Social Media Apps Deliberately Being Made to be Addictive, Insiders Say

Silicon Valley insiders recently revealed in an interview that tech companies are intentionally engineering their apps to be as addictive as possible.

Aza Raskin, a former Mozilla and Jawbone employee, likened it to “behavioural cocaine” which tech firms sprinkle all over the interface so that the user keeps coming back and back and back. Raskin formerly worked at Humanized, a computer UI consultancy and is also the inventor of the infinite scroll feature used in most apps today.

Likewise, co-inventor of Facebook’s Like button Leah Pearlman said that she began depending on Facebook for validation and to stave off loneliness and insecurity. She added that the number of likes on her post started to become the basis for her self-worth.

Source: BBC