Happy Monday.
Today’s lineupKey Context Founder Tae Kim at 12:00 PM
Redpoint Ventures Managing Director Logan Bartlett at 12:30 PM
Granola Co-Founder Sam Stephenson at 1:10 PM
Figure.AI Founder & CEO Brett Adcock at 1:30 PM
Polsia Founder & CEO Ben Broca at 1:50 PM
Console Founder & CEO Andrei Serban at 2:00 PM
The Social Media Addiction Placebo Controlled Trial
Image: AlamyLast week, a Los Angeles jury found both Meta and YouTube liable for a 20-year-old woman’s mental health crisis in a bellwether trial that treated the platforms as “defective products” and potentially marks the end to the “absolute immunity” nature of Section 230.
Brandon Gorrell summarized the ruling this way:
In the case, the plaintiff’s lawyer Mark Lanier argued that Meta and YouTube built “digital casinos” that use neurobiological techniques similar to those employed by slot machines. The jury found that specific features of Meta and YouTube are designed to be addictive: infinite scroll creates an environment where there are no natural stopping points; algorithmic recommendations feeds users highly engaging content; autoplay removes users’ agency in choosing whether to watch the next video; notifications pull users back in by exploiting their need for validation; IG beauty filters contributed to the plaintiff’s body dysmorphia; features like the “Like” button exploit users’ biological need for social approval.
There are a ton of interesting takes on this social media addiction trial. Eric Goldman, from Santa Clara University School of Law, described the potential downstream implications of the case as existential for social media companies broadly. It’s not a question of whether or not social media will change going forward, it’s a question of “whether we will even have social media in the future,” he said.
It was a bit of an odd coincidence that the very same week that social media was found to be addictive and harmful, OpenAI’s nascent social network (Sora) shut down. The reaction to news of the shutdown was funny to watch because when it launched the vibe was very much the opposite. Roon summarized it well:
So what to make of these two situations? It feels a bit like a placebo-controlled trial to me. Sora absolutely used all the social media “best practices” (or addictive & harmful neurobiological techniques if you want to use the court’s language). The Sora app was basically the same as TikTok, IG Reels, and YouTube Shorts in terms of UI & UX design. It had infinite scroll, algorithmic recommendations, notifications, a “Like” button! All the same features that were found to be addictive when applied to human-generated content, very much did not seem addictive when applied to AI generated content (at least if estimated usage rates are to be believed).
As people compare social media to the cigarette industry, it might be worth revisiting what exactly is addictive about cigarettes. Nicotine is the addictive chemical in cigarettes that causes addiction, and nicotine is addictive even when it’s not administered via combustible tobacco. It’s addictive in vapes, it’s addictive in pouches, it’s even addictive in nicotine gum and lozenges.
So we now have an experiment where we applied all the same UI/UX features to different content, and maybe you can’t read too much into it, but it certainly seems like what pulls people into social media is more the humans that create content on the platform. Some creators create very compelling content that can lead to high screen-time. Some people go on social media and make horrible content that depresses people that land on it. It goes without saying that social media companies do have an enormous responsibility to manage recommendation feeds responsibly and route people in tough situations to helpful resources (Google already does this well by just showing phone numbers to get help based on certain keywords).
I’m still optimistic about the future of social media (and AI generated content too). I do think there is a nice meet-in-the-middle option here where tech companies give users, and parents in particular, even more control over their experience. It’s possible to disable algorithmic feeds and other UI features with browser extensions on mobile web, but surfacing those in apps could help users feel like they are more in control, which probably winds up increasing public perception broadly. We want everyone to be on the same team here!
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