Is slot machine psychology used in social media? Sites like Facebook and Twitter have many of us checking our phones several times a day. Justin Rosenstein—co-founder of software company Asana and former employee of both Google and Facebook—is part of a growing number of individuals speaking out on the addictive nature of social media and the way it has the potential to limit our productivity. Rosenstein is an expert in the field—he was after all the Facebook engineer who created the same ‘like’ button that he now avoids pressing.
One of the Silicon Valley heavyweights joining Rosenstein in his critique of social media is Tristan Harris. Formerly a design ethicist at Google, Harris is the director and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology as well as the cofounder of the Time Well Spent movement. Harris believes that the design of social media applications apply some of the same principles that can make other forms of entertainment, like gambling and slot machine psychology, exceedingly alluring. He has previously called smartphones the ‘slot machine in your pocket’ and is campaigning for stronger ethics in Silicon Valley, as well as the tech industry more generally.
“Each time you’re swiping down, it’s like a slot machine,” he says. “You don’t know what’s coming next. Sometimes it’s a beautiful photo. Sometimes it’s just an ad.” What slot machines and social media share are variable rewards. This feeds into the ‘pull to refresh’ function. Every time we pull down to refresh our timeline—whether that’s on Facebook, Twitter or even by email—we don’t know what we’ll discover. That could be a new email from work, lots of surprising ‘likes’ or even disappointment should there be nothing fresh to excite us.
Read more about the use of slot machine psychology with social media at We Heart.
