EU opens probe of TikTok Lite, citing concerns about addictive design

Table Of Content

• Disclaimer: The Dark Side of Addictive User Interfaces
• What are some examples of products that use humane design principles?
• Why Companies Should Prioritize Emotional Intelligence Training Alongside AI Implementation
• Trend #4: Social Proof
• It’s not you. Phones are designed to be addicting.
• How does humane design benefit both businesses and users?

Overlooking these findings will represent a missed opportunity for obesity-related policy and a potential public health revolution. A commentary on the necessity as well as potential downsides of the food addiction model was published previously (278). First, feeding behavior, as with other “natural” behaviors, has a satiety system provided by the mechanical limitations of the stomach and peptides like CCK that signal satiety while drugs of addiction apparently do not. Finally, the magnitude of the DA increase is lower during meal than during drug administration.

Disclaimer: The Dark Side of Addictive User Interfaces

Facebook and Instagram are two companies that have been criticized for using addictive techniques. For example, Facebook has been accused of using variable rewards, such as notifications and likes, to keep users engaged and addicted. Instagram has also been accused of using techniques such as infinite scrolling and autoplay to keep users engaged for longer periods of time. User interface design is a critical component of technology companies, as it determines how users interact with the product. Second, it needs to be easy to use so that users can easily navigate the platform and find the content they’re looking for.

What are some examples of products that use humane design principles?

Our third and latest UX Essay provides a starting point with practical ideas that we can apply to our designs, to our process, to our company, to our community, and to our personal life — to start breaking the business-as-usual cycle of designing for addiction. By Design is a new Vox video series about the intersection of design and technology, hosted by Christophe Haubursin. Watch the video above to see the three main ways smartphones try to manipulate users’ attention.

Why Companies Should Prioritize Emotional Intelligence Training Alongside AI Implementation

The EU’s first TikTok probe covers multiple issues including the protection of minors, advertising transparency, data access for researchers and the risk management of addictive design and harmful content. “Nutritious” information comes with a lot of hard work, like studying or doing some activity, but likewise, scrolling down on Instagram or watching funny videos on Facebook can reward you and also fill the need for data and be a much easier, more seductive. Social media developers know that very well, there is even a term for the strategy used to keep the user on their platform, and it is called “Addictive Design”, but we will get there soon. Before we get to that, we need to understand the nature of addiction and what we know about it so far, and a strong theory of how the addiction cycle — non-chemical, like drugs and adrenaline — works is the Seeking System theory.

Meet the Wolverhampton glass artist who loves her "completely and utterly addictive" craft - Express & Star

Meet the Wolverhampton glass artist who loves her "completely and utterly addictive" craft.

Posted: Sun, 28 Apr 2024 05:01:00 GMT [source]

Opinion: There’s a clear way to regulate Facebook, TikTok and other social media

We don’t know if we will be rewarded with interesting content when the page is reloaded or just with meaningless photographs. While the products we build every day have evolved, our ways of thinking about user engagement have scarcely changed since the days of dial-up. We assume that the higher the metrics, the more successful the business and, thus, the smarter the product designer.

To form a motivation, the user must feel the need to get into the app, FOMO (Fear of missing out) is a great example of that. Here is where the Seeking System comes, making us feel the need of being constantly receiving new informations. Over the past few decades, we have helped build a corporate culture that systematically prioritizes short-term gains over longer-term product health.

That is, designers should ask themselves why they are designing something before starting to work on it. By understanding the purpose of their work, they can make sure that everything they do meets that goal. And by putting themselves in the users' shoes, they can make sure that the end result will be something that users will love. When Charles Darwin postulated the evolution theory, he suggested that a trait would emerge if it contributed to survival and increase the reproductive success of a species. Plants have evolved protective measures to prevent herbivores from eating them.

It’s not you. Phones are designed to be addicting.

The app allows you to compete with your friends and stay engaged with the experience. Also, you have to progress through the app challenges to unlock new challenges, which gives users incentives and motivates to keep using the app. For example, the use of color is a common tool that designers use to influence our emotions. Colors can create different moods and feelings, which can affect how we interact with an interface.

How does humane design benefit both businesses and users?

Given ethical limitations, prospective studies examining the impact of extreme dietary imbalances (high-sugar, or high-fat) during human pregnancy cannot be undertaken. Rodent models show that such dietary extremes (high-sugar and/or high-fat) can impact fetal neurodevelopment, providing evidence of “addiction transfer” from mother to the newborn (233). These animal studies highlight the importance of biological processes (absence of social factors) in the development of FA. Specifically, maternal exposure to drugs of abuse or to highly palatable foods during both the pre- and postnatal period alter behavior via the DA reward system (234, 235) and MOR (236) of the offspring. Intrauterine nutritional experiments in animal models have demonstrated perturbations in hormone (e.g., insulin, leptin, ghrelin) signaling that interact with the development of the reward system in the VTA. Both under- and overfeeding have the potential to increase obesity prevalence in the offspring by way of the DA and opioid systems (237) and such effects have been observed at the intergenerational level (238, 239).

In our latest study of adults, the typical college student has active accounts on nearly 6 sites that they visit at least once a week and most are accessed daily. If social media is the driving force behind your addiction/obsession move all social media apps to the last page of your home screen and hide them in a folder so that they are not stimuli that drag you into their world. From a design perspective, this means that product should be designed to require a certain amount of input from users. This investment by users (be it time, effort, or something else) increases their bond with the product.

However, others have not been able to modify feeding behavior when specific DA agonists or antagonists were used (103, 104). Recently, chemogenetically activating DA neurons in the VTA that project to the NAc disrupted feeding patterns (105). In part, these dissimilar findings show that it is very hard to propose that only one neurotransmitter or hormone is responsible for driving behavior. I would argue that at any minute we fall at some point on a spectrum ranging from totally addicted to totally obsessed. Right now, I have not checked my email for 15 minutes and I am feeling anxious and when I look at my phone I see that I have an email from my younger son and I feel pleasure. It’s a bit of both but our work consistently shows that the anxiety system makes us keep our phones close by and makes us constantly check in.

While distracted driving is nothing new (Americans have been eating hamburgers and fries while driving for decades), texting while driving is particularly dangerous because it combines multiple types of distraction. Looking at a text takes the driver’s eyes off the road (visual distraction), at least one hand off the wheel (manual distraction), and the mind off the task (cognitive distraction). It’s easy to say that people should not text and drive, and many states and countries have passed laws to this effect.

In the next section, we will look at the history of Big Tech companies and how they have navigated regulation. The thrill—and disappointment—of constantly checking to see how many ‘likes’ you receive on social media is an activity that easily becomes addictive. That’s because the algorithms spreading content on social media work much faster than the content moderators trying to screen and remove it, including extreme or false info. To see why content moderators are fighting a losing battle, consider what social media algorithms are designed to do.