The Infinite Scroll effect — How design can hack your brain

And why tech companies want to get your attention

Image by Keith Lobo on Pexels

You might not know what Infinite Scroll is. But you have certainly used it — in a daily basis — as it is everywhere. You finish an episode on Netflix, and the next one starts right away. You watch one Tik Tok video, and the next one pops out before you can quit it. You listen to one song on Spotify — and the next… you already know. Infinite Scroll is here to block any slight chance to consciously think about if you still want to consume any content. You opened up Instagram just to check what your friend posted — Oh god… half an hour is already gone — or maybe you’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of kitten videos and lost an hour — or three.

In today’s digital age, social media is an increasingly important part of our daily lives. It has revolutionized communications, to the extent that it is now our preferred medium of everyday communication. Social media has completely changed our modern societies. From the early launches of barely sketched digital services as Messenger or Facebook to their modern successors, there has been a significant leap in quality. The digital services have been improved and enhanced in every single feature one can imagine —connectivity, speed, design or utility among others. However, most of them have failed us — people.

These early improvements were mostly led to contribute to a better society while democratizing technology and enhancing our performance. Yet, at some point, this wish for social-centered improvements turned into income and user-engagement boosting ones. Since then, all apps and algorithms are trying to get our attention by implementing some specific design techniques to retain our attention from a sea full of possibilities.

Infinite Scroll is one of the most successful ones — ever.

Never before have a handful of tech designers had such control over the way billions of us think, act, and live our lives. — The social dilemma in Netflix.

Infinite Scroll

Infinite Scroll is a technique that loads more content as a user scrolls down a page…