131–140 of 276 posts
The word “addiction” is overused in my opinion. Bad habits are not addictions. An addiction is something which actively harms you, but you can’t stop doing it. Yes, you can argue social media is harmful, but it generally does not cause people to lose their jobs or spend all their money.
By the way, are you arguing that smoking is not an addiction?
I own https://www.executeprogram.com, which has interactive in-browser courses on various software development technologies. Currently they all cover languages, more or less: TypeScript, SQL, various JS topics, regexes. (Disclosure: it costs money after you finish your 16th lesson.)
Almost all (maybe literally all) of our competitors are amenable to binging. It's true of books, video learning platforms, and most/all other interactive learning platforms.
Execute Program is very intentionally non-bingeable. When you start a course, you get 5 lessons on the first day, then it stops you and tells you to come back tomorrow. On the next day, you get some brief reviews of yesterday's lessons, then a few new lessons, then it stops you again until the next day. That cadence repeats until you finish the course. You can't binge/cram even if you want to.
(A bit more technical detail: it's a spaced repetition system with exponential review intervals, similar to those used for language learning in e.g. WaniKani and Anki. But it also has a lot of fine-grained knowledge of its own course structure, so it can use reviews to intelligently unlock different lessons depending on how the user performed on their reviews.)
Occasionally, we get support email from new users who don't like this. They want to cram a whole course in a day. But cramming is a very time-inefficient way to learn, so this is self-defeating! Since launch, we've had good success adjusting the app's behavior and internal explanations to reduce these complaints.
However, we still get emails from long-term users who appreciate the time limitations. Generally these fall into two categories:
1. Users like that an enforced break before the reviews provides tangible evidence that "yes, I genuinely understood yesterday's lessons". If we allowed cramming, that reassurance wouldn't exist; it's too easy to succeed at a review when you just finished the lesson 30 seconds ago.
2. Users like that the usage limits remove a source of anxiety and worry. You do your reviews and lessons, you finish, and then you wait until tomorrow. There's no temptation to think "I really should've done 10 lessons today instead of 5; I'm so lazy".
It's still possible for a very dedicated user to do all of our courses in parallel within their first monthly billing cycle. (Median course start-to-finish time is 8-18 days depending on the course.) So this scheme doesn't make users pay us more than they would otherwise. And they're spending the same amount of wall-clock time that they'd spend if they crammed all of the lessons in one day. That makes it pure win: they memorize the topics more deeply, they worry less, and they get those benefits for no extra time expenditure. The only exception I can think of would be people who think "I must get exposure to all TypeScript syntax and semantics before tomorrow morning, even if that significantly reduces my ability to remember what I learned."
Obviously I'm very biased here, and the goals that we're optimizing for don't even exist in most other product spaces. But I thought it would be nice to have a counterexample to "engagement at all costs".
This kind of semantic game has to stop. If you water down the meaning of "addiction" enough then you can say that anything is "addictive" and with that, you can carry over all the connotations of the word. Then people start saying "I'm addicted to coffee" and "I'm addicted to bread" and before you know it people saying "I'm addicted to heroin" are met with "well, why don't you just stop, like I did with coffee for a…
To be honest, I still don't understand how people use the word. Am I addicted to water? I have nasty physiological reactions if I stop using it. What about sleep? Is that a bad habit I should get rid of?
Withdrawal isn't actually required for someone to be addicted to something; they just have to want to keep doing it, even though it's obviously bad for them.
This definition still has flaws; am I "addicted" to eating unhealthy food? Etc.
Posts like this completely misunderstand how companies like Facebook think and operate. As a result, they cause people to fight boogymen instead of working toward positive change. Yes, using Facebook instead of doing something like talking in person or reading a book is probably worse for you in the long run. But most people don't do those things instead of Facebook. Instead they use Tiktok. Or watch TV. Or read Teen…
So you're a BAT scientist.
Here's an anecdote about what happens when you design a product in the opposite way. I own https://www.executeprogram.com , which has interactive in-browser courses on various software development technologies. Currently they all cover languages, more or less: TypeScript, SQL, various JS topics, regexes. (Disclosure: it costs money after you finish your 16th lesson.) Almost all (maybe literally all) of our competitor…
Social media requires time from those users - they want to know you, crack you open psychologically, so they can then be better at selling you stuff (and, incidentally, pass all that info on to 3 letter agencies for their population modelling etc). That is a different model. They want you to be deeply engaged for a long time. The longer the better.
I don't like the current trend of social media apps burying users under push notifications, calls to action, and other engagement hooks. However, there's a second, parallel problem adding fuel to the fire: The more we talk about overindulgence in social media (or Netflix, or video games, or fast food) as an act perpetrated by evil corporations on us helpless individuals, the less sense of individual agency we give ou…
This is going to make a world of difference the first time people try it. I started monitoring screen time/configuring notifications about a year ago, and made me feel a lot better about the time I spent on my phone.
But, all of this assumes that social media should (and will) stay the same as it currently is with addictive never ending feeds and endless notifications.
At the end of last year I sat down thought of what social media could look like if it was designed to be used less, and in a way that would add value to people.
For me, that looked like intentional written reflections, shared with a small circle of close friends and family. To keep me from scrolling, there would be no feed. To keep me from checking my phone, content would rarely be surfaced.
This ended up becoming Sundayy, a mindful social network that you can only check once a week (on Sunday): https://www.sundayy.app
Each day you're prompted to slow down and reflect, but there is no feed of reflections. They're all kept secret, for now. At the end of the week, on Sunday, reflections are revealed. It's a more intimate insight into how people close to you lived their week - day by day and in their own words.
We should definitely bring more awareness to monitoring screen time and curating feeds, but we should also question whether we should have to do any of that at all :)
I don't like the current trend of social media apps burying users under push notifications, calls to action, and other engagement hooks. However, there's a second, parallel problem adding fuel to the fire: The more we talk about overindulgence in social media (or Netflix, or video games, or fast food) as an act perpetrated by evil corporations on us helpless individuals, the less sense of individual agency we give ou…
> I know the common refrain is "Delete Facebook!" but that's the equivalent of abstinence-only education. We need to start talking about how to configure Screen Time on iOS, or how to use Facebook's built-in tools to hide content you don't want to see. I see it more akin to the opioid crisis. Just like drug manufactures shouldn't be pushing opioids as a way to deal with minor pain and depression because they know it…
Exactly like tobacco companies had scientists on the payroll to boost addiction. That is the best and most accurate analogue for Facebook I believe, it’s like smoking, it’s addictive and it externalises its harmful effects.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I know the common refrain is "Delete Facebook!" but that's the equivalent of abstinence-only education Not at all; its more like breaking up with a toxic, manipulative, dishonest partner. There's many more fish in the sea and there's many more ways to heathily socialize than just Facebook. Though I suppose people in abusive relationships often have a sort of Stockholm syndrome where they see no alternatives.
not only do people in abusive relationships often have stockholm syndrome, many people are actually materially dependent on their partner, for example women who have stayed home a long time historically but also still today, and thus they literally cannot leave. Or they have children, or leaving might put others at risk. Point of working through the analogy being, even on an individual basis framing leaving a relatio…
I feel like there's basically two business models in the world - you can be a baker, in which you try to create a product that customers will want on its merits, and work to make the best possible customer experience, or you can be a crack dealer. I think a lot of people think they're bakers, but you gotta realize, the moment you start sprinkling crack in the cookies, you're not selling cookies anymore.
The US bread industry has been slowly jacking up the amount of sugar in their products for decades. That's because almost all large-scale food producers also want their product to be as addictive as crack. Maybe there are "bakers" who are more honest than that, but as a category I don't think there are enough to base a useful analogy on.