Since my last post on living the quiet life, I’ve unfortunately started using TikTok. TikTok is designed to be addictive. Like everything these days, it has infinite scrolling. The videos are short, too, which shortens the biological reward cycle (did you know drugs with a faster route of administration are more addicting?). Tapping the screen to pause the video often makes me like the video by accident, so I’m hesitant to ever pause a video. Also, the videos auto-loop instead of simply stopping, which makes the user want to swipe to the next video right away to avoid having to see the same thing they already just saw. Because of all this, the videos are consumed in a non-stop waterfall, akin to being waterboarded with content. The videos never stop coming, and the algorithm is sophisticated enough to reliably feed you a stream of entertaining content basically forever. Because of all this, TikTok is like an infinitely long, digital cigarette.

The comparison to drugs is direct. TikTok is habit-forming; it overwhelms the brain’s reward system at the expense of long-term reward, and is difficult to quit. I have found other apps and websites to be addictive in the past, but none have made me feel like a junkie quite like TikTok¹. I wonder at what point entertainment applications will become addictive enough – and life-destroying enough – to start to be classed with other addictions like gambling, drugs, and porn. Back in the earlier days of the internet, people laughed when a World of Warcraft rehab center opened up, but now I don’t think the idea of rehab for internet addiction is all that crazy (in fact, it seems like many are already popping up). I wonder when digital content will become as addictive as real drugs like alcohol, for example. They will no doubt become more and more powerful in their ability to dazzle and enthrall us; the only question is when we will start to notice and fight back. I was² reading Johann Hari’s book Stolen Focus, which is a book talking about how technology is ruining our ability to focus. It’s a New York Times Bestseller, so clearly people are starting to wake up to the fact that the Internet has downsides. Ask the average person if social media is good for you, and they’ll probably say, “no”. But, they’ll probably still use it, too. Will we ever get our shit together enough to actually fight back in a meaningful way that doesn’t rely on individual willpower?

You might be surprised to hear me say that I’ve actually enjoyed the last month that I’ve been using TikTok. It’s not all bad. The algorithm is very sophisticated compared to Youtube, so it actually knows what I like. If Youtube is like a friend who barely listens to what you say and then lazily recommends the same Jimmy Fallon clip you’ve said you didn’t want to watch 100 times already, then TikTok is your therapist, who knows you better than you know yourself. TikTok has shown me a lot of content I actually like, and has exposed me to a lot of things I wouldn’t have found otherwise. I have made recipes I saw on TikTok, I have watched TV shows I found out about on TikTok, and I’ve even learned programming stuff on TikTok that I’ve later used at work. The thing about a platform that’s really good at showing you what you want to see is, you get to see a lot of stuff you want to see. (And heroin, believe it or not, actually feels really, really good!) TikTok, like all drugs, is therefore a double-edged sword. It’s the therapist that soothes you, but subtly reinforces your insecurities to keep you coming back for more. You feel like you are growing and becoming more productive, but you never really do. Used responsibly, TikTok is a bit of fun, like any drug. But abused, I could see it easily damaging a person’s psyche, and destroying their ability to focus.

Actually, I do suspect that, as Johann Hari says in Stolen Focus, our entire society is basically addicted to our phones and other devices in a way that is already damaging our ability to focus, and I think TikTok is a step in the wrong direction. As a result, I’m going to take a break from TikTok and other attention traps for a month, and see how it feels. I’ve done “dopamine detoxes” before, but I think you have to do things like this more than once for them to really sink-in on an intuitive level. You have to try exercising regularly and then give up several times before you learn how exercising makes you feel on an intuitive level. I don’t expect I’ll be quitting the addicting Internet forever, but I’ll be gathering data, and maybe one day I will quit forever, or at least have a healthier relationship with it.³.

Youtube Shorts failed to captivate me in the same way as TikTok, despite using many of the same mechanisms. I think because the algorithm is worse. The people working at YouTube are probably used to the kind of weak algorithms normal Youtube uses, and that’s not good enough for a platform like TikTok, I think. ↩
I have paused all reading since I downloaded TikTok a month ago :/ ↩
I think my relationship with it is already pretty healthy, relatively speaking. I probably will stay away from TikTok, specifically, though. I find it harder to stop than Youtube or reddit when I’m using it. One trick I’ve found for putting away infinite-scrolling sites/apps is to scroll down 10-20 videos, and then work your way upward instead. Hopefully they never make that trick impossible to use. For now, happy scrolling!” ↩

Footnotes

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