We all know the situation: We are bored and want to quickly check Instagram and then spend the next hour sucked into stories and our image feed.
Or we keep refreshing our browser tab on Facebook in the hunt for a new posting. Or hit the „check for new email“ button in our mail client.
For whatever reason, we keep doing it, and feel good while we do it. These experiences leave us so content that we want to do them again. They are addictive.
But why?
This doesn't happen by accident. These applications are carefully designed to create this kind of flow, this stimulus-reponse model that sometimes gives you something delightful. Just often enough so you keep going.
They lock you into a ‚ludic loop‘, a perpetual repetition of an action you perform because you are expecting some kind of reward once in a while.
The term was coined by Natasha Schüll, who describes it as "the way that digital interactions are designed across a variety of formats (slot machines, Facebook photo-clicking, candy crush, text checking, and the like)“
And in case you’re asking yourself: Yes. This is the exact same mechanism that keeps players putting coins into the slot machines in the casinos of Las Vegas.
The interesting thing is that there is no real goal. Nothing to be accomplished. The habit is its own reward. Some people call that an addiction.
In his book ‚Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products‘, Nir Eyal talks about the connection between products and habitual use:
"Habits form when the brain takes a shortcut and stops actively deliberating over what to do next.
… Once a habit is formed, the user is automatically triggered to use the product during routine events such as wanting to kill time while waiting in line.“
Sounds familiar?
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