[corodra]

Search "social media mental health study". Theres a flood of universities that have pretty good evidence of social media causing a lot of mental health issues. Namely towards teens and young adults who grew up with it.

Yes, it does seem silly, but the rise of anxiety and depression in society is linked to social media. Theres a good reason why people do the social media fasts and cleanses. A lot don't go back.

[coldcode]

Then ban social media, not a UI feature. Clearly this law is beyond stupid. What next, banning sunglasses because people might have shifty eyes?

[corodra]

Well, ban cigarettes instead of the mechanism for gaining and retaining customers (ads). But the gov banned the widespread advertising of cigarettes instead of banning the product. The usa now has around a 14% smoking population, compared to like a 50% back in the 50s.

[Kaveren]

A lot of that can likely be attributed to increased public awareness of the dangers of smoking.

[tooop]

That is a social media problem not infinite scrolling problem.

[jjulius]

Infinite scrolling triggers a dopamine response in users, not unlike a slot machine. It's sole purpose is to keep users hooked on the app. It's designed to be addictive.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/automatic-you/201208...

[orbifold]

Tell that to a person in bed, scrolling through Facebook for hours on end. If the content stopped at some point they would do something else hopefully. Compared to TV the pacing is such that people get hooked like on slot machines.

[tooop]

I highly doubt that showing something like "There are X new great posts from blah blah blah, check them out" instead of using infinite scroll will resolve the problem. At the end of the day one could simply load a million posts (probably needs some code/data optimizations but we are talking here about billion dollar companies) and now it is a finite scroll (EDIT: seems that the bill addresses this case).

[jjulius]

Sure it will. Infinite scrolling triggers a dopamine response just like a slot machine[1]. Its sole purpose is to keep users hooked. Telling the user "you're done now, unless you want to keep going" removes that addictive reaction in the brain.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/automatic-you/201208...

[tooop]

"Dopamine is a chemical released in the brain, often when we experience reward or pleasure. The "dopamine feedback loop" is sometimes held up as evidence that social media can affect our brains in the same way drugs do. The idea is that we become chemically dependent upon bursts of dopamine triggered by people 'liking' our posts on Facebook, or retweeting us on Twitter.

But while it's true that interacting with social media can give your brain a dopamine shot, that does not mean you're getting high. Your brain releases dopamine on an everyday basis.

"Dopamine research itself shows that things like video games and technologies, they're in the same realm as food and sex and learning and all of these everyday behaviours."

This was a year ago - Neither Professor Przybylski nor Amy Orben rule out the possibility that social media can negatively affect human behaviour, but both emphasise the need for further research.

[gdfasfklshg4]

Hence only 3 minutes of content per click...

[Kaveren]

And this will solve it how? All it does is create the awful user experience of having to manually tap continue. If, instead, the law prevented scrolling past a certain limit (which would be very stupid indeed, but this is just a hypothetical), users would simply switch to the next social media app.

[Kaveren]

That's not because of infinite scrolling and autoplay.

[jjulius]

Yes it is. Infinite scrolling triggers a dopamine response in users, keeping them wanting more. Its sole purpose is to keep you engaged in the app.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/automatic-you/201208...

[Kaveren]

The source of the mental health issues caused by social media is toxicity, competition for status, and false perceptions of how good other people's lives are. I don't believe stopping people from seeing more by clicking a continue button is going to help with the core issue.

[jjulius]

Infinite scrolling is designed to keep you in the app, looking at more of the content that is going to cause "toxicity, competition for status, and false perceptions of how good other people's lives are". I recognize that these are all major issues that need to be addressed and that this bill doesn't do that as well as we'd like, but one of many other ways we CAN address that is by preventing users from addictively subjecting themselves to more of that content.