While we think of the social network as a revolutionary tool for connecting people, it was designed to be addictive, to exploit a vulnerability in people. This was said in no uncertain terms when Sean Parker, the 38-year-old founding president of Facebook, described one of the operating principles at an event in Philadelphia in November. “The thought process was: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’” He said Facebook’s architects exploited a “vulnerability in human psychology."
The mechanism behind this is the same neurotransmitter that makes people addicted to cupcakes, cocaine, sex and gambling. Dopamine. When Facebook users post articles or photographs they seek little hits of dopamine. It's no different than a drug fix.
In his article titled “How evil is tech?," David Brooks described Silicon Valley's pattern recognition: “Tech companies understand what causes dopamine surges in the brain and they lace their products with ‘hijacking techniques’ that lure us in and create ‘compulsion loops’.”
The trick behind these compulsive loops is irregularly timed rewards, which is the same technique used by slot machine manufacturers to enslave gamblers in casinos. In the case of Facebook, this is ensured by proprietary AI using machine learning to carefully curate the schedule of rewards bestowed upon a user.
The power of dopamine is no small matter. Around 7% of patients who take Parkinson’s drugs, which heavily modulate the brain's available dopamine, become compulsive gamblers.
So, in addition to being lured into a gauntlet of predatory data mining, Facebook and other social networks are also psychologically manipulating us by exploiting the same aspects of our brain chemistry responsible for drug addictions. It may be decades before we see the long-term damage of this cycle.