Picture this.
You’re sitting in math class, trying to figure out how the numbers add up, when your phone suddenly vibrates. Maybe, you think, it’s a text from your parents about dinner. Maybe it’s a friend of yours replying to your Snapchat story with a hilarious comment. Maybe it’s Amazon updating you on the status of that sweatshirt you ordered.
All of a sudden, you find yourself focused on that vibration. What could it be? What could cause your phone to vibrate? Surely it’s important, right?
You might find yourself pulling out your phone, checking to see what’s new on its screen. And then, you get distracted. You feel bored in class, so you open TikTok or Instagram Reels, and watch a few. Before you know it, ten minutes have passed, and the class has moved on entirely. Looking around in confusion, you notice other students on their phones, just as oblivious to the world as you were a few seconds ago.
That ten minutes didn’t feel like a long time. Where did it go?
Social media plays a big part in our lives, whether we realize it or not. According to US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, over 95 percent of teens say that they use some form of social media platform, and one third say that they are on one “almost constantly.” When social media’s effects permeate almost every minute of our lives, it’s hard to perceive or avoid the harm they might bring.
Researchers from Rutgers University found that students performed worse on average by about five percent when they were given access to phones and other electronic devices during classes and lectures. Though it may seem insignificant, five percent is a very noteworthy number. It could be the difference between a B+ and an A, or passing and failing a class.
This distraction isn’t coincidental: it’s by design. Social media and short form content are designed with our psychology in mind, down to the smallest detail (for example, many app notifications are red circles, a color that stimulates urgency in the human brain). Because social media earns money from advertising, social media companies intentionally design their apps to be as engaging and addictive as possible.
The inherent principle behind scrolling – the search for interesting and engaging content – is deeply related to our evolutionary design. The human brain is structured to process as much new information as it can and actively seek out more. This explains how, for example, if you’re walking down the sidewalk, you might immediately register the form of a dog running across somebody’s lawn. Your brain notices that the dog is new in the environment and singles it out.
This principle has a very important evolutionary purpose. It’s the same principle that helped keep our ancestors alive, and allowed them to detect subtle changes in the environment around them. However, it is a significant factor in what makes social media so addictive, by preying on the brain’s natural tendency to seek new information. This idea may also be part of the reason why many teens experience anxiety or fear over missing out on things.
Many people who use social media might find themselves “doomscrolling” – simply scrolling endlessly down their feed – even if they don’t want to. The layout of an app like Instagram scrolls infinitely, procedurally generating content as you scroll farther. Often, those who find themselves doomscrolling may feel trapped, unable to pull themselves away from the screen, which may cause feelings of anxiety or self-loathing.
The infinite scrolling system has a definitive effect on how people interact with the app. By removing gaps in the stimulation your brain receives using a seamless, endless scroll, Instagram keeps you engaged by removing some of your own agency to pull yourself away. With no definitive endpoint to the scrolling, it gives the user a more frictionless environment, which allows one to slip even further down the hole.
The way that our neural pathways work is based on a well-known chemical called dopamine, which is part of reward pathways in the brain, and crucial to experiencing feelings such as happiness. According to Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke, our brains release dopamine as a reward when we make connections with others, such as those afforded by social media. Dopamine release is also part of our brain’s habit of seeking new information.
However, Lembke warns that stimulating too much dopamine can have harmful effects. Addictive drugs elevate dopamine levels in the brain, producing euphoric highs where users feel overly happy and satisfied. When we compare ourselves to others on social media, we can feel overwhelmed by those comparisons, and sink into a depressive state; psychologists call this “learned helplessness.”
Comparison on social media has already been proven to have negative effects on mental health, and may inspire negative emotions like jealousy. Combined with the reward-based brain pathways that social media forms, users may feel the urge to pick the phone back up right after putting it down, both as a way to avoid negative feelings (even though social media causes them) and because of the reward pathways. These same dopamine-related reward pathways can be seen in drug addicts, who may experience drug cravings when not high.
Tristan Harris, a former Google employee, explains that social media operates based off of a “variable reward system.” By rewarding you at random and unpredictable times with things that engage your attention, such as a funny or interesting post, social media uses that unpredictability to pull you in. It operates off of the principle that if you scroll long enough, you’ll eventually find something that you enjoy, further reinforcing the scrolling behavior. This idea is often associated with gambling tendencies, due to slot machines operating on similar principles.
In an interview with The Guardian, Chris Marcellino, who worked at Apple and designed the iPhone’s push notifications, says that he never intended for it to become so addictive. When he worked on the iPhone, he pictured the gift of connection and social interaction that the phone would bring. He realized only afterwards that the same principles used to make the phone engaging were the same concepts applied in gambling and drug usage. After retraining as a neurosurgeon and moving out of the tech industry, he expressed mixed feelings on the inherently exploitative design of social media.
“It is not inherently evil to bring people back to your product,” Marcellino said to The Guardian. “It’s capitalism.”
There are quite literally hundreds of further, subtle nuances in the designs of our phones and apps that are designed to keep our attention, from the positive reinforcement of its liking system to the eye tracking and color theories that it uses to direct our attention across the screen. But, what are some things that you can do to avoid being sucked into the whirlpool?
1: Limit your screen time. Though this seems obvious, setting hard limits for social media usage is crucial if you feel trapped by a doomscrolling habit. Because the infinite scrolling system is designed to remove gaps in the attention you pay to your phone, creating those gaps yourself can be a helpful way to break away.
2: Turn off your social media notifications. Social media notifications are also a variable-reward system, rewarding you every so often with engaging content if you interact with them. This allows social media apps to seize your attention, using notifications that are purposefully designed to distract you and convince you to engage with them. By going into your phone settings and turning off distracting notifications, you can prevent social media from suddenly popping up on your phone and hijacking your attention.
3: Try new things, and pay attention to the world around you. One reason that a lot of teens find themselves scrolling is because they’re bored, less engaged with the world around them, or want to escape into the comfort of their phones. It harms productivity and attention in environments where focus is necessary, such as in school or while driving. By finding new ways to engage yourself, you can more successfully ignore the addictive urge to use your phone.
Although our phones do serve useful purposes and keep us connected with the world, the addictive nature of social media can be harmful to multiple facets of daily life. Being informed about how our phones are designed to keep us engaged allows us to see the bigger picture, and keep our mental and physical health in mind.
As society moves further into a new technological age, maintaining a healthy relationship with our technology is ever-important for our mental and physical health. By keeping their interactions with their phones healthy, students can stay connected with the world around them and protect themselves from the psychological side effects, which all starts with being informed.
