The One Second That Keeps You Scrolling

You made a small movement today, probably before you were fully awake. Pull down, let go, wait. You'll make it around two thousand more times before you sleep. The man who invented it built it in a weekend, as a convenience. He has since called it one of his regrets. In the 1950s a psychologist found that a pigeon fed on a predictable schedule stops pecking when it's full — and a pigeon fed at random never stops at all. The reward wasn't what created the behaviour. The uncertainty was. Casinos understood this immediately. So did the people who designed the thing in your pocket. This video covers: — Loren Brichter and the gesture he built in two days — Skinner's pigeons and the variable ratio schedule — Natasha Dow Schüll on what slot machine players are actually chasing — the Stanford lab that taught persuasion as a curriculum — what Facebook's first president admitted in 2017 Sources and further reading: Skinner, B. F. — Schedules of Reinforcement (1957) Schüll, N. D. — Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas (2012) Fogg, B. J. — Persuasive Technology (2002) dscout — Mobile Touches study (2016) New investigation every week.You made a small movement today, probably before you were fully awake. Pull down, let go, wait. You'll make it around two thousand more times before you sleep. The man who invented it built it in a weekend, as a convenience. He has since called it one of his regrets. In the 1950s a psychologist found that a pigeon fed on a predictable schedule stops pecking when it's full — and a pigeon fed at random never stops at all. The reward wasn't what created the behaviour. The uncertainty was. Casinos understood this immediately. So did the people who designed the thing in your pocket. This video covers: — Loren Brichter and the gesture he built in two days — Skinner's pigeons and the variable ratio schedule — Natasha Dow Schüll on what slot machine players are actually chasing — the Stanford lab that taught persuasion as a curriculum — what Facebook's first president admitted in 2017 Sources and further reading: Skinner, B. F. — Schedules of Reinforcement (1957) Schüll, N. D. — Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas (2012) Fogg, B. J. — Persuasive Technology (2002) dscout — Mobile Touches study (2016) New investigation every week. 0:00 The gesture nobody questions 0:48 Skinner's pigeons 1:57 The slot machine 2:48 Your thumb 3:17 2,617 taps a day 3:41 The Stanford lab 4:45 The man who regrets it 5:19 What you blame