The average social media user spends 2 hours and 24 minutes on social media platforms each day. This number varies from country to country, and by age group, with Gen Z spending the most time. No one is likely surprised by these numbers because, after all, who hasn’t gotten sucked into doomscrolling after a long day? But there’s a reason so many people fall into spending hours each day on these platforms—they’re designed to capture and extend our attention.
Our brains react to social media the same way they do to addictive substances and activities. The features that drive these responses in people’s systems have been built to do just that—keep people hooked. This keeps them coming back to the app so they can benefit from increased engagement rates, ad views, and user data. What are these features, and why are they so effective in retaining attention? Let’s take a look.
The Allure of the Infinite Scroll
Social media platforms began primarily as a way to connect with friends, family, and acquaintances. Over time, however, another use arose: the ability to consume content from influencers and creators—people we’ve never met but whose posts we enjoy engaging with. This led platforms to create feeds where we can scroll through content from those we know and don’t know. This creates a subconscious hook: we don’t know what’s coming next. The uncertainty of not knowing fills us with anticipation, keeping us engaged to satisfy our curiosity, leading to lost hours spent scrolling. This is the same phenomenon that keeps us binge-watching shows and unable to put down a book.
Captivating Design Features
Beyond the anticipation of what comes next, social media has built-in features that keep us scrolling, like autoplaying videos. This automatic content scrolling removes natural stopping or disengagement cues, making it difficult for us to put our phones down. Layered on top of our automatic pull into endless content are the notifications and metrics that social media apps deliver, such as likes, comments, saves, and views. Whenever we see these notifications or metrics, we get a dopamine boost, a feel-good hormone, keeping us engaged. When we’re not using the app, the desire to check these notifications and metrics drives us to open the app to see how a post is performing, which in turn brings us back to that infinite scroll of endless content.
There’s also the powerful allure of personalized feeds thanks to the infamous social media algorithms.
Algorithmic Curation and Personalization
Social media algorithms build a unique experience for each user based on their past behaviours and interactions within the app. These algorithms tailor the content that shows up in our home feeds on Facebook and Instagram and the For You Page (FYP) on TikTok. This pairs novelty with personalized content, making it a satisfying experience that, like those random notifications, releases dopamine. Personalized content creates a more engaging user experience that reduces user fatigue, keeping people active on the platform for longer periods.
Beyond Social Media: Mobile Games & Micro-Rewards
These engaging features have influenced more than just the design and development of social media. They have also played a role in making online and mobile games more engaging, ranging from Block Blast! and Candy Crush to online gambling platforms like casinos and sportsbooks.
Mobile games offer rewards that operate similarly to push notifications, making the experience more engaging and rewarding. This keeps us coming back to avoid missing out on things like daily login rewards. As we play, we’ll also be rewarded with loot boxes, keeping us on the platform and playing longer. These platforms also offer design elements that resemble what we might find at casinos, like bright, attention-grabbing colours that capture and hold our attention. They tap into the same neurological processes that make social media so irresistible and habit-forming.
The Neuroscience of Intermittent Reinforcement, Novelty, and Rewarding Experiences
Beneath features like infinite scrolling and personalization lie deeper neurological processes, and these are what make social media so addictive. The notifications, curated content, and automatic scrolling reward us with the release of dopamine. This hormone is associated with positive feelings, and we’re hardwired at an instinctual level to seek out dopamine-releasing activities. We developed this base process to help ensure our personal survival and that of the human species.
When we engage in activities that allow us to survive and feel good—like eating food, developing social connections, and entering romantic relationships—we’re rewarded with the release of dopamine, making us feel good about these activities and actively seek them out. But in the modern world, this process is activated by activities that, when unmoderated, lead to problematic behaviours that disrupt our daily lives, which is why dopamine is linked to addictive behaviours. It’s also why social media and online entertainment can feel so addictive and why they are now recognized as real addictions, just like gambling and drug use, by mental health professionals.
The Cost of Engagement
As social media platforms work to hold our attention, a real human cost has begun to emerge, with social media addiction being at the extreme end. Even those not experiencing addiction can suffer consequences from this attention-capturing design. Our increased use of social media negatively affect our attention spans, making it harder for us to focus and impacting the quality of our work. They can also disrupt our sleep cycles and fuel anxious thoughts and behaviours related to the ever-present feeling of FOMO and constant comparisons of our lives to what we see in other people’s content. Although we may understand that such content tends to present the highlights of their lives and not the reality, we may still end up losing time to these platforms, reducing real and meaningful in-person interactions and real connections. While these adverse effects can impact all groups of people, they are particularly concerning in younger age groups, whose brains are still developing and are more susceptible to the negative impacts.
It’s essential to be aware of the negative side of social media and to exercise healthy boundaries with social media from a young age. Healthy boundaries can include having a strict cut-off time for using social media platforms, setting screen time limits on our devices, and turning off notifications. These small shifts can help us keep our social media use in check, allowing us to have a healthier relationship with our devices.