The captivating nature of social media explained to children

2023-11-24 07:24:01

You do it while waiting for the bus. Or while standing in line at the supermarket. And even if hardly anyone admits it, many people even do it in the toilet. You pull out your phone and check whether there’s anything new on TikTok or Instagram, Facebook or X (formerly Twitter). This is a great way to kill a few minutes when you’re alone with your thoughts and bored.

There’s no question about it: there’s often something interesting – a funny video, a photo of a beautiful sunset or a reference to an exciting newspaper article. Social media is a fascinating place for exchanging ideas and experiences, and it can help us stay in touch with friends even over long distances.

But let’s be honest: it’s not uncommon for us to continue scrolling even when we’re bored by what we see. And when we’re not out and about, it’s easy to find that half an hour or an hour suddenly goes by, even though we just wanted to take a quick look. Then we lost a lot of time – and perhaps even increased our boredom.

Our column “How do I explain it to my child?”: Image: FAZ

Why are we doing this? What makes social media so compelling even though sometimes there’s nothing interesting to see? In fact, the platforms are designed to encourage their users to stay on them as often and as long as possible. Central to this is the possibility of endless scrolling. It was one of the big innovations compared to conventional websites, where, like in a book, you had to scroll to the last page or just click and get to the end.

However, on Facebook and Twitter new content is constantly being loaded and you never reach the end. There could always be something exciting waiting for us further down. This keeps our curiosity alive, and at irregular intervals we have the wonderful experience of actually coming across something surprising and new. And our brain loves nothing more than learning something new – no matter how difficult that may sometimes feel in school.

How social technologies make us lonely

The platforms present us with content tailored precisely to each and every one of us. They record which topics we stick with and which ones we continue to scroll through. For example, if they notice that we look at pictures and videos about cats or football particularly often, they will show us more of these pictures and videos in the future. Over time, platforms learn about our interests and preferences – and with this knowledge they can entice us to spend even more time on them.

This is worth its weight in gold for the platforms. Because TikTok and everyone else earns their money from the attention of their users. Companies pay a lot for advertising on the platforms. Because these platforms know so much about their users and have precise data about what content they like and what they don’t – from which you can also deduce age, gender and many other things with great reliability – they can target specific people there. Manufacturers of cat food and soccer shoes can advertise their products to cat lovers and soccer enthusiasts.