What is addictive information?
How are designers using behavioral studies to maintain the user entertained for longer periods of time?
The need for information
On average, an adult from the USA or the UK spends 142 minutes every day on social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter etc.), while those between 16 and 24 spend more than 3 hours a day. In addition, scientists measured the amount of data that our brain absorbs every day and found that we process more than 74 GB of new information daily.
Just as our body needs food, our mind needs to be fed with information every day, and it doesn’t matter if we are absorbing information through social media, reading books, talking to our friends, watching the news or working, we just need consistency and volume of information.
The reason the brain always needs information is a chemical response to its own addiction, an addiction to a neurotransmitter called dopamine. Dopamine is a molecule known as the main character in the brain’s reward system. Every time we are exposed to a rewarding stimulus — ex: eat something tasty, play sports, have sex, use drugs, etc. — our brain responds by increasing the release of dopamine.
We can understand our brain by understanding some of its most important structures. — There are different divisions of the brain and many other areas necessary to fully understand the brain, but for the sake of this article, we are taking on the following simplified summary so that we can continue our discussion (sorry psychologists).
The frontal lobe is the outermost hull of the brain, located mainly in the frontal area of the brain. Its importance lies in complex thoughts and skills, such as language, creativity, learning, attention and even personality traits. This area requires more energy to process data, which is why studying is not easy and requires focus and willingness, but it makes up for it with rich information that is almost never lost.
Increasing your knowledge, acquiring new skills, developing your intellect and learning new things are the result of these tasks and, with them, your brain receives what it likes most: dopamine.
Meanwhile, the brain’s internal structures are responsible for receiving external information: sounds, light, images or any other external stimulus. It processes information, but makes analysis more superfluous. On the other hand, the brain uses less energy to process in this way and receives dopamine as well.
The Seeking/Addiction System
Have you ever felt exhausted at the end of the day, but it looks like you did absolutely nothing at the same time? The reason you feel this way is that you probably received a lot of information throughout the day and your brain is tired of processing all of that data, but — just as food works for our body — not all information is equally rewarding.
“Nutritious” information comes with a lot of hard work, like studying or doing some activity, but likewise, scrolling down on Instagram or watching funny videos on Facebook can reward you and also fill the need for data and be a much easier, more seductive. Social media developers know that very well, there is even a term for the strategy used to keep the user on their platform, and it is called “Addictive Design”, but we will get there soon. Before we get to that, we need to understand the nature of addiction and what we know about it so far, and a strong theory of how the addiction cycle — non-chemical, like drugs and adrenaline — works is the Seeking System theory.
Human beings are driven by a natural instinct — thanks to natural selection — to search for new information, puzzles or challenges, which enabled our ancestors to seek food, supplies and shelter instead of sleeping and waiting for something to happen. A controversial American scientist named Harry Harlow studied the nature of learning using monkeys and putting mechanical puzzles for them to solve. He noted that, even after compensation for the sampling group had ceased, the monkeys continued to perform previously necessary tasks, without being asked to do so. He first coined this term intrinsic motivation; later, psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan wrote an article that revealed Harlow’s studies, describing how human beings see challenges in their daily lives and how we are always looking for new discoveries, new information.
The lower areas of our brain are crucial when we talk about the Seeking System. These areas are responsible for our emotions and are completely related to the upper regions of the brain, which means that the Seeking System, by stimulating the production of dopamine, has a great impact on our daily lives and our choices.
During our childhood, we are mostly driven by the Seeking System, and it has a crucial evolutionary importance in the development of children’s brains. As a child, curiosity is the main effect of the system and, as a result, it makes it easier and more fun to learn by being exposed to new stimuli — new places, images, sounds, people and tasks. A healthy increase consists of different stimuli during childhood, to familiarize our brain to execute new information and to develop learning methods and skills, such as focus and interest. Otherwise, if a person is brought up in front of the television, not being stimulated to new discoveries and just being a passive information-absorbing machine, it is more likely that in the future, that individual will develop learning difficulties and activities that require focus and effort.
Addictive Design
Many ex-employees from big companies like Google, Facebook and Apple, are starting to talk about how some of those places are deliberately studying and creating more addictive interfaces, so they can increase the time spent in their products. According to the VP Product of Nomtek, Peter Mezyk, you can only addict if you form a habit.
‘’Three criteria are required to form a habit: sufficient motivation, an action, and a trigger’’ — Peter Mezyk
• Sufficient motivation
To form a motivation, the user must feel the need to get into the app, FOMO (Fear of missing out) is a great example of that. Here is where the Seeking System comes, making us feel the need of being constantly receiving new informations.
• An action
The action is an important part to form a habit. The user needs to be rewarded to keep doing this it. For example, when you check how many likes your photo has, your brain is rewarded and feels motivated to continue pursuing that feeling.
• A trigger
To connect the motivation to the action, the user needs a reminder to keep doing this cycle, like the sound of a notification or the light on the screen of the phone.
These are the reasons why we always feel a little joy every time an app’s homepage is updated. We don’t know if we will be rewarded with interesting content when the page is reloaded or just with meaningless photographs. Just like a slot machine, most apps give us this expectation of winning or not getting anything, every time we look for an interesting movie on Netflix or scroll down to find a fun video on Youtube, we’re not just absorbing new information , but we are searching, therefore, it activates our Seeking System.
Most social media have infinite content appearing, encouraging the user to continue searching endlessly, and when we close the app, this endless source of new information will continue to increase its content, making us feel that we are missing something that may be relevant (FOMO).
Addictive content
Not only the way the content is delivered, but the nature of the content is important to justify the addiction. For example, if a free book streaming platform were invented, would it be as addictive as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter? Probably not.
As mentioned earlier, not all types of information are equally rewarding. Learning a new skill — a language, an instrument, a new sport, etc. — is usually more stimulating than watching a video on Youtube, but it takes a lot of time and energy to complete these tasks. When faced with the option of an easy or challenging reward, we are likely to choose the former one. This behavior is found more often in depressed and anxious people, and for that reason, in most cases, people who are addicted also have a history of psychological illnesses. That is why junky food, alcohol, drugs and long sleep are very attractive things for a depressed person, it is easily rewarding. The same is true when we are sad or exhausted after a full day of work, we need to feel a little pleasure and we don’t have enough energy to look for it.
As with children, when we get used to easy sources of information, it becomes even more difficult to absorb more complex content, and added to addictive platforms that provide that content, social media and streaming apps have the means and the product necessary to maintain the user increasing the algorithms for large companies, without looking at the damage they may cause.
Conscious design
Due to the enormous pressure from users, some colleagues are trying to alleviate the problem. For example, Mark Zuckerberg is announcing some changes in their platforms under the motto “Time well spent”. Now you can manage your time spent on Facebook and regulate how many minutes you can surf the platform. On Instagram, there is a notification informing that you have seen all the posts from your friends in the last 24 hours. There is a similar system on Facebook to manage time spent on the app.
It is still a very recent movement and there is not enough data to come to a final conclusion, as if it is effectively working or not, but it nevertheless brings up this discussion. Even if it doesn’t show a significant result at the beginning, it illuminates this idea and is a good start for many companies, to be aware of the current difficulties and to try to overcome them in the development of future projects.
If you liked this type of content, check out this article on how design is influencing our evolution as a species. Thank you very much for your attention. :)
