Meta and Google trial: are infinite scroll and autoplay creating addicts?
It was as “easy as ABC”, claimed the lawyer prosecuting a landmark social media harm case against Meta and Google which heard closing arguments this week,The defendants were guilty, said Mark Lanier, of “addicting the brains of children”,Not true, replied the tech companies,Meta insisted providing young people with a “safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work”,Features such as autoplay videos, infinite scrolling and constantly chirruping alerts woven into the fabric of online platforms were central to the six-week trial in Los Angeles, which has been compared to the cases against tobacco companies in the 1990s.
But how do these features work and what are their consequences? Are they creating addicts rather than users or are they just giving consumers more of what they want?There was a time when social media feeds ended.Now the scroll never stops.“There is always something more that will give you another dopamine hit that you react to and there is an infinite supply of that,” said Arturo Béjar, a whistleblower who worked in child online safety at Meta until 2021.“The promise of these things is that there is always going to be something interesting and rewarding and there is a never-ending supply.That is the mechanic of infinite scroll.
” Internal documents surfaced in the trial showed that other Meta employees were worried about signs of rising “reward tolerance” among users,One email conversation in 2020 showed one person referring to Instagram saying: “Oh my gosh y’all IG is a drug,” A colleague responds: “Lol, I mean, all social media,We’re basically pushers,”Béjar told the Guardian: “You are constantly chasing and even when you find what you are chasing … there is the promise of something else that catches your attention right after and with no bounds on that part of the mechanism.
” Sonia Livingstone, a professor of social psychology at the London School of Economics said: “When you watch young people scroll through their feed, they flip really, really fast.They make split-second decisions to swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, watch, swipe, swipe, watch.There is always a feeling that the next thing could be good and it’s only going to be another second or two.”Videos that autoplay are now everywhere from the Netflix homescreen to YouTube and Instagram.But according to Béjar, who was at Facebook when it became standard, consumers “hated it”.
“They found it disruptive,” he said,“The result was that more people watched more videos and advertisers were happy, but users were unhappy,”Autoplay, he explained, “triggers that reaction we all have as humans to watch enough to understand what is going on”,Lanier compared endless scroll and autoplay to getting free tortilla chips at a restaurant and not being able to stop eating them,Notifications and likes are other parts of the social media apparatus that keep people, especially children, hooked.
Mark Griffith, professor emeritus of behavioural addiction at Nottingham Trent University said that winning the competition for likes, is “a rewarding thing that gives you that little hit of enjoyment”,“When you enjoy something, your body produces dopamine and your body produces adrenaline pointers,” he said,“You produce lots of pleasure chemicals,And you know that in a way you’re becoming addicted to your own body’s endorphins,” It is not, however, the same as addiction to nicotine or cocaine, he said.
“For some people it’s genuinely addictive,” he said,“But by my criteria for addiction, very few people would fulfil that,” He talked about social media’s “moreish quality” instead,Social media consumption mostly falls into the categories of “habitual use”, which can affect productivity and relationships without necessarily ruining your life, and “problematic use” which has more serious implications,Giving evidence this week, Instagram’s chief executive, Adam Mosseri, insisted social media was not “clinically addictive”.
People could be addicted to social media in the same way that they could be addicted to a good television show, but that was not the same thing, he said.Jurors in the case against Meta and Google in Los Angeles began their deliberations on Friday.Their verdict will be closely watched as it could redefine tech companies’ responsibilities for their platform design.
AI could give us our lives back – if we don’t blow it
The other day I pulled into the parking lot of a client’s offices and in the spot next to me was a woman sitting in her car blasting music. She caught me looking and rolled down her window and said, “I’ll be inside in a minute … Just enjoying my last few moments of freedom!”Is this way we want to live? No, it’s not.Elon Musk recently predicted work will be optional. “It’ll be like playing sports or a video game or something like that,” he said. Sounds nice
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It has been years since the four-day work week was floated as a solution to everything from traffic congestion to burnout. So why aren’t we all doing it now?Get our weekend culture and lifestyle emailDuring the global soul-searching that followed the rupture of Covid-19 lockdowns, one idea for how we might live better suddenly seemed plausible: the four-day work week.The model is simple but somewhat counterintuitive. Employees work fewer hours for the same salary while getting the same amount of (or even more) work done. Advocates say this is made possible by reducing meeting times, streamlining workflows and prioritising work more efficiently
Meta and Google trial: are infinite scroll and autoplay creating addicts?
It was as “easy as ABC”, claimed the lawyer prosecuting a landmark social media harm case against Meta and Google which heard closing arguments this week. The defendants were guilty, said Mark Lanier, of “addicting the brains of children”. Not true, replied the tech companies. Meta insisted providing young people with a “safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work”.Features such as autoplay videos, infinite scrolling and constantly chirruping alerts woven into the fabric of online platforms were central to the six-week trial in Los Angeles, which has been compared to the cases against tobacco companies in the 1990s
New study raises concerns about AI chatbots fueling delusional thinking
A new scientific review raises concerns about how chatbots powered by artificial intelligence may encourage delusional thinking, especially in vulnerable people.A summary of existing evidence on artificial intelligence-induced psychosis was published last week in the Lancet Psychiatry, highlighting how chatbots can encourage delusional thinking – though possibly only in people who are already vulnerable to psychotic symptoms. The authors advocate for clinical testing of AI chatbots in conjunction with trained mental health professionals.For his paper, Dr Hamilton Morrin, a psychiatrist and researcher at King’s College in London, analyzed 20 media reports on so-called “AI psychosis”, which describes current theories as to how chatbots might induce or exacerbate delusions.“Emerging evidence indicates that agential AI might validate or amplify delusional or grandiose content, particularly in users already vulnerable to psychosis, although it is not clear whether these interactions can result in the emergence of de novo psychosis in the absence of pre-existing vulnerability,” he wrote
Britain to raise Winter Paralympic targets after finishing Games with solitary medal
UK Sport is set to raise performance targets for the next Winter Paralympics after Great Britain returned from Milano-Cortina with only a single silver medal.ParalympicsGB failed to hit a reduced target of two to five medals in Italy, with only Neil Simpson making the podium following a second-placed finish in the men’s visually impaired alpine combination skiing. On Sunday Simpson did not finish either of his runs in the VI slalom, putting a final end to hopes of further success.UK Sport determines public funding for Olympic and Paralympic sport and their director of performance, Dr Kate Baker, said there was pride to be taken from many performances at the Games. However, she said questions would also have to be asked over the future direction of the British winter Paralympic programme
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