Have you ever wondered how social media became such a huge part of this generation’s lives? You might be surprised to hear that artificial intelligence plays a crucial role in the answer.
TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube — these names are etched into our minds in the year 2021. Personally, I interact and connect with my friends and family through platforms such as WeChat, Instagram, and TikTok. Without these methods of communication, it would be hard to establish bonds that go beyond my school and home life. Ultimately, social media has been a crucial part of my life, just as it’s been a crucial part of other teenagers’ lives.
An online survey conducted by Statista tells us that, on average, people are spending more than 145 minutes per day on social media [1]. Although there is only a limited amount of time in a day, social media companies have been able to grab the time and attention of individuals across the world. This was made possible as a result of AI.
Social media companies have employed studies about human behavior to create a model that effectively grabs people’s attention [2]. Such a model, also known as the hook model, utilizes AI near the end stages to fully immerse users in the social media experience. The first component of the hook model is a trigger. A trigger builds up to action; it can look like an email, a link, app icons, etc. These external triggers interest users, thereby prompting them to act in a way according to the goals of the social media company. For example, if you were to see a new email, you would be prompted to open it up and read its contents. Then, if that email happened to contain a link, you would be incentivized to press it, which would lead you to a website. Similarly, if you were to see a colorful app icon, one of your first instincts would be to press the app to explore its function. These triggers create the foundation for habits that subconsciously draw you into a specific platform.
Once you enter the website or the app, there is still one more step to go, according to the hook model. You need to perform the actions that will allow social media platforms to earn money. In short, the platform needs to motivate you to interact with their services. Although the trigger partially captures the user’s interest, the platform fully grabs their attention by offering easy-to-perform and entertaining actions. By exploiting individuals’ laziness, these tech companies can manipulate their users to engage with their services and stay glued to them. Thus, social media networks such as TikTok limit the length of videos, only requiring a swipe of a finger to move from one video to another.
One might think that the hook model ends there. The social media companies got their views and revenue; they should be happy with it, right?
Well, no. These companies want you to not only interact with their services but also build a habit of engaging with their platform. Their goal is to make sure that every time a user opens their phone and catches a glimpse of the TikTok app icon, they click on the app and scroll through a few videos or photos during their free time.
As a result, building a habit is both the final component of the hook model and the most crucial step in “hooking” the user. Instead of an open-loop where the user leaves after using the product once or twice, companies use two other elements – “variable reward” and “investment” — to make sure that the customer is caught in a “closed loop.” Thus, the customer will consume the companies’ products repeatedly without stopping.
In the case of TikTok and Facebook, the variable reward is new cool videos and photos. Users will never know what content they may find by exploring these platforms, which in turn creates anticipation. Additionally, although these users may have already found a cool video, they are motivated to still scroll for more as newer and more entertaining posts are frequently released. In this context, the reward leaves people craving the product, making it difficult for them to leave the platform.
Once the loop is closed, tech companies create extra precautionary methods to prevent users from escaping. Specifically, customers are incentivized to invest in the platform. This does not necessarily refer to investing money, but rather time and effort. On TikTok, if you invest a lot of time into it, you’ll find that the recommended videos will better fit your preferences. That’s because the algorithm embedded within TikTok receives the information necessary to “understand” your taste in videos. This is where AI comes into play.
With regards to TikTok, the platform’s algorithm consumes data from your page by looking at how much time you spend on each video, which videos have you liked, which videos have you shared with your friend, etc. The algorithm then processes that data and finds patterns. Perhaps the algorithm finds that you watch videos about basketball for longer times compared to other video types. After finding that pattern, the algorithm will execute an action, which in this case would look like suggesting more basketball-related videos to you on TikTok. If the algorithm finds that the user is still not spending more time on the platform after suggesting more basketball-related videos, it will restart until it finds the users’ preferences. When the algorithm offers the correct suggestion, it pushes the user to invest more time into its platform. As a result, the platform makes sure that you go through the cycle of engaging with its services repeatedly, and a habit is formed in the user.
Ultimately, the rise of social media has changed the world of tech and overall society. Too often, we are no longer doing things that we deem valuable, but we are instead spending time on activities that bring us short-term pleasure. The time spent scrolling through videos could be spent enriching ourselves by reading a book, finishing homework, or going outside to exercise. Thanks to AI, we’re in a confined loop, which many of us aren’t trying to escape. Maybe it’s time we tried.
[1] Statista Research Department. "Daily Social Media Usage Worldwide." Statista, September 7, 2021. https://www.statista.com/statistics/433871/daily-social-media-usage-worldwide/.
[2] Diep, Francie. "Some of the Best Data on Human Behavior Is Privately Held by Social Media Companies." Pacific Standard. Pacific Standard, September 18, 2018. https://psmag.com/education/some-of-the-best-data-on-human-behavior-is-privately-held-by-social-media-companies.