Studies follow one another which show that the mechanisms used by social networks like TikTok and Instagram to always hook their users a little more cause an addiction comparable to that of alcohol or certain drugs. A new version of its application currently being tested promises to swing TikTok squarely on the side of hard drugs.
This is doubly worrying given the popularity of TikTok, especially among younger internet users. At the end of April, two out of three users of this application for sharing short video loops were under the age of 24, according to the same data from ByteDance, its parent company.
The popularity of TikTok with the rising generation, as we know, irritates the leaders of Meta (the ex-Facebook) to the highest degree, who would like to observe the same kind of demographic curve among Instagram’s customers. Meta, traditionally, does not hesitate to copy its rivals. Already, last fall, we learned that the Californian company intended to go even further and create an outright “Instagram for children”, which would undoubtedly be devoid of any content deemed inappropriate for minors, but which would not use less the same mechanisms that create an addiction that can become unhealthy for some Internet users.
To quote a popular meme on these same social networks: everything is fine here, it’s only the house that’s on fire.
TikTok pure juice
The American author Laura McKowena published last fall in the New York Times a long essay about her very difficult relationship with Instagram. His case is special, because Mme McKowen began her career in an environment where alcohol was flowing, which pushed her towards alcoholism. She happily pulled through and now runs an international support network for ex-alcoholics called The Luckiest Club.
She does not hide it: she also suffered for a long time from an addiction to Instagram, which she compares to alcoholism. The misery and exhaustion caused each day by the anguish of constantly seeing more popular or more beloved publications than his. The sudden surge of joy caused by a complete stranger’s positive comment on one of her posts. Life is more beautiful in photos and on social networks than in the daily routine…
TikTok differs a bit from Instagram in that the network promotes consumption more than content production among its younger followers. We slide the finger and quickly a new video appears. The network wants to be playful and entertaining, and it relies on very short videos to provoke constant engagement: quickly a video, quickly we like (or not), quickly the next video.
A few thumb movements later and you have just spent hours in front of your mobile. Every day, users spend an average of almost an hour scrolling through videos on TikTok. A third spend one to two hours a day there.
It’s a lot. But that’s not enough for the leaders of TikTok, who are testing new functions these days, which aim to make its application even more addictive.
The news was first fanned by users and then picked up by the American specialized media. TikTok could have a clear mode — a “pure mode”, so to speak. In this mode, everything superfluous is eliminated. No text, no description of videos, no buttons to like, comment or share. No form of interface other than the videos, which we scroll through one after the other.
All forms of distraction are eliminated to ensure the maximum impact of clips consumed by increasingly captivated viewers. Like a bag of chips that only contains perfectly round and wavy chips, salted just the way you like them, always full to the brim.
We have found a way to make millions of young Internet users around the world dependent. And they may soon be offered an even purer version of this addiction-creating machine.
To paraphrase another meme: we don’t always try to increase the time our users spend on our platform, but when we do, we don’t hesitate to take inspiration from the hardest drugs on the market.
The secret is in the sauce
We can blame TikTok and Instagram for encouraging people to always spend more time consuming their content. But the thing is, they’re just duplicating a business model that’s ubiquitous in the digital world.
Visitors who spend more time on a site or in an application, this allows advertising to be sold at a better price. Visitors scrolling through more successive pieces of content, this creates more opportunities to show them that ad.
Distributing more advertising sold at a higher price is obviously a great way to increase revenue. On the Web and on mobile, it is the main – if not the only – source of income for many sites and applications that are accessible completely free of charge.
Because to quote an adage that has also become a meme on the Internet: if it’s free, it’s because the product is you. Or your children.