The 5 simple tweaks to make social media less addictive
The 5 simple tweaks to make social media less addictive
We’ve all been there: lying on the sofa at an awkward angle, phone in hand, scrolling through reels. It’s so easy to lose track of time, and so hard to disconnect.
Big tech has been hooking us on their products, and they can no longer deny it. Meta and Google recently lost a landmark court case in the United States. A jury ruled the firms deliberately designed their social media platforms to be addictive, resulting in real harm to the young plaintiff.
So, what are the design features that make us so addicted? And what would social media look like without them?
Here's a version of a generic social media app. You'll likely recognise many of its features.
There's a feed you can scroll endlessly, algorithms push highly personalised content to the top, and incessant notifications demand attention.
These features aren't for your benefit. They're keeping you on the app for longer because that makes them money.
One technique is through notifications about what our friends are sharing, or that there's something new we may be interested in on the feed. This constant barrage reduces our ability to focus, and makes us more likely to respond to future notifications.
One technique is through notifications about what our friends are sharing, or that there's something new we may be interested in on the feed.
This constant barrage reduces our ability to focus, and makes us more likely to respond to future notifications.
While you may still want genuinely important notifications from friends, it takes effort to limit them. Thankfully, your smartphone likely has options to help you control notifications and reduce their choke-hold on your attention.
Let's remove the likes counter and distracting notifications.
Feeling FOMO? Notifications have become something we expect and look forward to. It gives us a dopamine fix from seeing new content and engagement.
Snapchat takes this further with disappearing messages that have to be checked within a time limit, a feature you'll now find on many platforms.
Get rid of it, and there’s one less reason to open the app again.
And then there's the algorithm, promoting highly emotive content to the top, drawing more eyeballs and making the social media organisations more money. We've known since the notorious Facebook experiment more than a decade ago that social media can affect our emotions, and that being made angry increases our engagement.
Engagement doesn't just increase revenue for big tech, though. It keeps us coming back. This can be likened to cigarette companies adding chemicals that made cigarettes more addictive.
We don't need this. Bye rage-bait!
Then there are filters. It used to just be a quick wash or silly ears-and-tail, designed to be fun.
But what was harmless in the early days has made everyone else more beautiful and glamourous, and us more insecure as a result. This effect is particularly strong for teenage girls.
Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Meta, made a deliberate choice to keep them on Instagram in 2020 even after being told that filters had negative impacts on teen girls.
Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Meta, made a deliberate choice to keep them on Instagram in 2020 even after being told that filters had negative impacts on teen girls.
We're killing the filters. They won't be missed.
Finally, we have the big bad: infinite scroll. This feature is so addictive, the European Union is considering an outright ban. In the early days, when you'd seen all the new content, your social media feeds would state you were "up to date" and to check back later – a gentle nudge to go and do something else.
Finally, we have the big bad: infinite scroll. This feature is so addictive, the European Union is considering an outright ban.
In the early days, when you'd seen all the new content, your social media feeds would state you were "up to date" and to check back later – a gentle nudge to go and do something else.
That nudge is now gone, replaced by a highly effective “dopamine slot machine” that keeps you scrolling.
Infinite scroll wasn't always a part of social media, and doesn't have to be now. Let's bring back finite scrolling.
So now we have a “better” social media app look. It’s simple.
Start by limiting notifications for users or forcing social media companies to make their notifications gentle, and only for very specific items.
Then, disconnect the link between viewed content and advertising dollars, and reprogram the algorithm to stop prioritising highly emotive content.
Finally, remove infinite scroll and place a clear “bottom” on the feed where users are encouraged to stop and do something else.
This removes all the features the Australian eSafety Commissioner has cited as dangerous for teens, which is how we ended up with a hard-to-enforce social media ban for under 16-year-olds.
There’s still a conversation to be had about the content itself and how it might be moderated: AI, the community of people on social media, the law, and expert fact checkers all have a role to play here.
For now, though, we believe that with some simple changes to the interface, social media apps could move from manipulating us and our kids to just being another tool in our arsenal of communication.
Social media could be more like the public square it promised to be in the beginning.
Disclosures
Dana McKay has received money from ACCAN for work on safer social media, and received a Google PhD fellowship in 2016.
Michael Cowling does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Associate Dean, Interaction, Technology and Information, RMIT University
Professor & Director, Hub for Apple Platform Innovation (HAPI), School of Computing Technologies, RMIT University
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