Addictive by Design: How TikTok Keeps You Hooked

Addictive by Design: How TikTok Keeps You Hooked

You don’t need me to tell you that TikTok is addictive. Spend a few minutes on the app and you can see how easy it is to fall down a rabbit hole of cute animals, short-form comedy, and innovative DIY. There’s endless content to keep you engaged and it seems like the app knows exactly what video you want to watch next. An article in Medium states that “TikTok receives more engagement per user than Instagram and on average its users spend 52 minutes per day on the platform” [1]. But how does TikTok know what will get you hooked? And why is it so hard to close the app even when you know you have a paper due in 6 hours?

A Brief Guide to the TikTok Algorithm

A lot of TikTok’s appeal has to do with how the app was designed [2]. I think many of us have realized that the TikTok’s algorithm works with frighteningly fast precision. But what information does the algorithm base its learning on? There are several interactions that influence the content you are shown. An article by Hootsuite [3] lays out the main data points that Tiktok’s algorithm pulls on to ensure you’re getting the most enjoyable experience possible:

• Which accounts you follow
• Creators you’ve hidden
• Comments you’ve posted
• Videos you’ve liked or shared on the app
• Videos you’ve added to your favourites
• Videos you’ve marked as “Not Interested”
• Videos you’ve reported as inappropriate
• Longer videos you watch all the way to the end (aka video completion rate)
• Content you create on your own account

From this list you can start to understand that there are a lot of factors that go into the curation of your For You Page [FYP]. An article by Wired says that the strongest signals that you send to TikTok are “whether you watched a video to the end, whether you shared it, and if you followed the creator who uploaded it afterward” [4]. The time you spend on the app and the time you spend engaging with content are the biggest factors that influence the algorithm. But how does TikTok get you to stay on long enough so that it can perfect your FYP?

Less Choices to Make = Less Chances to Leave

TikTok’s UX designers embody the principle known as “Hick’s Law” [5]. This principle states: “The more choices users have, the harder it is for them to make one.” When we reduce the number of decisions that our brain must make, we go into autopilot. It’s the same reason psychologists say that if you want to pick up a new habit, make it easy! Want to start a running routine? Leave your shoes and workout gear beside your bed. Need to floss more regularly? Keep the floss out where you will see it often. TikTok takes the guess work out by showing you content on a rolling basis with the flick of a finger. You don’t need to click “Next Video”, wait for 10 seconds for a new video to load, or search around on the site to find something relevant. TikTok’s algorithm and design makes the decision for you. It doesn’t take long to get sucked into the content blackhole when all you need to do is sit there and enjoy.

Why does TikTok invest so much energy into building a meticulous machine learning model? It’s the same reason all social media apps fight for your undivided attention. The time you spend on the app directly corresponds to TikTok’s profit margins. Your attention is the product that TikTok sells to advertising partners. It is in their best interest to keep you hooked for as long as possible to show advertisers that their platform has the best engagement rates.

Addictive by Design

There is a surprising (or maybe not so surprising) inspiration behind this addictive design: casinos [6]. TikTok is not the first app to pull their inspiration from casinos, but they have certainly perfected it. Modern casinos rely on the psychological tactic coined by B.F Skinner called Operative Conditioning. This theory suggests that people can be trained to exhibit certain behaviours through programmed rewards. For instance, parents may give their children a treat every time they clean their room. This is an example of the parents trying to shape their children’s behaviour with rewards [7]. Casinos give out the reward of money (or the

promise of money) and social media apps give out the reward of entertainment, engagement, and social validation.

Just like social media apps, it’s in the best interest of the casino to keep you around as long as possible. The longer you’re there, the more money you’re likely to spend (and lose). Casinos rely on some sneaky methods to keep you engaged. Think bright lights, fun sounds, variety of machines and games, and incentives to stick around (free drinks or free plays). There are also some less obvious methods. Casinos generally lack windows on the playing floor and they don’t put any clocks on the walls. This is to disorient your sense of time and disassociate you from the outside world. Remember Hick’s Law? Casinos use the same principle. The playing floor will have no sharp corners and the path-like design of the carpet will guide you along, gently swerving between machines and tables, in an endless loop. Eliminating decision making in the physical design of the building means that there are less chances for the players to stop and think about their next move.

The Near-Win Principle

There is an important cognitive principle that casinos rely on as well. It’s called The Near-Win Principle, or the Goal-Gradient Theory. This idea suggests that:

“When a reward is one hundred steps away, your initial step progresses you only one per cent towards your payoff. However, once you are almost in reach, the payoff for each effortful act is much higher, meaning we become more physiologically aroused and ready to act. But should the reward be snatched away, the readiness to act doesn’t disappear.” [8]

Essentially, “near-wins” excite our brains in the same way as winning. The more times a person scores “Cherry-Cherry-Dollar Sign” on a slot machine, the more motivated they feel to continue playing because of how often they have “almost” won. This psychological phenomenon is how casinos can keep players hooked without having to dole out consistent wins. Just the proximity to a jackpot is enough to keep you engaged.

TikTok’s Design

So how does TikTok borrow from these design principles? The most obvious feature would be the infinite scroll. This feature isn’t exclusive to TikTok and is available on pretty much all social media apps. However, TikTok takes it to a new level with how seamless and fast each new video pops up [9]. The app also hides the time length of videos to obscure a sense of how long you’ve

been scrolling. All of the central controls are along the bottom and lower-right side of the app, meaning you barely need to stretch your finger to navigate. You can also scroll through the comment sections while you’re watching a video, meaning you don’t need to pause the app or move away from the content. TikTok also leans on the principle of near-wins by teasing you with the next video. Their extremely intuitive algorithm gives you what you are looking for and then pulls back, keeping you looking for the next funny, interesting, viral video. It prominently displays likes, views, and comments which means when you create your own content, you are hyper aware of how well your video is doing and how others perceive your content. This can influence you to create more videos, searching for the dopamine rush we all get from internet validation.

Like a slot machine at a casino, TikTok knows how to keep us playing. Bright lights, music, bottomless content, and engagement. We are always searching for that next big “win”, that novel rush of feel-good hormones we get when we find a great video or create a video that goes viral. And it’s not just the endless content that hooks us, it’s the entire experience of the app’s design that draws us in and makes it so easy to keep coming back.

Take Back Control

What can we do to ensure we have a healthy relationship with TikTok? Here at the Digital Tattoo project, we don’t advocate for deleting all your social media accounts and throwing your phone in the ocean. Apps like TikTok can play an enjoyable and educational role in our lives! There are some really innovative creators on the platform and it can be a quick and accessible means for connecting with communities that would be harder to connect with offline. That being said, we recognize that you may want to re-examine your relationship to social media and ensure you’re engaging in a healthy and informed way.

Here are some tips to help you:

• Set a timer on your phone for the time that you want to spend on TikTok. As mentioned, TikTok makes time telling really difficult while using its app so you will want to set up your own system to track your usage.
• You can also set different timers for all your social media apps! This article by Popular Science explains how to set app-specific timers on any phone.
• Practice intentionality with the content you engage with. Don’t spend time watching, commenting, or sharing content that gets you heated. This could influence the algorithm to show you similar content that could have a negative impact on your mood.
• A more extreme tip is to change the display on your phone to grayscale. You can usually do this under the Accessibility section on your Settings page. Our brains are designed to love colour. If you zap the colour out of your phone, it removes a lot of the appeal. For a less extreme approach, most phones let you dim the colour saturation on your display.
• If you’re finding that you just can’t stop using TikTok (or any social media app) and it’s having a serious impact on your mental health – maybe it’s time for a digital detox? Check out the Digital Tattoo’s quiz and resources on starting a Digital Detox.

References

[1] How TikTok is Addictive. (2020, Sept. 6). Medium. https://medium.com/dataseries/how-tiktok-is-addictive-1e53dec10867

[2] Memmo, J. (2020, Dec. 14). Why TikTok is Addicting (It’s Not the Reason You Might Think). NYU Comm Club.  https://www.nyucommclub.com/content/2020/12/14/why-tiktok-is-addicting-its-not-the-reason-you-might-think

[3] Newberry, C. (2021, Aug. 23). How the TikTok Algorithm Works in 2021 (and how to work with it). Hootsuite. blog.hootsuite.com/tiktok-algorithm/

[4] Matsakis, L. (2020, June 18). TikTok Finally Explains how the ‘For You’ Algorithm Works. Wired.  https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-finally-explains-for-you-algorithm-works/

[5] Dulenko, V. (2020, Dec. 8). How TikTok Design Hooks You Up. UX Planet. https://uxplanet.org/how-tiktok-design-hooks-you-up-6c889522c7ed

[6] Busby, M. (2018, May 8). Social media copies gambling methods ‘to create psychological cravings’. The Guardian. www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/08/social-media-copies-gambling-methods-to-create-psychological-cravings

[7] Jhangiani, R. (n.d.). Introduction to Psychology I: Operant Conditioning. BC Campus. pressbooks.bccampus.ca/kpupsyc1100/chapter/operant-conditioning/

[8] Fradera, A. (2015, Aug. 19). The powerful motivating effect of a near win. The British Psychological Society Research Digest. bps.org.uk/2015/08/19/the-powerful-motivating-effect-of-a-near-win/

[9] Pierce, R. (2021, Sept. 22). TikTok Videos Really Get You Hooked By Tricking Your Brain. Tech Times. www.techtimes.com/articles/265687/20210922/tiktok-videos-really-get-you-hooked-by-tricking-your-brain-sociologist.htm

 

Featured Image: Image by Kon Zografos from Pixabay  licensed by Pixabay License

---

Written by: Brittanny Dzioba

Edited by: Alex Kuskowski & Lucas Wright