Implications of social media (42)

Social media copies gambling methods 'to create psychological cravings'

Social media platforms are using the same techniques as gambling firms to create psychological dependencies and ingrain their products in the lives of their users, experts warn. These methods are so effective they can activate similar mechanisms as cocaine in the brain, create psychological cravings and even invoke “phantom calls and notifications” where users sense the buzz of a smartphone, even when it isn’t really there.

• “Facebook, Twitter and other companies use methods similar to the gambling industry to keep users on their sites,” said Natasha Schüll, the author of Addiction by Design, which reported how slot machines and other systems are designed to lock users into a cycle of addiction.
• “In the online economy, revenue is a function of continuous consumer attention – which is measured in clicks and time spent.”
• “Social media sites are chock-a-block with unpredictable rewards. They are trying to grab users’ attentions ... to make social media users create a routine and habitually check their screens.”
• phone dependency, driven by high social-media usage, can lead us to think our phone is vibrating, or that we have received a message, even when we haven’t.