> - It's optimized to "maximize engagement," which is code for making it addictive. When anyone says engagement in our industry it's usually a euphemism for addiction.
Wikipedia on its own with zero-cost internal hyperlinks was also addictive. There were people going down Wikipedia rabbit holes well before they were getting themselves into Youtube rage bubbles.
That's to say-- I think it matters what one is getting addicted to.
Society can bounce back from people who got addicted to studying too much of various bona fide topics like constitutional law and industrial hygiene.
On the other hand, society would have a harder time recovering if a critical mass of citizens are quantized to mostly low-effort rabbit holes, like believing the earth is flat, or fiat declarations that maritime and common law are the only legally binding forms of constitutional power.
Wikipedia doesn't have "infinite scrolling", you have to make a choice to look at associated content. Better still, you get to choose what you look at instead of having an algorithm choose for you. And you could even bookmark what you found and continue exploring at a later date!
Social media mostly or completely removes these loci of control. You are fed "content" by the simple act of scrolling down the page and what you see is often determined by an algorithm. Because the feed is always changing it's often difficult or even impossible to get back to the same "state" so there's a sense of FOMO as well.
Wikipedia on its own with zero-cost internal hyperlinks was also addictive. There were people going down Wikipedia rabbit holes well before they were getting themselves into Youtube rage bubbles.
That's to say-- I think it matters what one is getting addicted to.
Society can bounce back from people who got addicted to studying too much of various bona fide topics like constitutional law and industrial hygiene.
On the other hand, society would have a harder time recovering if a critical mass of citizens are quantized to mostly low-effort rabbit holes, like believing the earth is flat, or fiat declarations that maritime and common law are the only legally binding forms of constitutional power.