this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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The harm doesn't come from the aspects of infinite scroll, auto play, or algorithmic examples in a vacuum.
But we have statistically proven that when you gamify the system and the content can be considered harmful to consume too much of, those two factors are what makes it dangerous.
Tricking the brain into doing something harmful to itself by gamification is the problem. The algorithm, auto play and infinite scroll are just mechanisms to facilitate that. Novelty only plays a small part in that. The algorithm by itself doesn't provide a dopamine hit. The infinite scroll by itself doesn't provide a dopamine hit. The auto play feature by itself doesn't cause a dopamine hit.
Even when you combine all three the dopamine hit won't come if the content being pushed isn't sufficient to cause a rush of dopamine. And that dopamine rush often comes from things like upvotes and downvotes, and badges, and achievements. Follower counts and other metrics that the individual users use to get dopamine are being weaponized against them to make money. And it was intentional on the part of meta execs.