Yesterday, a jury in Los Angeles has found media giants guilty of damaging a young woman’s mental health and awarded her $6 million from Meta and Youtube for addicting her to Social Media (CNN).
That was the first time these companies were actually found guilty and may be the start of a new wave of lawsuits. A tobacco-related lawsuit wave in 1990s led to 1998 Master Settlement Agreement, in which 46 states and several territories settled with the four largest cigarette companies for $206 billion and imposed advertising and marketing restrictions.
Weaponized Psychology
The core of the case stated that the companies knew both about their manipulation and it’s effect on the users. They were charged with using addictive psychological tricks – auto-scrolling, beauty filters, fear of missing out, autoplaying videos, and many others – to make their users come for another fix.
The issue is systemic: Stanford Behavior Design Lab regularly consults with Tech Giants help them with “Persuasive Technology”, and the market incentives create apps designed for engagement – which is a code for addiction.
Time to fight back
Sure, regulation is one solution, but nobody is coming to save you: managing your media diet is part of being an adult now.
For that reason I created an app using all psychological tricks I know to help you curb social media addiction and I’m launching it today.
Check out DoomToll on Product Hunt:
DoomToll swaps your social media icons on the home screen with it’s own shortcuts. These shortcuts put a paywall between you and addictive apps.
Here is why it works:
- Replacing existing icons is leveraging Habit replacement to form a new habit – touching grass
- The paywall appears roughly 25% of the time and randomly. This is called Variable reinforcement and is meant to keep you from giving up and going to social media directly. It makes doomscrolling a little more tedious
- Paywall is introducing loss aversion and pain of paying. You don’t have to pay – touching grass is always free – but it makes it clear that not only you are trying to waste time, but also lose money.
Yes, I am getting this money. As one user stated:
This is the most ingenious combination of evil altruism I’ve ever seen
But you shouldn’t pay me. You should touch grass.
It’s the Media, not Social Media
I think social media is getting an unfair amount of the blame here. When the networks were all about keeping up with your friends, the Internet was fairly whimsical.
The real digital fentanyl hit the information highway when the feed started displaying the most addictive content sourced from the entire human race.
TikTok is bundled together with “social media” but there is nothing social about it: the videos you see are chosen by the algorithm and they have nothing to do with your social circle. It has more in common with the oldschool television experience than social media, and it has the same brain numbing effects.
Group chats, closed communities and small online groups can be an antidote to the mass digital media, and a grounding force to prevent ill effects leading to the mentioned lawsuits.
Humans were simply not meant to constantly hear what other 7 billion of homo sometimes sapiens is currently enraged about.
Touch grass, don’t doomscroll. Your attention has a price.