Why you can't stop scrolling: the science of 'dark flow'

You pick up your phone to do one quick task, and suddenly 20 minutes have flown by without you even noticing. How do apps do that to you? Science journalist Michaeleen Doucleff https://michaeleendoucleff.com/ felt like her phone had superglue on it, holding her on it for hours each day while draining her of time and energy. Turns out, that feeling isn’t accidental. In her new book, Dopamine Kids https://michaeleendoucleff.com/dopamine-kids/, Michaeleen describes four features that tech companies add to apps to keep us scrolling for as long as possible. She’s sharing this superglue recipe with Short Wave host Emily Kwong … and explaining how these features can pull people into what scientists call a ‘dark flow’ state. Interested in more tech and social media science? Email us your question at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave http://plus.npr.org/shortwave. Listen to Short Wave on Spotify https://n.pr/3HOQKeK and Apple Podcasts https://n.pr/3WA9vqh. This episode was produced by Hannah Chinn. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. The audio engineer was Jimmy Keeley. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:15Speaker 00

  You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.

• 0:20Emily Kwong?

  Hi, Short Wavers. Emily Kwong here with NPR alum, now independent science journalist, Mikeleen DuClef. Hi, Mikeleen.

• 0:26Speaker 02

  Hi, Emily.

• 0:27Emily Kwong?

  I hear you have a new book out now about the science behind screen time.

• 0:31Speaker 02

  I do. It's called Dopamine Kids. And in one part of it, I explore why so many of us, including myself, can't put down our darn phones.

• 0:41Emily Kwong?

  It's awful. Yeah, I pick up my phone to do one thing, and suddenly I'm on social media for 20 minutes. I don't know how that happens.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, for me, Emily, it feels like there's this kind of super glue on the phone holding me there. Turns out, that feeling isn't accidental. Many apps are designed to do this.

• 1:00Emily Kwong?

  And this has kind of come to light in the courts, too. There have been two landmark trials this year in which tech companies were found guilty of harming children through their apps. And specifically, the California case found Instagram owner Meta and Google's YouTube deliberately designed their apps to be addictive for kids.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the companies are appealing those verdicts. But scientists have already spent more than a decade identifying the exact features that tech companies use to keep us glued to apps for as long as possible. So Emily, I have for you today the super glue recipe. As the anthropologist Natasha Dalshaw puts it.

• 1:36Speaker 03

  Things that keep us, you know, spending more time, spending more money, draining more of us and our energy and ourselves. What might literally prevent flourishing?

• 1:49Emily Kwong?

  Yes, this is what social media addiction and like obsession sounds like. But these features, they have a surprising history, I hear.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  Yes, they have deep roots in the gambling industry.

• 2:02Emily Kwong?

  So today on the show, we are digging into the design of your favorite phone app and learning how tech companies mimicked the gambling industry to keep us scrolling and staring. I'm Emily Kwong.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  I'm Mikeleen DuClef, and you're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

• 2:25Speaker 00

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• 2:29Speaker 04

  This week on the NPR Politics Podcast, the midterm elections are wrapping up and millions of people have already voted. We're taking one final check of the electoral pulse with a new NPR PBS News Marist Poll. It shows Democrats still poised to make gains, but also with some warning signs for just how many. We'll explain on the NPR Politics Podcast.

• 2:53Speaker 05

  Oh, Kevin, it feels good to be back.

• 2:54Speaker 06

  It sure does, Casey. And what a time. The world is talking about AI and what's going on in Silicon Valley. And we are here with a new show to tell you all about it.

• 3:04Speaker 05

  That's right, Kevin. On our new show, Machine Gods, twice a week, we'll be bringing you the biggest news in tech and bring you unmatched access to the real titans of this industry.

• 3:12Speaker 06

  You can find Machine Gods from NPR on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 3:18Speaker 07

  This week on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, we talk with fashion designer Daniel Vasevic about why he is in charge of renovating his parents' house. I don't have an architecture degree. Yeah. I'm not an interior designer, but I'm gay. Right. Well, there you are. So how hard can it be? Don't miss our full conversation and the rest of our games. Listen to the Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 3:42Emily Kwong?

  OK, Michaeline, so this story begins in the casinos of Las Vegas. Take us back in time and explain what was happening there.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. So we're going to rewind 40 years ago, way back in the 1980s, when the casino industry underwent a massive transformation and created what many scientists think is the most addictive form of gambling ever.

• 4:03Emily Kwong?

  Oh, how did they do that?

• 4:04Speaker 02

  So they went around and ripped up nearly all the mechanical slot machines and all those green felt poker tables and replaced them all with digital versions of these games. So video-based slot machines, video-based poker machines.

• 4:20Emily Kwong?

  Oh, no.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  They did this because these machines were way cheaper to maintain, but also they allowed the casino industry to add in all these extra features to them.

• 4:31Emily Kwong?

  It's like... Like, they were apps before they were apps. The gambling games just played on screens.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  That's right. They're like apps with giant touchscreens and these ergonomic chairs attached to them. Plus, they added all these things to like, capture your attention and hold you there, like lights, sounds, flashing images. So, over the course of about 20 years, the industry gradually and purposely increased the addictiveness of these games by tweaking their features based on user feedback.

• 5:00Emily Kwong?

  Wait, who gave the user feedback?

• 5:01Speaker 02

  The gamblers. The casinos essentially ran these large-scale experiments on all the millions of people gambling each year in Vegas. They tweaked the device a bit and then see if those changes increased the time people spent gambling. Then they just repeated the process for decades.

• 5:17Emily Kwong?

  So, they were performing essentially massive A/B testing on gamblers?

• 5:22Speaker 02

  Pretty much, and the result was truly extraordinary. The industry created devices that some people stay on for remarkable periods of time. 24 hours, 48 hours, uninterrupted.

• 5:34Emily Kwong?

  Like, they don't even stop to use the bathroom?

• 5:36Speaker 02

  Sometimes not. That anthropologist we just heard from, Natasha Dalshul, found that some people wear adult diapers to the casino so they don't have to stop gambling. One casino worker told her that each night, a bunch of the machines sit out in an alley for cleaning because people have peed in them.

• 5:53Emily Kwong?

  That is awful. That makes me so sad to hear because it just shows the power these devices have on people's attention.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the power they have on people's time and money as well. In her 15 years of researching, Natasha found four features that, when combined together, can trigger a trance-like state in people. You lose track of time, where you are, what you're doing. Scientists call this the machine zone or dark flow. And some people have a really hard time stepping away from a device when they're in this state. And Natasha realized that apps on phones can sometimes trigger this same machine zone state. So, she started to analyze the design of apps, social media, games in the same way.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  You know, I could never have anticipated this. I think gambling offers a case study of what big tech does in a more general way.

• 6:42Emily Kwong?

  Michaeline, let's blow the cover off of this. What are the four ingredients in social media superglue?

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Okay, so the first ingredient is solitude. You use the app alone. It's just you and the screen.

• 6:53Speaker 03

  This is important because it removes social cues for stopping.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  When we use an app by ourselves, we have trouble noticing if we're actually enjoying what we're doing or even realizing when what we're doing is hurting us in some way.

• 7:06Emily Kwong?

  So you're saying it's the presence of other people that helps pull us out of that machine zone state?

• 7:11Speaker 02

  That's right. And this, Emily, is real people, not virtual people. Studies have found that when kids use screens all alone in their bedroom, they're more likely to stay on the app even when it prevents them from going to sleep or interferes with their homework or friendships.

• 7:26Emily Kwong?

  I've experienced this as an adult. Okay, what is the second ingredient to social media superglue?

• 7:32Speaker 02

  It's what I call bottomlessness. There's just seemingly endless photos, endless videos, endless comments to read, endless levels to reach on games. And as Natasha points out, all this content appears automatically.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  There is no natural stopping point.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  So as you're scrolling, you may have a little thought in your head like, hmm, maybe I should go to sleep, right? But then another outrageous video pops up in your feed.

• 7:57Emily Kwong?

  I genuinely feel like I'm being baited, like a fish. And that it's not totally within my control for some reason and I just have to keep watching. And I think it's because I just, there's this feeling of, well, if I just stick around, something else will happen and I won't be totally satisfied if I leave now.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  Exactly. And that feeling grows even stronger when you add in the third ingredient.

• 8:17Emily Kwong?

  Which is?

• 8:18Speaker 02

  Speed.

• 8:20Emily Kwong?

  Ah, right.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  The gambling industry found that when people could place bets faster and faster, they gambled longer and longer. Today on slot machines, you can play like 1,200 games per hour or like one game every three seconds. It's bonkers.

• 8:33Emily Kwong?

  Wait, what? And the speed thing, you're saying this has been happening for a long time with casino games and it's definitely happening on social media?

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, for sure. The faster we can scroll, the longer we stay on these apps. Infinite Scroll and autoplay let us view new content faster and more smoothly because you don't have to stop and click. When social media companies added Infinite Scroll in the 2010s, there was a huge jump in use.

• 8:58Emily Kwong?

  Do scientists know why that's the case? That moving faster would make us stay on the app longer?

• 9:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, scientists don't know yet, but Natasha suspects.

• 9:06Speaker 03

  The speed can cause this sense where you feel like you're kind of don't have a sense of where you begin and the machine ends and it really just pulls you into this flow.

• 9:17Emily Kwong?

  I don't like that. I don't want to be hooked up to a machine.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean Natasha says you can have this feeling that you sort of merge with the screen.

• 9:26Emily Kwong?

  I don't like it.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Me neither. So Emily, can you guess what the fourth ingredient is? I'll give you a hint. AI is really good at it.

• 9:34Emily Kwong?

  Oh, you mean the algorithm?

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Yes, the fourth ingredient is a personalized algorithm and how it selects content for you.

• 9:41Emily Kwong?

  Yes, it does.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Neuroscientist Jonathan Morrow studies addiction at the University of Michigan. He thinks this ingredient is probably the most important and he explained how it works. First, the app uses AI to determine what you want to see.

• 9:53Speaker 05

  They know what you want. They're very good at figuring that out.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  But then this is key.

• 9:58Speaker 05

  They don't give it to you. They give you something close to that.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  Then a few clicks later, the algorithm gives you something even closer.

• 10:05Speaker 05

  Giving you what you want will get you off the app. They don't want that.

• 10:08Emily Kwong?

  They don't want that. They want you to stay on the app as long as possible. All the features are designed to do that.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Exactly. So they sort of tease you in a way, right?

• 10:16Emily Kwong?

  Yeah, they're not trying to satisfy you.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  The app makes you feel like you're making progress or getting closer to your goal. Mateo Schgola is a neuroscientist at UC San Diego. He says when people feel like they're making progress, they double down their effort and try harder.

• 10:31Speaker 06

  When you see improvement, progress and so on, then you have a huge spike of dopamine telling you, oh, do it again and you will get it. Yeah. Because in the real life, when we try again, this dopamine really motivates us to get closer, closer, closer and hit it.

• 10:46Emily Kwong?

  So he's saying just a sense of progress, even if it's not true progress, motivates us to keep trying and to stick with the app because it's just enough.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's always this possibility, right, of getting what you want.

• 11:00Emily Kwong?

  So the social media super glue recipe is as follows: solitude, bottomlessness, speed, and teasing.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  Yep. When all those things combine together, you're likely to enter that trans-like state called the machine zone or dark flow. And for many people like me, it's hard to pull out of that state.

• 11:19Emily Kwong?

  I mean, it seems to me like the tech companies and the gambling industry is hacking human minds. You know, everyone is susceptible to this. But question, Mike Lean, I thought being in a flow state was good. Isn't that where you're so immersed in a task and you're enjoying it so much that you almost forget where you are and you play the piano for hours?

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. So that's the like classic flow state. You know, the one that the psychologist Meihai, Chick Sit Meihai, described back in the eighties. People go into these good flow states when they're doing complex and challenging tasks like playing the piano or knitting a sweater, biking over tough terrain, right? Afterwards, this type of flow leaves you feeling really good and optimistic and relaxed.

• 11:59Emily Kwong?

  Yeah, you get a little mood bump.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Exactly. It's like your most euphoric state or something. Yeah, but these apps don't create that. These apps create dark flow. And that's where you're concentrating on an easy kind of mindless task. And you still feel deeply immersed in it, right? But afterwards, you often feel bad, right? Lethargic and maybe even gloomy.

• 12:20Emily Kwong?

  This is fascinating to me. I didn't realize there were two types of flow and that social media is very good at the machine zombie one.

• 12:30Emily Kwong?

  Final question, can we use this super glue recipe to fight back and pull ourselves away from these apps?

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Absolutely. So for example, our family was wasting way too much time on streaming apps, right? Streaming videos. So we put a bottom on the app and slowed it way down.

• 12:50Emily Kwong?

  How'd you do that?

• 12:50Speaker 02

  We canceled all of our subscriptions and now have to buy each video à la carte. I thought we'd end up spending way more money, but actually we save so much money because we're really careful about what we watch. Before we press play, we really think to ourselves, hmm, do I really want to spend $5.99 on this video?

• 13:09Emily Kwong?

  Wow.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. And we cut back on our movie watching. I'd say like a 10th.

• 13:13Emily Kwong?

  You never binge when you have to pay for it each time. These are great. Any other tips?

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I have a bunch of tips in my book, but here's one that changed my life. Quit carrying your phone around your house.

• 13:26Emily Kwong?

  But it's an appendage. What would we do without it?

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, so try it. When you come home, put your phone in a drawer near the door and leave it there. If you want to use it, go to the drawer, use it, and put it back. I guarantee you, it'll change your life.

• 13:41Emily Kwong?

  Michaeline Dukleff, thank you so much for sharing these fascinating insights into our phones and how we can, I don't know, get a bit of distance from them.

• 13:49Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you so much, Emily.

• 13:53Emily Kwong?

  If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend. It really helps out. Short Wave? Oh, and while you're at it, subscribe. This episode was produced by Hannah Chin. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. Jimmy Keely was the audio engineer. I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

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• 14:23Speaker 04

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• 14:47Speaker 06

  I'm Kevin Ruse.

• 14:48Speaker 05

  And I'm Casey Newton.

• 14:49Speaker 06

  And together, we've been tech journalists for decades. Now, we're your hosts of Machine Gods, a new podcast from NPR that makes sense of what AI means for your work, your life, and all of our futures.

• 15:00Speaker 05

  Twice a week, we'll be exploring the biggest moves in tech and give you unmatched access to the real titans of industry.

• 15:06Speaker 06

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