What Makes Social Media So Addictive

Streaks keep you coming back day after day. (Sabrina Chen)

Streaks

Students are probably most familiar with streaks on Snapchat, called Snapstreaks. This mechanism keeps track of how many days you’ve used a product – in Snapchat’s case, it’s the number of consecutive days you and someone else have conversed through sending photos. The inventor of streaks, Quentin Zervaas, originally intended his invention to be used on an app called Streaks, which encouraged users to complete tasks by creating streaks for them. But social media platforms quickly realized how it could be repurposed to create addictive behaviors. Streaks pressure you to not “break the chain” by continuing to use their platform every day. According to a poll of 94 St. Mary’s students, around 54% of Snapchat users have sent meaningless photos just to keep up a streak, instead of actually conversing online. Forty-five percent of them have given their passcodes to friends to continue their streaks when they couldn’t do it themselves.
Push notifications compel you to open your apps. (Sabrina Chen)

Notifications

Notifications started in the same harmless way as streaks. In the 2000s, phones had an LED light that flashed when a user received a notification, which was either a missed call or voicemail. Email, a new form of communication at the time, was hard to check because they could only be sent when the app was opened. To prevent this time-consuming process, a company called Research in Motion invented push notifications, which allowed users to see that they’d been sent an email instantly. Nowadays, every buzz and ping from your phone lets you know that you’ve received a push notification from an app, compelling you to open it. Because of this, social media platforms send a plethora of notifications to try and get you to open their apps as often as possible. In our poll, the majority of students surveyed said they feel that they get more notifications from social media platforms than other apps.
Infinite scrolling makes the time fly by. (Sabrina Chen)

Scrolling

Much like streaks and notifications, scrolling was an innocent creation meant to make users’ experience easier on website pages. Finding Google’s multiple search pages frustrating, Aza Raskin invented the infinite scroll, so users could see all their results without having to click. Naturally, social media platforms weaponized the well-intentioned creation. Because of this, Raskin regrets inventing infinite scroll in the first place. Now, it’s one of the biggest contributors to social media addiction. After swiping up, new content plays immediately, making it harder for your brain to process whether or not you want to keep watching. Short videos can make you feel like you’re not spending much time on the app, but in reality, the time adds up. Over 40% of St. Mary’s students surveyed said they scroll five or more hours a week. Every time you scroll and see an appealing reel or post, dopamine is released, and you feel a rush of pleasure and motivation to find another enticing one. The longer you’re scrolling, the harder it is to break this cycle, leading to addiction.
Algorithms keep you hooked by learning what you like. (Sabrina Chen)

Personalization

Personalization on social media platforms has been around for a long time, starting first by simply showing posts users had recently seen. In 2009, though, Facebook created a personalized news feed, where the algorithm would analyze the likes, comments and shares of the user to select what content Facebook would display. By 2016, all major social media apps – including Instagram and X – adopted this personalization technique. The personalization of reels and posts is a major reason why scrolling can be so addictive. Every swipe, like, comment, rewatch, save and repost is recorded by the app’s algorithm, along with the content you share with your friends and the time you spend watching each reel and post. Every interaction is then used to curate content for you, making it harder for you to pull away from the app.

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It’s In Our Nature

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