The Devil’s UX Dictionary: Addictiveness
Although the goal of User Experience Design is to keep users engaged and satisfied with a product, there are occasions when the retention of interest can cross the line between engagement and actual harm. Design plays a vital role in how and when this line can be crossed, and it’s Design Ethics that aid the designer to differentiate between what aids the user and what is capable of damaging their mental and physical health.
On face value, it would be easy to dismiss Ofir Turel and Antoine Bechara’s much-cited study that claimed Facebook addiction is comparable to cocaine addiction as hyperbolic. But, shockingly, their evidence revealed that the MRI brain scans of Facebook users demonstrated a reduction in the grey matter in the amygdala that correlated with their level of addiction to it. “This pruning away of brain matter,” they state, “is similar to the type of cell death seen in cocaine addicts.”
With psychologists estimating that 5–10% of Americans are addicted to social media, and with the number of social media users predicted to reach 4.4 billion by 2025, the significance of having a possible 220–440 million people worldwide neurologically impaired by social media should be of great concern.
Addictive by Design?
The whole philosophy behind the concept of Social Media is that of retaining the user’s interest and attention. In 2017, Facebook’s founding president, Sean Parker, publicly stated that the company set out to consume as much user time as possible, claiming that it was “exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.” What it actually exploits, however, is not just psychological in nature, but neurological, because Facebook’s addictiveness is attributed to the dopamine-producing effects of positive interactions such as likes and shares, which provide the user with the feelings of reward associated with success and approval.
Not even the designers who came up with these features are immune from the addictive effects of their own work. Leah Pearlman, co-inventor of Facebook’s Like button, says she became addicted to Facebook after she started to base her sense of self-worth on the number of likes she had, saying:
“When I need validation — I go to check Facebook. I’m feeling lonely, ‘Let me check my phone.’ I’m feeling insecure, ‘Let me check my phone.’ I noticed that I would post something that I used to post and the ‘like’ count would be way lower than it used to be. Suddenly, I thought I’m actually also kind of addicted to the feedback.”
Another example of a tool that contributed to social media’s addictiveness is the infinite scroll, which enables users to scroll endlessly without ever needing to click. Its inventor, Aza Raskin, expresses regret over its role in inspiring compulsive behaviour, but says it was never his intention to get people hooked. The problem, he explains, was that designers are encouraged to create addictive features by the large tech companies that employ them.
“In order to get the next round of funding, in order to get your stock price up, the amount of time that people spend on your app has to go up,” he said. “So, when you put that much pressure on that one number, you’re going to start trying to invent new ways of getting people to stay hooked.”
The Effects of Social Media Addiction
The effects of social media addiction are much the same as any other form of addiction. It causes users to demonstrate behavioural, cognitive, and emotional preoccupation, involves platform usage to modify mood, leads to increased levels usage of tolerance, can cause withdrawal symptoms and relapses, and can bring significant interpersonal and professional problems.
With overuse of Social Media having been proved to cause detrimental effects to the brain—as well as low self-esteem, anxiety disorders, depression, disrupted sleep patterns, decreased physical activity and a reduced ability to empathize with others—the impact it can have on children, whose brains are still developing, is of even greater concern. Of the cerebral deficiencies discovered in Turel and Bechara’s study, social media addiction was associated with a reward system that was smaller in size, suggesting that the effect of addiction in children is one of stunting the development of the part of their brains that controls their reward system. As smaller reward systems can process associations much faster than better developed ones, the potential for future addiction is therefore greater in a system that doesn’t develop properly.
Although our reward systems begin to become more activated and well-developed by adolescence, the part of the dopaminergic system linked with self-control isn’t fully developed until the age of 21. This means that even if a young person has remained free of addictions before becoming a teenager, the introduction of one at such a vital, formative age can have permanent effects on their ability to control their behaviours.
As well as having poorer self-control, research has shown that adolescents who habitually use social media from a young age also have poorer social interaction skills. With this comes greater social anxiety, higher rates of depression, negative body-image, and lowered levels of empathy and compassion towards others. While not directly linked to issues of addiction, there are a wealth of other negative behaviours associated with social media use in adolescents and young adults that those spending a disproportionate amount of time connected to social media platforms are at greater risk of succumbing to. These include, but are not limited to, elevated rates of poor self-esteem and eating disorders due to constant exposure to unrealistic body images, partaking in risky behaviours by accepting dangerous social media challenges, cyberbullying, gang-related violence, the sharing of explicit images and higher rates of suicide.
Solutions
It’s natural for companies to want their users to engage with their products, and it seems to be the case that many of the elements that would later turn out to be addictive were designed to enhance engagement rather than steal users’ capacity to operate as effective human beings. But when an increasing amount of evidence suggests the line between engagement and harm has been well and truly breached, it’s time for the senior executives of these companies to take responsibility for the damage done by their products and ensure that ethical design standards are adhered to.
As far as designers are concerned, the increasing trend to study the psychology of persuasion to make products more central to a user’s attention should be approached with an ethically educated stance. Many designers are genuinely interested in making products more usable and appealing to people in a way that can improve their lives, but to ensure they retain good vision of how this can go too far, they need to acknowledge the fact that they have the power to cause harm whether they intended to or not.
