go to YouTube for likes or notifications. I go to watch entertaining or interesting videos. And as I search for these videos, I scroll through my recommended feed. And I scroll. And scroll and scroll and scroll.
The infinite scroll is just another one of these addictive design features like notifications and likes. But why is it so addictive? For what reason do we keep returning to social media only to mindlessly scroll? And how can we stop this bad scrolling habit?
Answers from Psychologist B. F. Skinner
To answer these questions, I must introduce you to B. F. Skinner. You might have heard Skinner’s name before in a psychology course or in books about habits. That’s because Skinner was the founder of operant conditioning, one of the most influential concepts in behavioral psychology. In operant conditioning, behavior is either strengthened by reinforcement or weakened by punishment.
This is essentially why the like button is so effective. Let’s say you post an image or tweet that garners a lot of likes. These likes ultimately translate into three of the most powerful reinforcers — attention, approval, and affection from other people.
What happens as a result of all this reinforcement from likes? You post more, each time trying to out-perform your previous post’s like count. In other words, the reinforcement from likes strengthens the behavior of posting.
You might be wondering how this applies to the topic at hand of the infinite scroll. I’m getting to that. But first, another quick lesson on Skinnerian psychology is necessary.
The Variable-Ratio Reinforcement Schedule
Skinner formulated several types of reinforcement schedules, which are predictable or random patterns of reinforcement following behavior. Among these is the variable-ratio reinforcement schedule, in which reinforcement follows a behavior intermittently, only some of the time.
In his research, Skinner found the variable-ratio schedule to be the most effective in maintaining behavior. Behaviors reinforced by a variable-ratio are the least susceptible to extinction, the most difficult to cease performing. In other words, these behaviors are addictive.
This is because when someone performs a behavior reinforced by a variable-ratio, they don’t know whether or not they will receive reinforcement. But they know it’s possible. Thus, they keep repeating the behavior hoping to be reinforced.
This is quite different from reinforcing a behavior after every time it occurs— what Skinner called continuous reinforcement.
Imagine every time you play a video game, you beat it. This might be good fun at first. It might keep you returning to the game for a little while. But over time, you’ll lose interest. The game will become easy, boring, and, ironically, unrewarding.
This game is reinforced continuously. Every time you play, you win. What happens if this game was reinforced instead by a variable-ratio schedule? What happens if every time you play the game, you win only some of the time?
The game becomes all the more exciting. When you sit down to play, you don’t know whether or not you will win, but you know it’s possible that you can. And it’s that possibility of reinforcement that keeps you returning to the game over and over again.
Therefore, it’s when the video game is paired with a variable-ratio schedule that it becomes highly addictive and players spend more time on it. This is why designers don’t want to make their games either too easy or too difficult — in both cases players will soon quit playing. Instead, game designers want to find that sweet spot where it is possible to win, but not guaranteed.
This is the same reason why scrolling through social media is so addictive. It’s even the reason why you’re scrolling through this article. There’s a possibility that whatever I say next might be something interesting, humorous, or otherwise valuable to you in some way.
The Slot Machine in Your Pocket
The most commonly cited example of the variable-ratio reinforcement schedule is the slot machine. Slot machines function on the same principle as the addictive video game example—there is a possibility, not a guarantee, of winning.
“Here’s the unfortunate truth: Several billion people have a slot machine in their pocket,” writes Tristan Harris, former design ethicist at Google and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology. “When we pull our phone out of our pocket, we’re playing a slot machine to see what notifications we have received. When we swipe down our finger to scroll the Instagram feed, we’re playing a slot machine to see what photo comes next.”
Scrolling through social media is, like a slot machine, reinforced intermittently through a variable-ratio schedule. You keep scrolling through your feed because of that possibility of reinforcement. If you swipe one more time you might see a photo of your crush. One more time, there might be an ad for a product you want. One more time, a tweet from your favorite celebrity. One more time, a video from your favorite YouTuber.
“If you want to maximize addictiveness,” Harris says, “all tech designers need to do is link a user’s action (like pulling a lever) with a variable reward.”
But unlike with slot machines, where the behavior is an aggressive pull-down of the entire arm, with social media it’s just a swipe of your thumb on a screen or two fingers on a trackpad. This ease of the behavior paired with variable-ratio reinforcement is why scrolling through social media is so addictive.
How to Stop Mindless Scrolling
In an episode of the original TV series The Twilight Zone, a man named Franklin tries his luck on a slot machine while on vacation in Las Vegas. Shocked, he wins on his first go. While Franklin is determined to save all his earnings and not gamble them away, he is seduced to keep playing the slot machine when he imagines—rather unfortunately—that the machine is an animate monster.
Franklin becomes addicted. He becomes obsessed with the machine. He knows there’s a possibility that he might win — after all, he has before — so he keeps pulling the lever again and again, hoping for another grand reward. In the end, he wastes his entire vacation and all his initial earnings on the slot machine.
How do we stop ourselves from becoming like Franklin, addicted to the infinite scroll and its variable-ratio rewards?
You could delete all social media, buy a dumb phone, or turn your smartphone into a Light Phone. For most people though, these aren’t desired options. Real change from addiction begins with awareness — that is, awareness of the reasons for the addiction.
Why are we addicted to scrolling? Because it’s easy and because it’s reinforced intermittently. Knowing these reasons, we can reverse them so that scrolling becomes more difficult and is reinforced more consistently.
First, to make scrolling more difficult we need to increase the friction between us and the behavior.
In James Clear’s book Atomic Habits, he suggests a simple way to cure TV addiction — unplug the TV. Every time you feel the urge to watch something, say the name of the show or movie you want to watch aloud before you plug in the TV. This eliminates the likelihood of spending all evening browsing Netflix trying to find something to watch.
The same principle can be applied to break the habit of scrolling through social media. Delete Instagram and only re-download it when you set a timer or say aloud that you will only spend 30 minutes on it. Block YouTube on your browser and only allow the website when you can say aloud the YouTuber’s name whose new video you want to watch.
Second, while the variable-ratio reinforcement schedule will always be apart of the infinite scroll, there are ways to limit its effectiveness by making the reinforcement more consistent.
Instead of filtering through posts you don’t care about to get to those you do, only follow people and organizations whose posts are truly meaningful to you.
This will create a feed with more consistent reinforcement. You will see more of what you’re interested in and less of what you’re not. In theory, by taking this step you’ll spend less time scrolling because you won’t have all the unwanted junk to sort through to find those occasional bits of desired reinforcement.
In sum, the infinite scroll is designed to be addictive. It’s designed, through application of the variable-ratio reinforcement schedule and ease of use, to keep you on your phone.
But you don’t have to give in. You don’t have to waste so much time scrolling into oblivion. You can break the habit.
Sources and Further Reading/Viewing
- “Social Media Apps are ‘Deliberately’ Addictive to Users” on the BBC.
- “B. F. Skinner: Operant Conditioning” and “Schedules of Reinforcement.” Overviews on the Skinnerian concepts in this article.
- “The Slot Machine in Your Pocket” by Tristan Harris. Harris argues that many other design features of apps utilize the variable-ratio reinforcement schedule, not just the infinite scroll.
- “The Fever,” episode 17, season 1 of The Twilight Zone. It’s on Netflix, so watch with caution. The infinite scroll awaits you.
- Atomic Habits by James Clear. An in-depth guide on how to establish good habits and break destructive ones.
- “Turn Your iPhone into the Light Phone” by me. How I dumbed down my phone to be used as little as possible.
