PROBLEM: ADDICTIVE TECHNOLOGY
Technology, as necessary and helpful as it’s become, has an overwhelmingly addictive power that many people fail to resist. While some people have a bit more resistance than some, others are so addicted to their technology that they don’t often go a day without it. It’s doubly bad amongst children, especially young girls and boys between the ages of 16 and some even as young as 11. It’s why tech developers don’t allow their kids to use social media, despite falling prey to it themselves. (Business Insider) None of it is by accident, either; it’s completely by the tech companies’ designs.
These tech companies design their technology, especially their social media platforms, with all kinds of bells and whistles that are built to keep people hooked on it for as long as possible. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit…all of them do this, without exception. They send out constant notifications about likes and follows, tell people about what’s happening and what the people they follow are doing. They increasingly amp up sensationalism in the content people consume and show them content, one after another, in order to keep them hooked on that kind of content. (The Guardian) All so that they can milk as much money out of people as possible.
All these factors have lasting consequences on people’s physical and mental health; Eye-strain and back pain (among other medical conditions) from being glued to the phone all day, FOMO (fear of missing out), anxiety and depression, as well as the general loneliness that comes from being online all the time and not engaging with others. Tech companies don’t care about any of these, of course. They’re just designing these products to make money, not to benefit anyone else, in the long run.
CONTEXT
It’s really easy to become addicted to the internet, particularly for a younger person (and especially if said younger person is a teen). For many, especially teenage girls, getting off the internet in order to avoid the addiction of being on it would be sacrificing a good portion of their social lives. (Vanity Fair)
I’ve been on the Internet for a while; in fact, I think I had my first laptop in middle school. Discovering social media was extremely appealing for my introverted, shy self, who lived practically in the middle of nowhere and had very few friends IRL. It quickly made me want to spend all my time there, even when it was disadvantageous for my mental health (I already had a lot of anxiety by then, but the internet made it worse), physical health (I was quickly becoming overweight and started to need glasses for seeing far away by the time I was in high school) and school life (it caused me to procrastinate a lot and get below-average grades in some of my classes). One of the main perpetrators of this early on was Instagram (it was the only way I could contact some of my friends after high school).
TECH: INSTAGRAM
Instagram is probably one of the more notorious examples of this. I’ve been on the app for a number of years. The app allows for easy networking with fellow users and the ability to share images (in my case, my own, original art) with relative ease; however, it’s still one of the most addictive apps out there. From my own experience, there are several ways the app gets people to stay on it for as long as possible:
- The notifications. The constant, noisy notifications (even if you’ve set your phone on vibrate, like I have) that tell me about recent posts, updates, how many likes I’ve accumulated, how many people have recently followed me, who’s messaged me, who’s typing out a message, the whole nine yards.
- Having the number of notifications you have displayed as a tiny number on the icon for the app, with white text and a red background. It gives me this subconscious feeling of anxiety and makes me feel like I need to check it in order to get rid of it.
- Having the likes displayed on my posts. Whenever I see the likes attached to my posts, it’s like I feel this need to refresh it again and again to see that little number go up.
- Infinite scrolling. Instead of having to continue over to another page, it instead just scrolls on forever. It keeps me scrolling on and on, in order to have me stay on there and consume content for as long as possible.
- Having the number of followers I have displayed on my profile. It’s the same thing with the likes, just refreshing the page and wanting to see the number update in real time. There’s a whole other issue surrounding bragging about how many followers you have on Instagram, but that would just be killing two birds with one stone, in my opinion.
- Instagram stories: they have that little circle around them that’s pink and orange that indicates that they haven’t been seen by me yet. They also stack horizontally across the screen, according to how many people you follow have released new stories. Like the little notification icons, they cause me to want to check them, just in case I’m missing out of something (again, FOMO).
- Instagram lives: this is one of the features that Instagram notifies me about, too. It tells you who’s going live and telling you when it’s ended as well, creating more of a sense of FOMO within me when I see those notifications.
VALUES
One of the values that I think is missing in Instagram’s design, in terms of addiction, is respect for the user’s time. People have stuff to do, whether they have jobs, simple obligations, or simple hobbies, outside of social media. Instagram tries to hog people’s attention as much as possible, whether they have other stuff to do or not. Someone could be scrolling through Instagram, while still having obligations they need to take care of, but they can’t because all their attention is on Instagram. It hinders people’s productivity, due to how intrusive it is in people’s thoughts and lives.
Another value that I think is under-supported from Instagram is patience. Instagram is bombarding you with all these notifications and features (again, trying to grab people’s attention) and they don’t wait around for you to return from whatever they’re doing. Instead, they just bombard the user with notifications of what they’re missing out on while they’re away (messing with their FOMO). In turn, this also can cause impatience within the user as well, because they’ve become accustomed to the dopamine rush of getting a notification. They’ll wait impatiently for the next text, Instagram story, or Instagram live, and then jump on the app as soon as that notification comes in.
REDESIGN
Notifications
The main issue with people becoming addicted is seeing those notifications and fearing not being able to keep up-to-date with what the people they follow are doing. I’ve considered just removing notifications altogether, but that may be counterproductive to some people and the kinds of things they do that involve networking on Instagram. Therefore, I’ve elected to make notifications an opt-in experience; that would mean that the user would receive no notifications whatsoever, unless they manually went into their settings to enable some of those notifications. It would be a completely customizable experience, depending on what they use Instagram for. I would also remove the tiny, red notification icon that shows up on the app icon, showing the user that they have new stuff. They wouldn’t be able to view that stuff until they tapped the icon and entered the app.
Homepage
Let’s start with the home page, using my personal Instagram account as an example. Right off the bat, there’s a row of Instagram stories that are currently unread.; they have a pink and orange circle around them to indicate so. Under my username and header, there’s a bunch of people recommended to me based on my interests, who I follow, who’s new to Instagram, and so much more. Combined with all that is the infinite scrolling, as well. All of these are designed to keep the user on the homepage as long as the app can manage. With a quick, little adjustment, I’ve managed to fix the UI to make it less likely to keep you hooked in the images down below.
As seen above, I removed the top section that included the Instagram stories and bumped the post up to where that once was. If people want to see the Instagram stories of other people they follow, they’ll have to manually click on the person’s profile picture. I also removed the “Suggestions for You” section from it, too, in which people will only have other people recommended for them if they go to the person’s profile and specifically click on a recommendations button. Infinite scrolling is no longer a thing, either; pages will only show 20 or so posts at a time and if people want to see more posts, they’ll have to manually click a link at the bottom of the page to move on. Now the homepage design is not only less busier, but also less likely to keep you there for longer than you want to be. People would become less inclined to stay for too long if they had to interact more with the app manually than have all these automatic features.
Profile
Now on the profile page, there’s the amount of posts, followers, and people the user follows displayed right next to and above the bio. The addictive part of seeing those numbers, particularly the number of followers the person has, comes in the form of having that dopamine rush every time that number goes up. It feeds the need to stay on the app and post more in order to make it potentially go up. This required some more tweaking on my part.
As seen above, I’ve completely removed the number of posts, followers, and people the user follows from the profile page. If they wanted to see that number, they’d have to, again, manually go to their settings under their account information to see those numbers. The less easy it is to find, the harder time they’ll have becoming addicted to seeing those numbers rise.
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