5 ms·

In what sense do you mean Instagram is “addictive” to a neurotypical adult?

bbrks 7mo ago
Reels are non-stop dopamine hits, just like TikTok. It's incredibly addictive to scroll through. That is by far the worst part of Instagram for anybody. Everything else outside of reels is the usual social media fake life facade, and everything amplified to the max for engagement to get it pushed to feeds via "the algorithm" (note: Interactions don't need to be positive to promote it to feeds)
- twoodfin 7mo ago
  Some quick Googling tells me Instagram has something like 3B users who spend an average of around 30 minutes a day in the app. Rewind 30 years or so, how long did the typical New York Times subscriber spend with their paper every day? Was the Times addictive? And I won’t even get started on network television for half a century.
  - wredcoll 7mo ago
    "average of 30 minutes" covers a pretty massive range. Lots of people can get drunk once a month and suffer or cause no real harm. Some people get drunk everyday which is slightly more harmful.
    - twoodfin 7mo ago
      So any producer of X should be regulated or otherwise held liable for the injuries of unhealthy individuals who misuse X?
      - fc417fc802 7mo ago
        Depends. Was the product intentionally designed to be that way? The addition of caffeine to soda is the closest example that immediately comes to mind but in that case many individuals are specifically seeking the additive. There are many physical products that are today designed to minimize harm and misuse after facing liability historically. So I suppose the direct answer to your question would be "yes, absolutely, and there's a figurative mountain of precedent for it".
        deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
        twoodfin 7mo ago
        What do you mean by “be this way”? There’s somebody out there who’s harmfully addicted to just about anything, from ultramarathons to World of Warcraft. What’s the limiting principle on liability?
        fc417fc802 7mo ago
        Are you intentionally being obtuse? It means whether or not the product was intentionally designed to be addictive. What was the intent behind the design? Why were the decisions made? Was there a reasonable alternative that was otherwise functionally equivalent? The limiting principle on liability is quite complicated. You'd have to go ask a lawyer. At least in the US (and I believe most of the western world) it has to do with manufacturer intent, manufacturer awareness, viable alternatives, and material harm among other things.
        twoodfin 7mo ago
        This is begging the question. Doritos are designed to taste good and encourage you to eat them to your satisfaction. The latest Mario game is designed to be playable & fun for as long as you have time and energy to play it. My Instagram feed is designed to engage me with interesting and relevant content for as long as I have time to scroll. All three can be used in unhealthy ways, and would be less likely to be so used if they were designed less well to their goals. Which is “designed to be addictive”?
        fc417fc802 7mo ago
        No, it is not begging the question. Can you point to where I presupposed my own conclusions? You are (I suspect disingenuously) pretending not to understand intent. It doesn't matter if the outcome is the same here what matters is the intent behind the design when considered in the context of the intended usecase. That's in addition to lots of other factors (some of which I listed) plus any relevant legislation plus any relevant case law and that will all be examined in great detail by a court. At the end of the day what is legal and what is not is decided by that process. A large part of the point of employing corporate lawyers is to prevent a situation where your past behavior is examined from arising in the first place. I'd suggest the essay "what color are your bits" if you're genuinely struggling to understand this concept.
maxaw 7mo ago
I don’t know a single person who after exposure to short form video has not had to exert special effort to regulate their consumption.
- twoodfin 7mo ago
  Really? I watch a lot of long-form YouTube while doing the dishes, and occasionally poke at the Shorts. Some funny, mostly dumb and I move on. Maybe a generational thing, but for most of the latter half of the 20th Century most folks had to “exert special effort to regulate their consumption” of network television. Should there have been lawsuits and regulation of couch potatoes?
  - bigDinosaur 7mo ago
    If you mean 'should network TV be allowed to use behavioural psychology to manipulate people into being couch potatoes' then the answer is yes, that should be regulated against. Anyway, the way you talk about shorts reminds me of drug addicts who talk about how they can control their consumption. Some can. Many cannot but delude themselves. The way I see people interact with shorts/TikTok/reels is very much not restrained. They're optimised for addictive scrolling in the same way a slot machine is - the fact that some people can use a slot machine without becoming addicted is besides the point.
    - twoodfin 7mo ago
      Using behavioral psychology in commercial speech should be illegal? Good luck with that one. Somebody probably used 18th Century behavioral psychology to try to sell George Washington a horse!
      - bigDinosaur 7mo ago
        You dropped the second half of my sentence which pointed to a specific harm. You consequently argued against something which I didn't say. You are not arguing in good faith and this 'conversation' has clearly run its course as you are not capable of engaging the actual points someone is making. Someone saying that someone shouldn't be able to promote specific harm x is not saying that the idea of 'promotion' of anything in general is necessarily bad, exactly in the same way that we restrict certain harmful things from being sold without being against the idea of selling things in general.
samrus 7mo ago
I feel like this is a somewhat bad faith argument becuase its shifting blame onto the user. Its addicting the same way gambling is addicting. Its ridiculous to say that people who get addicted to it are not neurotypical.

bbrks 7mo ago

Reels are non-stop dopamine hits, just like TikTok. It's incredibly addictive to scroll through. That is by far the worst part of Instagram for anybody. Everything else outside of reels is the usual social media fake life facade, and everything amplified to the max for engagement to get it pushed to feeds via "the algorithm" (note: Interactions don't need to be positive to promote it to feeds)

twoodfin 7mo ago
Some quick Googling tells me Instagram has something like 3B users who spend an average of around 30 minutes a day in the app. Rewind 30 years or so, how long did the typical New York Times subscriber spend with their paper every day? Was the Times addictive? And I won’t even get started on network television for half a century.
- wredcoll 7mo ago
  "average of 30 minutes" covers a pretty massive range. Lots of people can get drunk once a month and suffer or cause no real harm. Some people get drunk everyday which is slightly more harmful.
  - twoodfin 7mo ago
    So any producer of X should be regulated or otherwise held liable for the injuries of unhealthy individuals who misuse X?
    - fc417fc802 7mo ago
      Depends. Was the product intentionally designed to be that way? The addition of caffeine to soda is the closest example that immediately comes to mind but in that case many individuals are specifically seeking the additive. There are many physical products that are today designed to minimize harm and misuse after facing liability historically. So I suppose the direct answer to your question would be "yes, absolutely, and there's a figurative mountain of precedent for it".
      - deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
      - twoodfin 7mo ago
        What do you mean by “be this way”? There’s somebody out there who’s harmfully addicted to just about anything, from ultramarathons to World of Warcraft. What’s the limiting principle on liability?
        fc417fc802 7mo ago
        Are you intentionally being obtuse? It means whether or not the product was intentionally designed to be addictive. What was the intent behind the design? Why were the decisions made? Was there a reasonable alternative that was otherwise functionally equivalent? The limiting principle on liability is quite complicated. You'd have to go ask a lawyer. At least in the US (and I believe most of the western world) it has to do with manufacturer intent, manufacturer awareness, viable alternatives, and material harm among other things.
        twoodfin 7mo ago
        This is begging the question. Doritos are designed to taste good and encourage you to eat them to your satisfaction. The latest Mario game is designed to be playable & fun for as long as you have time and energy to play it. My Instagram feed is designed to engage me with interesting and relevant content for as long as I have time to scroll. All three can be used in unhealthy ways, and would be less likely to be so used if they were designed less well to their goals. Which is “designed to be addictive”?
        fc417fc802 7mo ago
        No, it is not begging the question. Can you point to where I presupposed my own conclusions? You are (I suspect disingenuously) pretending not to understand intent. It doesn't matter if the outcome is the same here what matters is the intent behind the design when considered in the context of the intended usecase. That's in addition to lots of other factors (some of which I listed) plus any relevant legislation plus any relevant case law and that will all be examined in great detail by a court. At the end of the day what is legal and what is not is decided by that process. A large part of the point of employing corporate lawyers is to prevent a situation where your past behavior is examined from arising in the first place. I'd suggest the essay "what color are your bits" if you're genuinely struggling to understand this concept.

maxaw 7mo ago

I don’t know a single person who after exposure to short form video has not had to exert special effort to regulate their consumption.

twoodfin 7mo ago
Really? I watch a lot of long-form YouTube while doing the dishes, and occasionally poke at the Shorts. Some funny, mostly dumb and I move on. Maybe a generational thing, but for most of the latter half of the 20th Century most folks had to “exert special effort to regulate their consumption” of network television. Should there have been lawsuits and regulation of couch potatoes?
- bigDinosaur 7mo ago
  If you mean 'should network TV be allowed to use behavioural psychology to manipulate people into being couch potatoes' then the answer is yes, that should be regulated against. Anyway, the way you talk about shorts reminds me of drug addicts who talk about how they can control their consumption. Some can. Many cannot but delude themselves. The way I see people interact with shorts/TikTok/reels is very much not restrained. They're optimised for addictive scrolling in the same way a slot machine is - the fact that some people can use a slot machine without becoming addicted is besides the point.
  - twoodfin 7mo ago
    Using behavioral psychology in commercial speech should be illegal? Good luck with that one. Somebody probably used 18th Century behavioral psychology to try to sell George Washington a horse!
    - bigDinosaur 7mo ago
      You dropped the second half of my sentence which pointed to a specific harm. You consequently argued against something which I didn't say. You are not arguing in good faith and this 'conversation' has clearly run its course as you are not capable of engaging the actual points someone is making. Someone saying that someone shouldn't be able to promote specific harm x is not saying that the idea of 'promotion' of anything in general is necessarily bad, exactly in the same way that we restrict certain harmful things from being sold without being against the idea of selling things in general.

samrus 7mo ago

I feel like this is a somewhat bad faith argument becuase its shifting blame onto the user. Its addicting the same way gambling is addicting. Its ridiculous to say that people who get addicted to it are not neurotypical.