The recent landmark social media harm case against Meta and Google in the US has brought attention to the features woven into the fabric of online platforms, such as infinite scroll and autoplay, and their potential to create addicts. As reported by The Guardian, the case has been compared to the cases against tobacco companies in the 1990s.
Mark Lanier, the lawyer prosecuting the case, claimed that the defendants were guilty of "addicting the brains of children". However, Meta and Google denied these allegations, with Meta insisting that providing young people with a "safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work".
Features such as autoplay videos, infinite scrolling, and constantly chirruping alerts have become central to the online experience. Arturo Béjar, a whistleblower who worked in child online safety at Meta until 2021, explained that these features work by providing an "infinite supply" of content that gives users a constant dopamine hit.
The Mechanics of Infinite Scroll
Internal documents surfaced in the trial showed that Meta employees were worried about signs of rising "reward tolerance" among users. One email conversation in 2020 showed an employee referring to Instagram as a "drug". Béjar told the Guardian that users are constantly chasing the next thing, with no bounds on the mechanism.
Sonia Livingstone, a professor of social psychology at the London School of Economics, observed that young people scroll through their feeds quickly, making split-second decisions to swipe or watch. She noted that there is always a feeling that the next thing could be good, and it's only going to be another second or two.
Autoplay and Its Consequences
Videos that autoplay are now ubiquitous, from the Netflix homescreen to YouTube and Instagram. However, according to Béjar, consumers initially hated the feature, finding it disruptive. Despite this, more people watched more videos, and advertisers were happy, but users were unhappy.
Lanier compared endless scroll and autoplay to getting free tortilla chips at a restaurant and not being able to stop eating them. Notifications and likes are other parts of the social media apparatus that keep people, especially children, hooked.
The Psychology of Social Media Addiction
Mark Griffith, professor emeritus of behavioural addiction at Nottingham Trent University, explained that winning the competition for likes is a rewarding thing that gives users a little hit of enjoyment. He noted that social media consumption mostly falls into the categories of "habitual use" and "problematic use".
Giving evidence in the trial, Instagram's chief executive, Adam Mosseri, insisted that social media was not "clinically addictive". People could be addicted to social media in the same way that they could be addicted to a good television show, but that was not the same thing, he said.
The Verdict and Its Implications
Jurors in the case against Meta and Google in Los Angeles began their deliberations, and their verdict will be closely watched as it could redefine tech companies' responsibilities for their platform design. The outcome of this trial will have significant implications for the tech industry and our understanding of social media addiction.
