They are trying to grab users’ attentions. “Social media sites are chock-a-block with unpredictable rewards. “The rewards are what psychologists refer to as variable reinforcement schedules and is the key to social media users repeatedly checking their screens,” said Dr Mark Griffiths, a professor of behavioural addiction and director of Nottingham Trent University’s International Gaming Research Unit. Phone dependency, driven by high social-media usage, can lead us to think our phone is vibrating when it isn’t. But that’s precisely what keeps us coming back.

We cannot know when we will be rewarded, and more often than not we don’t find anything interesting or gratifying, much like gambling. “You pull a lever and immediately receive either an enticing reward (a match, a prize!) or nothing,” Harris wrote. The pull-to-refresh and infinite scrolling mechanism on our news feeds are unnervingly similar to a slot machine, said Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist for Google who has been described as the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience. It’s not just a game – it affects us financially, physically and emotionally.” Recreating the slot machine “We have to start recognising the costs of time spent on social media. “If you disengage, you get peppered with little messages or bonus offers to get your attention and pull you back in,” said Schüll. Whether it’s Snapchat streaks, Facebook photo-scrolling, or playing Cand圜rush, Schüll explained, you get drawn into “ludic loops” or repeated cycles of uncertainty, anticipation and feedback - and the rewards are just enough to keep you going. “In the online economy, revenue is a function of continuous consumer attention – which is measured in clicks and time spent.” “Facebook, Twitter and other companies use methods similar to the gambling industry to keep users on their sites,” said Natasha Schüll, the author of Addiction by Design, which reported how slot machines and other systems are designed to lock users into a cycle of addiction.

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